Demo- Video from the 100 Grad Festival, Sophiensaele

Performers: Mab Cardosa, Naemeh Shirazi, Lisa Shirin
Music/Sound: Lukas Grundmann
Arduino: Sarah Hermanutz
Costume: Johanna Schraut / Monika Dorniak
Camera: Lisa Shirin
Direction/ Concept: Monika Dorniak


The performative installation „An emological symphony“ is a lively hybrid literally joining human and technological organs. The outcome of this mixed form is a bio-musical score which is being breed -live on stage- not only by the human performers but also by the computers influence. The heart rate, breathing scale, and temperature of the performer is being measured and used as a parameter for sounds. With the action of the performer the music is changing its emotional layers, and with the modification of the soundtrack the performers reaction is being influenced. Who is the active performer within this installation- and who isn`t? And who is controlling whom?

If we regard it from the philosophical side there would be no explicit political difference between the elements on stage. As Bruno Latour explains in his manifest „Politics of nature“: „I do not claim that things speak „on their own“, since no beings, not even humans, speak on their own, but always trough something or someone else“.
Could the performers „speaking organ“ be the machine then? Or is the machine just a designed interpretation of human being- and therefor as human as the person using it? Even if we collected the scientific data by the performer we would need to question ourself which data we may rely on. Weither its the dancer controlling the intensity of movement, the designed computerprogram transforming the dancers data into a new media, or the human performer who is controlling the program- there are many stages within a process of collecting information and processing it into a „fact“. And the start or ending point is hard to define.

Within this performance artist Monika Dorniak composes a philosophic and scientific game, which is composed as a network of action and reaction. The audience may regards the performance on stage but needs to decide where it is actually taking place. By merging the traditional background of technological and musical performance with a usual dance performance the artist wants to awake the audience attention- or overwork it with the mass of data.
The work „An emological Symphony- Langsamer Wendepunkt“ is regarding current topics such as (over-) usage of technology, politics of privacy in the internet, and the impact of psychological pressure within a group.