In 2004, I did an experimental performance with SenS I and two SenSorSuits. Together with the audience I ‘programmed’ an interactive audio-visual composition and performed this composition with them live.
Making the performance
Two people from the audience wore a SenSorSuit.
One person carried a camera and microphone.
Two people from the audience made two tracks on the floor, marked by a red/white barrier tape, for the persons wearing SenSorSuits.
The rest of the audience was split up in pairs and created interesting obstacles and assigments to place on the tracks. The purpose of the obstacles and assigments was to force the SenSorSuit persons to make interesting movements with their bodies, so they would generate interesting audio-visuals.
Assignments could be tasks like, “wait until the other SenSorSuit is at the camera”, “do the last assigment six times”, “move to a position as close as possible to the other SenSorSuit”, “scream loudly when the camera is near”, “walk the stairs 10 times”, “wait here for 10 seconds” etc. Obstacles could be any object in the building, like a box, a trashbin, a mattress, a ladder etc.
The two persons that created the tracks placed the assignments and objects on the tracks.
Two persons worked together as show director. They made a track on the floor for the camera operator and checked if all objects and assigments on the courses were placed in an interesting way.
For forty five minutes everybody worked on their tasks and the two persons with the SenSorSuits learned how to play with live recorded video samples.
The performance
After forty five minutes we discussed the tracks and assigments and the timing of the performance. We rehearsed difficult tasks briefly and then we just let the performance take its course.
The performance started with a live recording of somebody in the audience. Then the three performaners (two with SenSorSuit, one with camera) walked their tracks and did their assigments, automatically generating audio-visuals. The end result was an experimental audio-visual experience (watch below), but the process was interesting and fun. An interesting way to work with a group.
