Metabody International Forum

METABODY is a 5 years project starting July 2013, with the support of the European Commission and the participation of 38 partners from 16 countries, coordinated by Reverso. http://metabody.eu/

With: Jaime del Val, coordinator / Reverso, Nimish Biloria / Hyperbody, Marije Baalman / Steim, Jean-Marc Matos / K. Danse,  Johannes Birringer et Michele Danjoux / Dap_Lab Brunel University, Robert Wechsler, Delphine Lavaux and Marcello Lussana / Palindrome, Pablo Palacio / Stocos.

Public activities:

• Workshops: 6^th, 7^th – 19:00-22:00
• Talks and panel: 8^th – 19:00-21:00
• Performances: 8^th – 21:30-22:30 (outdoors) and 9t^th – 19:00-22:00
  Public presentations: projects by Reverso, TUDelft, Steim, K. Danse, Dap_Lab, Palindrome and other Metabody partners.

6^th-7^th October

19:00-22:00

Workshop and demos – Metabody / Metatopia – embodied media as response to surveillance culture.
The workshop will focus on experimentation with perception, movement, spatial and bodily affordances for researching into the way interfaces capture and reduce movement to traceable discreet units, at the same time the workshop will propose to reinvent the affordances of the interface by involving bodily motion in non-reductive ways that foreground the indeterminacy and unquantifiability of movement as experienced through proprioception and other sensing modalities. All the Metabody tools, technologies and techniques developed by Reverso, TUDelft, Steim and K. Danse will become a critical playground for reinventing the body, reversing cybernetics and queering Big Data Brother.
With Jaime del Val, Jean Marc Matos, Marije Baalman, Nicolo Merendino, Nimish Biloria, and other Metabody partners.

Featuring Workshop by Palindrome on the 6^th October 19:00-20:00
Human Body Tracking — Motion and Touch

Many artists and performers today are using interactive technology. In this one-hour workshop, participants will get a taste of the body interface using camera and electrode-based technologies. We will look at some of the places such interaction draws its expressivity, and how it can be amplified and contextualized.

Palindrome has been working with MetaBody on an project called Affording Differences. This refers to fundamental differences in bodies and their desires for movement, and particularly recognizes the beauty and artistic values of diversity and disalignment. We work with persons of other abilities.

The workshop is for anyone — of any body-type and of any ability.
It concerns movement, music and touch.
Participants should come at the beginning (not in the middle) of the hour.
Wear loose clothing.

Software: EyeCon, EyesWeb, MotionComposer
Hardware: Computers, video cameras, touch sensors
Workshop Leaders: Robert Wechsler and Delphine Lavau
Bios

8^th October

19:00-21:00

Metabody introduction by Jaime del Val
Metabody Panel – Reversing cybernetics – Hacking Big Data Brother – Embodied media as response to surveillance culture.
Metabody is a European project that attempts to redefine the body in Media in less reductionist ways than is usual in current information technologies, thus counteracting technology’s increasing tendency to dampen differences by reducing bodies and movements to prescribed forms in current surveillance culture. Metabody proposes a reversal of cybernetics that highlights the indeterminacy of embodied expressions as a key factor for a sustainable society. This foregrounds the need for a new ethics, which we may call metamedia and biomedia ethics.

With Nimish Biloria, Marije Baalman, Nicolo Merendino, Jean Marc Matos, Jaime del Val, Johannes Birringer, Michele Danjoux, Pablo Palacio and other Metabody partners.

21:30-22:30

Performances
Metakinesphere-Microsexes
by Reverso (Jaime del Val and Cristian García)

Indoors (9^th october) and/or outdoors (8^th october)

A new series of wearable architectures by Reverso that become extensions of a body looking onto itself through surveillance cameras disseminated on the skin, proposing intimate one-to-one encounters with the audience.
Microsexes
Metakinesphere

9^th October

19:00-22:00

Performances-Installations-Metaformances
several meta-scenes from Metatopia 1.1 will be presented

METATOPIA 1.1

Metatopia is a metaopera, metaformance, and metagaming platform, a laboratory of perception, embodiment and space that extends in a series of installations / dis-concerts / performances / metaformances / urban interventions and home performances.
In an apparent future that could be the present a planetary cyberorganism, or hipercyborg, called Big Data Brother, traces, cuantifies and modulates every movement of every human and non-human body and space. There is a diffuse guerilla of Metabody agents that aim at deprogramming the hipercyborg (Big Data Brother) through mobilizing unquantifiable movements, untraceable behaviors, emergent perceptions and illegible affects, in a counter-reductive move towards increasing diversity of bodies and behaviours, infusing indeterminacy into the system. Metatopia is the architectural, kinetic and perceptual laboratory of the Metabody agents (also called mutant bitches 2.0) who develop dynamic, intra-active spaces, illegible behaviors and unquantifiable affects that exceed reduction to data. Metabody agents are affecthackers and perception hackers that operate in theontological substrata of power and control, XXI century Quixotes that undo the invisible strata of power disseminating diffuse actions across all spaces, a metapolitics for a potential Occupy 2.0 movement in the era of global surveillance.

Amorphogenesis-Errance

by Reverso (Jaime del Val) and K. Danse (Jean-Marc Matos)

A Hybrid of the Errance project of K. Danse and the Amorphogenesis project by Reverso, in which the audience is invited to explore an immersive experiential space in which small gestures expand in an amorphous digital architecture disseminated in translucent structures and projections of an intra-active space where the audience occupies shifting positions.
Amorphogenesis
Errance-22

Interaction and choreography: Jean Marc Matos and Jaime del Val
Conception, visuals and sound: Jaime del Val and Jean Marc Matos
Physical Structure: Jaime del Val and Cristian Garcia
Projection system: Dieter Vandoren
Computer Programming: Dieter Vandoren
Digital meshes: Jia Rey Chang
(The original work on “Errance” alone has been done in collaboration with Emilie Villemagne, Arnaud Courcelle, Marianne Masson, Mario Garcia Saez and Emmanuel Mondolfo).
Performer-dancer: Marianne Masson

K. Danse will present a short recent video of the Errance project.
Based on the multiple meanings of the labyrinth, Errance is a hybrid project which combines an immersive interactive installation, live performance and physical involvement of the audience.
Project made by K. Danse in the context of Metabody, www.k-danse.net
Choreographers: Anne Holst & Jean-Marc Matos
Digital artists : Aurélie Dumaret & Emilie Villemagne, ww.1minute69.com
Dancers-performers : Marianne Masson & Mario Garcia Sáez
Multimedia artist : Arnaud Courcelle
Composer : Emmanuel Mondolfo
Full documentation: Here