About the project

PERFORM – Making Movement Matter is a transdisciplinary, practice-based research project that explores digital and visual engagement with kinaesthesia – our awareness of body position and movement.  Through digital tools and improvisational workshops the aim is to examine how a heightened experience of kinaesthesia may play a role in identifying new, ethically responsible pathways to efficacy and social agency.

The work challenges current trends in movement capture by seeking alternatives to signification via recording and reference. Our interest, therefore, is in making movement matter in ways that are oriented toward performance and reciprocity. Hence, we explore the ways in which kinaesthesia can be materialised, and made relevant for people whose experience of movement may be outside of the parameters of normal – from those considered to be neurodivergent to those considered to be movement experts through training.

Critically, our enactive, visual and material approach to kinaesthesia allows for representational variation and scope in a bid to move away from what could be cognitively explained. This rich territory for applied research draws on the disciplines of interaction and graphic design, animation, computing, rehabilitation and health, philosophy, sociology and choreography. Our collective approach to digital movement forms a central, yet rarely examined, discourse on the role kinaesthesia may play in shaping human agency. As such, there is a need to critically couple the ethical concerns of human-digital transformation with techno-centered innovation and design processes.

PERFORM is a collaborative project involving partners Wendy Keay-Bright at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Joel Gethin Lewis at Goldsmiths University, London. The project sits as part of the Dancing in Data Network.

Publications:

Hansen, L. 2015. ‘Movement Scripts – The materialisation of movement through digital media’. In Digital Movement – Essays in Motion Technology and Performance, Salazar, Nicolas & Sita Popat (eds.) .UK: Palgrave Macmillan

Hansen, L. 2015. ‘From scripts to scores – Movement as an embodied material for digital interaction’. In Proceedings of the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art 2015. Vancouver, Canada: 14.08.2015–19.08.2015.

Hansen, L. 2016. ‘Presenting a Performative Presence – Materializing data for digital interaction’. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Movement and Computing. Thessaloniki, Greece: 05.07.2016–06.07.2016.

Hansen, L., Keay-Bright, W., & Milton, D. 2017. ‘Conceptualising Kinaesthesia – Making Movement Palpable’. In 12th EAD Conference – Design for Next. Sapienza University of Rome: 12.04.2017–14.04.2017.

Future Events & Publications

Hansen & Keay-Bright ‘Perform – digital movement in the making’ at the NORDES Conference, 15-17 June 2017, The Oslo School of Architecture & Design, Norway

Keay-Bright & Hansen ‘Dancing in data: Representation, repetition and recreation’ at the Movement & Cognition Conference, 9-11 July 2017 Oxford University, UK

Hansen ‘Movement Matters’ at the Design History Society Annual Conference: Making & Unmaking the Environment at 7-9 September 2017 University of Oslo

Workshop ‘Coding Kinaesthesia – Making Movement Matter’ at AHO Autumn 2017

Workshop ‘Movement Matters – a Digital Sense of Self’ at Cardiff Metropolitan UniversityAutumn 2017

Hansen, Keay-Bright & Lewis ‘Movement matters’ at the Anticipation Conference 8 -10 November 2017, Anticipation Conference, School of Advanced Study, London