Ukiyo [Moveable World] — A choreographic installation fusing dance, sound, design and digital projections by dap-lab / dans sans joux :: June 1, 2009; 7:00 pm :: Antonin Artaud Building, Brunel University, West London (UK).

UKIYO explores the layers of perceptions in an audiovisual world that constantly shifts and fragments; the audience is invited to move in and around the space which in its current version features five hanamichi (runways) and several movie screens. Dancers perform simultaneously with digital objects that are projected, and their sounds and voices are sampled and processed. The music and visual choreography for “Ukiyo” are designed for real-time gestural interaction to animate the feedback system and generative algorithms through with the Second Life virtual space and the performer movements are intertwined.

Loosely based on several haikus and Christian Kracht’s utopian novel on the SwissAfrican Soviet Revolution of the early 1900s (Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten), and developed in online rehearsals with Japanese dancers and engineers creating a possible future “world” simulation of the cavernous Swiss sanctuary system in the inner Alps (“Réduit”), UKIYO challenges our fantasies and conceptions of past and future virtual worlds.

Conceived and directed by Johannes Birringer, the installation features fashion design concepts by Michèle Danjoux with choreography by Katsura Isobe, Helenna Ren, Yiorgos Bakalos, Anne-Laure Misme, Rumiko Bessho, Mamen Rivera and Olu Taiwo; photography and digital designs by a group of collaborating artists including Paul Verity Smith, Takeshi Kabata, and Yukihito Obara; original music with real-time synthesis composed by Oded Ben-Tal, and live music by Caroline Wilkins and Kerry Yong, scenography by Johannes Birringer, and lighting design by Mamen Rivera.

UKIYO is performed by an international cast of several performers whose work developed in online collaboration with digital artists in Tokyo, as part of a cross-cultural research venture in virtual environments directed by Birringer (Professor of Performance Technologies, DAP-Lab, Brunel School of Arts).

For further information, call + 44 (0)1895 267 343 Or email: Johannes.Birringer [at] brunel.ac.uk

This project is supported by a PMi2/connect British Council research cooperation Awar; The Japan Foundation, IAPL 2009 conference. Bliss Trust/PRS Foundation, and The Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance at Brunel University