Embodied Synthesizer: An xR Dance Workshop
with:
Paula Strunden in collaboration with Bita Bell
#virtual #dance #performance
This week-long interdisciplinary workshop merges dance and virtual technologies to explore extended reality (xR). Drawing from Paula Strunden's PhD thesis on ‘Embodied Virtuality’ and her xR dance performance ‘Rhetorical Bodies,’ participants will work in groups to create a collective ‘Embodied Synthesizer.’ This synthesizer combines physical movements with auditory sounds in real-time. Using VR headsets, object trackers, and immersive software like Gravity Sketch and Manus Polygon, participants will engage in free movement, dance, and full-body VR drawing and tracking exercises. The workshop aims to foster experiences of hybrid intimacy and expanded consciousness. It will include introspection exercises, guided discussions, and culminate in an xR dance performance, open to all Summer School participants.
Paula Strunden is a transdisciplinary xR artist. She studied architecture in Vienna, Paris and London and worked at Raumlabor Berlin and Herzog & de Meuron Basel. She is currently pursuing her artistic dissertation as part of the European research network TACK at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and, as founder of xR Atlas, is committed to an alternative historiography of virtual technologies.
https://paulastrunden.com
Bita Bell is a dance artist and composer with a BA in music composition and an MFA in dance. Born in Iran, she studied in Hong Kong and lived in the U.S. since 2012 until she moved from New York City to Vienna in 2020. Her artistic research and practice in both dance and music is based on the body as archive, fragmented memories, collective imaginations, visceral sensations, radical softness, and playful improvisations. Her works aim to expose, question, and subvert social-political matters that disrupt the joy in daily life. She has been awarded the 2023 Startstipendium for Music and Performing Arts from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture and the 2024 DanceWeb Scholarship for Vienna’s Impulstanz International Dance Festival.
https://bitabell.com
︎MEDIA: Virtual Reality (VR), Extended Reality (xR), Body Tracking (Vive), Embodied
Drawing (Gravity Sketch), Game Engine (Unity)
︎LOCATION: Main location
︎TEACHING LANGUAGE: English
︎WHAT TO BRING: Comfortable cloths to move, any smart phone
︎REQUIREMENTS: None
︎MAXIMUM NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 5