This workshop will host a disco of colour and rhythmic digital beats. Liquid projections will provide a backdrop for bodily traces and forms. As an introduction, MFA students will outline the primary forms of engagement with the subject, be that music, performance, dance or academic research.
Using The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici as starting points, the student group have been looking at the concept of bodies in the digital age in relation to flow, immersion and absence. Florence Peake and Shama Khanna will join in the discussion, responding to these key texts and collected research through their respective practices.
Peake will lead a Skinner Releasing movement session using guided imagery and tactile hand studies for gentle releasing of tension to allow for maximum freedom of movement.
Khanna will present a screening programme entitled Transcending Flatness spanning over 50 years of digital artists' moving image practice including works by Stan VanderBeek, Tom Lock, Ben Russell and Elizabeth Vander Zaag. In considering the physical in a digital age, what if anything, is being compensated in the creation of avatar aesthetics? What happens to our bodies when we are in a state of digital immersion? Who, or what fills the space of absent bodies in digital production?