cycle 3

For the third iteration of my project, I added in additional elements of a contact mic tracking my heart beat and a large scale projection of my blinking eye. I stood in front of the large eye projection and performed my movements with the smaller face projection trained on my face at all times.

The performance was a 7 minute duration, but in the future I could see it being much longer–potentially 30-45. The movements that are the score of the piece are my slow, measured blinkings that sync in and out with the blinking done by the image projected onto my face and the large eye projection, as well as the deliberate and slow movements of my head turning from left to right. My movements are slow to the point that it takes 7 minutes to turn from center to the right, back to center, and then to the left.

The addition of the contact mic picking up my heartbeat felt vital to the piece. With the help of Michael at MOLA, I was able to narrow in on the low frequencies of my heart beating and had that play for the duration of the performance. It felt crucial to be a live sound, as it was really evident how much it would change according to what was happening. For instance, it was quite fast at the beginning and then gradually slowed throughout, or it would speed up if someone moved around in the audience. The feedback I got was that it felt clear that it wasn’t pre-recorded because of how it felt tied to my physical presence in the room as audience members could see me breathe.

Besides increasing the duration of the piece, something I would consider changing in a future iteration would be providing subtle clues to the audience that they would be allowed to come closer to my body as I performed. Some clues I would consider would be a sign outside of the performance space that said something like “viewers are invited to look closely at the artist, but to not touch her,” or perhaps include a variety of seating at different viewing distances. Especially in the case of a longer durational piece, seating would become an invitation to stay and look. I was also appreciative of the monitor that was provided to me so I could “mark” my movements, and it made me remember that I had at one point considered having a live feed in the space that showed the performance in a different light; perhaps with a time delay? Alex pointed out that that could be a good idea, especially because there were many layers of mediation happening within the performance already.

I am really proud of this piece. It’s an idea that I had early on in the semester, and I’m really glad I stuck with it and spent the whole 3 cycles dedicated to broadening the performance.