Sensory hallucinations in the extended choreographic

Abstract

ABSTRACTDeriving its impetus from contemporary associations between the choreographic as extended sculptural (plastic and virtual) scenographies and augmented virtuality, and thus also reimagining some of the radical modernist abstract and technologized poetic techniques invented by Bauhaus artists such as Schlemmer and Moholy-Nagy, this essay mixes up questions of common perception with un-common senses and ‘homuncular flexibility’ (Jaron Lanier). It focusses on kinaesthetic, trans-sensorial notions of material affect in dance-theatre environments where performers or visitors move between real and unreal space. The author briefly discusses examples drawn from atmospheric studies, architecture and choreographic objects, reflecting on the impact of the Bauhaus on the design of such sensorial environments which themselves are conceived as performative, not built-in stable forms. The hallucinatory dimension is introduced in reference to matsutake and forest dance (Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing), and to tactile-aural choreographies in recent productions of the DAP-Lab, the author’s production company. The essay imagines more speculative developments of how bodies and matter come to affect, and be affected by, augmented reality and virtual reality interfaces within kinetic atmospheres – here called ‘kimospheres.’