Techno Performance

Since the 1966 New York performance series, 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, which partnered engineers with choreographers such as Lucinda Chiles and, later, the 1972Cornell performance of Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik (featured at the exhibition entrance), the media arts have incorporated, if not also challenged, leading developments in engineering, information sciences, robotics, and corollary scientific experimentations. The transformation of the art gallery and museum into sites for live media performance engages audiences with the delights of technology and the body/machine interface. Projects by Toni Dove and Ken Feingold have celebrated the wonders of robotics and interactive technology, while the blendings of the body and technology are staged, from Eduardo Kac’s fluorescent genomic rabbits to Stelarc’s extra ear grown into his arm, to talk back to passersby via Bluetooth technology. In contrast, the activist collective, Preemptive Media, invites users to hack technologies as their way of speaking back to the pervasive tracking systems of digital culture.

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