TRANSIENT EXPOSURE
TRANSIENT EXPOSURE is a dance and research project in mixed reality. It is a collaboration between the artists’ collective reVerb and the dance company Chitrasena, Colombo (Sri Lanka) – and from January to September 2021 also in collaboration with XR_Unites. Across the distance, it is an attempt to bring together five female artists on different continents. Mixed Reality (MR) becomes a testing ground for a working process with the long-term goal of combining live performance, interaction and mediality. The purely digital installation planned for September 2021 will be a station on the path of realizing TRANSIENT EXPOSURE. A live performance in Colombo and Berlin, planned for 2022, will be another stage.
Based on the archive of the Chitrasena Dance Company in Colombo, Sri Lanka, TRANSIENT EXPOSURE asks about contemporaneity in dance. Since the island’s independence in 1948, the women of the Chitrasena family have led the company in the third generation, through the civil war (1983-2009) to a globalized present that brings Lankan Kandy dance to the brink of disappearance. In the planned installation, the artists explore the changing environment of the company, the search for a place for their dance and the struggle for renewal.
The collaboration with XR_Unites aims to experiment with the possibilities of MR and to make dance experienceable in a new way beyond the classical live performance. For this purpose, a sensual-virtual format will be developed that allows users to explore the different layers of time, to experience the three generations of dancers together and to participate physically. Tactile sensory experiences as well as Colombo’s heterogeneous sound backdrop are of central importance here – and connected to this is the tension between live experience and augmented scenography. Digitized images and film footage of the three dancers from different periods are available – both historical and current footage. They form the basis for a 3D montage that will be accessible via the Hololens 2 in Mixed Reality.
The project is funded within the framework of XR_Unites by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the INP-II program. It is also supported by the national performance network (npn) – stepping out, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the initiative Neustart Kultur. Aid Program Dance.
