Live Artery-Performing Tech-LaJuné McMillian, Brandon Powers, Kat Mustatea & Heidi Boisvert

Due to the recent pandemic developments and impact of the new variant, all in-person Live Artery events have been moved to a presenter dedicated digital program. Presenters RSVP here.
Artists have always pushed the boundaries of what technology can do, whether it’s exploring hybrid ways of experiencing performance, redirecting perception, interrogating narratives and barriers, or questioning technology itself.  In this session, LaJuné McMillian, Brandon Powers and Heidi Boisvert & Kat Mustatea will give brief presentations on their work in four unique perspectives.  The event will culminate with a performance of Lizardly by Boisvert and Mustatea.

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Presentation: LaJuné McMillian – Black Movement Library (BML)

BML is a library for activists, performers & artists to create diverse XR projects, a space to research how and why we move, and an archive of Black existence. BML seeks to grow community through the use of performances, xr experiences, workshops, conversations and tool making. Movement Portraits serve as a way to learn about the lives of performers contributing their movement data to the Black Movement Library. What happens when we ritualize the archival process of data collection, and invite the community as a witness?

Presentation: Brandon Powers – Duet

Duet is a collaborative dance ritual in virtual reality. Following a year of isolation, the experience invites us to reconnect with our bodies by reconnecting with each other. By utilizing VR, a technology often considered isolating, participants reclaim the simple gesture of a handshake through an immersive choreographic experience. In pairs, participants adorn headsets and are guided by interactive music and light to connect and move, as an audience watches on. Together, their movement powers the experience and inspires them to create a unique music composition which climaxes in an impactful moment of physical connection. Both playful and meditative, DUET seeks to reimagine virtual reality as a space for embodied collaborative interaction and shift how we are accustomed to watching others move in a headset. 

Presentation & Performance: Kat Mustatea & Heidi Boisvert – Lizardly

Lizardly is a mixed reality play that explores AI, environmental collapse, and interspeciality. Vincent and Rebecca’s marriage is falling apart as they brace for an oncoming hurricane—and if that’s not bad enough, they are also turning into lizards. Set in post-anthropocene Miami, the drama unfolds in the aftermath of various ecological cataclysms: rising oceans, aggressive mold, bio-engineered flora that conduct electrical current. Humans have not been wiped out, so much as they have adapted to rapid environmental shifts by mutating into lizards. Vincent and Rebecca have no choice but to weather the storm inside their smart-home, a technological remnant named June whose functions (and malfunctions) they weaponize in an escalating domestic turf war. The staging employs VR and MoCap to create a vivid portrayal of hybrid humans in a posthuman world where even reality is mutable.