Choreography in Every Day Life workshop
photos taken at Open Engagement at Portland State University, Oregon, Lipa University in the Philippines and at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
performance art events that include multiple ways for an audience participant to engage
with my artwork. I have conducted workshops with students in the USA, South America
and Asia in which ideas of Open Source performance art becomes a catalyst to create a
unified language of motion between the participants. My workshop “Choreography of
Everyday Life” has students isolate movements that they do in a daily basis and then link
them together like an equation, it then becomes simple translatable actions, they can then
organize the actions into shapes and do so in a public environment. The reaction from the
audience is one of recognition of the isolated movements in addition to an enigmatically
delightful experience as the outside viewers encounter an open form tableau of
synchronized movement in everyday places like a bank or a post office. It does not
require a common spoken language to conduct the workshop or advanced dance or
movement skills on the part of the participants.” -Amelia Winger-Bearskin (research
statement)
The Art of Hacking Toys
This workshop encourages people to bring all personal media devices with them to learn about repurposing consumer grade technology to be used as a tool of social practice and performance art. Amelia Winger-Bearskin is currently working with Pratim Sengupta of Vanderbilt University's Mind, Matter and Media Lab in order to hack consumer technology (webcams and the XBox Kinect specifically) to create a new software tool for 3rd and 4th grade elementary education. Their tool will use structures of performance art allowing children to use their bodies as a programming language. Winger-Bearskin has held workshops around the globe to think about performance art as a form of live algorithmic coding. This year's workshop will have 4 phases
1. Group think about the hacking of toys and its importance in social movements, play, learning and art
2. Identifying how the user can interface with their device in a new way
3. Forming small groups to create new group play with devices
4. Creating a project to interact with the Portland community to enact during the workshop or at a time during the conference.
Participants will be allowed to participate even if they do not have a personal media devices as there are elements of performance, traditional hand made media and group think that are important to the generative process of the workshop.
Examples of personal media devices that be brought (and some will be supplied) are:
Laptops, smart phones, Tablets, cell phones, mp3 players, synthesizers, digital toys, sound making toys, board games, musical instruments, video game consoles, projectors, human voices and bodies.
With the rise of social movements around the globe using social media networks as tools of information dissemination using a tool in a new way has never been more reticent. The goal of this workshop is not only to create collaborations with others with similar ideas but gain a new perspective on your own personal interaction with portable media.