Photos by Hugo Glendinning
7, 8, 9 NOVEMBER 2024,
7:30 PMPERFORMANCE IV
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Dance, science, and science fiction come together in this fourth and final performance from the NEUROLIVE project.
While the performers approach dancing as a process of ‘taking a reading’, intuitively interpreting their moment-to-moment embodied experience, this year, the NEUROLIVE team also stages an AI that augments this process. The AI is conceived as a system that reads multiple live data streams from the performers, the audience and the room to generate spoken interpretations of the emergent dance, like an interpretive oracle.
In this ritual-like, meditative performance, ‘taking a reading’ invokes associations with both magic and science at the same time: with the kinds of readings taken by scientific measurement devices, and more divinatory or magical readings, like the reading of palms, tarot cards, or tea leaves.
Readings of what was never written continues Sperling’s choreographic investigation into embodied ways of knowing as an intrinsic part of live dance experiences. For performers and audience members alike, this can span a generative meshwork of our bodily capacities for knowing that are variously ‘scientific’ (rational, languaged, explicit) and ‘magical’ (more-than-rational, felt sense, intuitive).
In their own ways, the performers, audience members, scientific team and the AI interpreter are all taking readings of what was never written.
* From Walter Benjamin’s On the mimetic faculty (1933), quoted in Georges Didi-Huberman’s Atlas, or the Anxious Gay Science (2018), a text that has informed a series of choreographic works by Matthias Sperling.
Created by Matthias Sperling in collaboration with Temitope Ajose, Ben Ash, Iris Yi Po Chan and Katye Coe.
Live Sound Design: Joel Cahen
AI Creation: Jamie Forth and Mirko Febbo
Costume Design: Annie Pender
Lighting Design: Marty Langthorne
Technician: Mike Picknett
Filmmaking: Ana de Matos
Programme
Review of Readings of what was never written by Florence Nicholls on Dance Art Journal
Matthias Sperling is an artist, choreographer and performer, and is the Artistic Director of NEUROLIVE. His work includes creating performances in theatre, gallery and museum contexts, as well as extending to curatorial work and scientific research collaborations. His work has been presented at Sadler’s Wells, Tate Modern, Southbank Centre, Royal Opera House, Wellcome Collection, Dance Umbrella and Nottdance, among others. He has been a frequent collaborator with Siobhan Davies Dance, an Associate Artist with Dance4 and a Sadler’s Wells Summer University Artist. He created an adaptation of a solo choreographic score by Deborah Hay, and has created commissions for Candoco Dance Company and Weld Company among others. He completed his artistic doctorate in 2022 at De Montfort University, supported by Midlands4Cities in partnership with Dance4/FABRIC and Siobhan Davies Studios.
PERFORMANCE IV
Readings of what was never written
A new performance from Matthias Sperling in collaboration with Temitope Ajose, Ben Ash, Iris Yi Po Chan and Katye Coe. Commissioned by NEUROLIVE.
“To read what was never written.” …
“Reading before all language”… occurs in the “entrails, in the stars, or dances.”
Walter Benjamin *
“Reading before all language”… occurs in the “entrails, in the stars, or dances.”
Walter Benjamin *
Dance, science, and science fiction come together in this fourth and final performance from the NEUROLIVE project.
While the performers approach dancing as a process of ‘taking a reading’, intuitively interpreting their moment-to-moment embodied experience, this year, the NEUROLIVE team also stages an AI that augments this process. The AI is conceived as a system that reads multiple live data streams from the performers, the audience and the room to generate spoken interpretations of the emergent dance, like an interpretive oracle.
In this ritual-like, meditative performance, ‘taking a reading’ invokes associations with both magic and science at the same time: with the kinds of readings taken by scientific measurement devices, and more divinatory or magical readings, like the reading of palms, tarot cards, or tea leaves.
Readings of what was never written continues Sperling’s choreographic investigation into embodied ways of knowing as an intrinsic part of live dance experiences. For performers and audience members alike, this can span a generative meshwork of our bodily capacities for knowing that are variously ‘scientific’ (rational, languaged, explicit) and ‘magical’ (more-than-rational, felt sense, intuitive).
In their own ways, the performers, audience members, scientific team and the AI interpreter are all taking readings of what was never written.
* From Walter Benjamin’s On the mimetic faculty (1933), quoted in Georges Didi-Huberman’s Atlas, or the Anxious Gay Science (2018), a text that has informed a series of choreographic works by Matthias Sperling.
CREDITS
Created by Matthias Sperling in collaboration with Temitope Ajose, Ben Ash, Iris Yi Po Chan and Katye Coe.
Live Sound Design: Joel Cahen
AI Creation: Jamie Forth and Mirko Febbo
Costume Design: Annie Pender
Lighting Design: Marty Langthorne
Technician: Mike Picknett
Filmmaking: Ana de Matos
Programme
Review of Readings of what was never written by Florence Nicholls on Dance Art Journal
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Matthias Sperling is an artist, choreographer and performer, and is the Artistic Director of NEUROLIVE. His work includes creating performances in theatre, gallery and museum contexts, as well as extending to curatorial work and scientific research collaborations. His work has been presented at Sadler’s Wells, Tate Modern, Southbank Centre, Royal Opera House, Wellcome Collection, Dance Umbrella and Nottdance, among others. He has been a frequent collaborator with Siobhan Davies Dance, an Associate Artist with Dance4 and a Sadler’s Wells Summer University Artist. He created an adaptation of a solo choreographic score by Deborah Hay, and has created commissions for Candoco Dance Company and Weld Company among others. He completed his artistic doctorate in 2022 at De Montfort University, supported by Midlands4Cities in partnership with Dance4/FABRIC and Siobhan Davies Studios.
A European Research Council funded project