In collaboration with our long-standing partner Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, and as part of the Attakkalari India Biennial 2021/2022, we are happy to present CyberBallet by Marcel Karnapke and Björn Lengers from the Berlin-based artist collective CyberRäuber.
January 24 - 28, 2022 | 7.00 & 8.00 p.m. Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Wilson Garden, Bangalore Entry pass on myinstamojo
CyberBallet is a dance performance in cyberspace: What does it mean to have a body, to exist and move in physical space? Can an Artificial Intelligence truly grasp the basics of the human experience if it lacks a body?
The collaboration of German Virtual Reality and Theatre Collective CyberRäuber with dancers of the Badisches Staatsballet, Karlsruhe, Germany, Israeli composer Micha Kaplan and German-Brazilian choreographer Ronni Maciel underwent two drastic transformations: first Covid forced the team to shift the project - originally planned as a live VR-installation on a theatre stage - to cyberspace.
CyberBallet became a performance in front of a live audience, sharing the virtual space with their avatars and the performers on a social VR-platform, without anybody physically leaving their homes.
This version was staged in a series of public rehearsals (one of them as part of the VRHAM Festival 2020 in Hamburg, Germany), followed by its premiere at Ars Electronica Festival 2020.
In a second step, 2021 CyberBallet transitioned to an installation on stand-alone VR-headsets, enabling the audience to experience the piece in the medium it was made for, encountering dancing avatars of a curious machine, moving and dancing with them.
Motion capture dance data and extensive video recordings are the basis for machine learning / neural networks to isolate, analyse, contextualise and visualise dance. The visitor, by exploring a stage, gains a fragmented new perspective on something humans take for granted, while being nearly incomprehensible for a machine: having a body and the joy of movement.
