When: June 27 — July 7
Where: Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Main Gallery, 8009 Fishburn Dr, Roanoke, VA 24020
Price: Free; waiver required

Tags: #dance, #art, #interactive, #ContactAdvisory, #ContentAdvisory (see below)

Event Link

Erica Gionfriddo, co-director of Austin-based interdisciplinary performance group ARCOS, is a dancer, choreographer and somatic researcher experimenting with how and where bodies — and humans — connect. Her exhibition, In the Ether, is a staged rehearsal of possible cyborg realities. Using the performance of identity as a lens to interrogate the ways emergent technologies de-center the body, this interactive exhibit offers participants the opportunity to question the distinction between their actual and virtual selves.

The exhibition is a culmination of a series of experiments at the intersection of performance and technology that Gionfriddo has conducted over the last three years in Montana, New Mexico, and Texas. The installation will feature three pieces: “Infinity Loop,” a large wall projection of live-streaming video that delays, loops, and distorts anything in front of it; “Pods,” a participant-performed score provided via audio in wireless earbuds and accompanying borders drawn in colorful light across the floor; and “Selfie-Portraits,” a growing wall of printed photographs to provoke reflection by visitors who would like to use their own smartphones to document their presence in the space. Those entering the exhibition will be required to sign a written release explicitly consenting to have their image captured and beamed into the online “ether” by the installation — both for legal purposes and to highlight how many times in our increasingly documented lives we are not asked for such consent (or ignore giving it, quickly clicking to accept each new set of terms and conditions).

A live performance will mark the exhibit’s opening on Thursday, June 27 at 7:30pm. The performance on June 27 will present Erica Gionfriddo demonstrating the strategies that she has developed to reintegrate the body with our digital interactions via the interactive mechanisms in the installation. Also during the performance, she invites audience members to participate in a silent duet through instructions dictated by her recorded voice playing in wireless earbuds (all are welcome to participate).

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Office facilities provided by Thymele Arts, in Los Angeles, CA.

Contact Level: None to Moderate (Familial)

Content Advisories: Performance-installation contains flashing lights. Signed image release is required for entry, as cameras will be publicly live-streaming online within gallery.

This experience is wheelchair accessible.