As part of The Magpie Collection: A Dance Festival, MZD is including two panel discussions on Performance in Digital. In anticipation of a research project happening at MZD in the fall of 2022, exploring opportunities for transmediating dance into virtual worlds, MZD invites four artistic pioneers working with a range of digital technologies to talk about their artistic practices. Looking towards the future with an interest in empowering dancers to expand their practices we are excited to hear from artists, JE Solo, Zelia ZZ Tan, Moon Ribas and Freya Björg Olafson.
The panels will be on Zoom and are free to attend. Register for the event to be able to participate in the discussions as there will be time for questions after the speaker presentations.
July 19 | 7 PM Mountain Time
July 20 | 7 PM Mountain Time
SPEAKER BIOS
JE Solo
JE (Liz) Solo is a multi-disciplinary performance and media artist, writer, and musician, best known as a trailblazer in machinima, hybrid-reality, and live and networked performance art; and for their work in East Coast music. They create performance artworks that merge traditional practices (theatre/dance/writing) with technology, (virtual/online/game environments). Recently JE has been exploring creation using Virtual Reality, machine learning, quantum computing, and Artificial Intelligence.
Zelia ZZ Tan
Zelia ZZ Tan is a cross-disciplinary dance artist focusing on presence and identity. She is a pioneer in dance x technology in Asia, creating virtual and hybrid performances with motion capture, AR, VR, avatar etc. Her research interest is in the future of body, experience and interaction. She is also an experimental filmmaker whose dance films were featured in 15 film festivals. A dance artist of City Contemporary Dance Company and founder of TechDanceLab, she is based in Hong Kong and works globally.
Moon Ribas
Moon Ribas is a Catalan cyborg artist best known for developing the Seismic Sense, an online seismic sensor that allows her to perceive earthquakes taking place anywhere in the planet through vibrations in real time. In order to share her experience, she then translates her seismic sense on stage. Ribas transposes the earthquakes into either sound, in her piece Seismic Percussion; or dance, in Waiting For Earthquakes. In these performances the Earth is the composer and the choreographer; and Ribas, the interpreter.
Ribas’ seismic sense also has allowed her to feel moonquakes, the seismic activity on the Moon. Ribas believes that by extending our senses to perceive outside the planet, we can all become senstronauts. Adding this new sense allowed her to be physically on Earth while her feet felt the Moon, so in a way, she could be on Earth and space at the same time.
Freya Björg Olafson
Freya Björg Olafson is an intermedia artist who works with video, audio, animation, motion capture, XR, painting, and performance. Their praxis engages with identity and the body, as informed by technology and the Internet. Olafson’s work has been exhibited and performed internationally at the Bauhaus Archiv (Berlin), SECCA - SouthEastern Center for Contemporary Art (North Carolina), LUDWIG museum (Budapest), and The National Arts Center (Ottawa). Olafson has benefitted from residencies, most notably through EMPAC - Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center (New York), Oboro (Montreal), and Counterpulse (San Francisco). In spring 2020 Olafson was one of the longlist ‘Sobey Art Award’ recipients through a nomination by Video Pool Media Arts Center and in July 2021 her work 'MÆ - Motion Aftereffect' was selected for the 'Lumen Prize for Art & Technology' longlist. Olafson holds an MFA in New Media from the Transart Institute / Donau Universität. Olafson joined York University as an Assistant Professor in screendance (2017). As of July 2021, Olafson is an Assistant Professor in Digital Media at the University of Manitoba School of Art.