Humans and Algorithms Dance Together in This Interactive Performance

In Tim Murray-Browne and Jan Lee's new collaborative audiovisual performance, This Floating World, Lee dances in time to music while computer-generated visuals dance in time to her body. Like Murray-Browne's previous work on the Cave of Sound, his new visual tools aim to get a better grip on human physicality by running it through a computer and seeing what happens.

Lee is the motor that drives This Floating World, effectively "drawing" on the stage as a 3D camera tracks her position and translates her movements into data. Custom software generates visuals from that information and then adjusts the music just enough to keep the dancer—and the resulting images—in constant flux.

"The interactive tech lets us push the boundaries of individual performance to transform dance into a radical audiovisual world of organic shapes," Lee tells The Creators Project. "We use the space as both a world that Jan exists in, and also an environment that she expands into, an extension of her body on the stage," Murray-Browne adds in the video above. "The piece is a journey, and it's a journey of how the self develops."

The final showing of This Floating World will be on March 6 at the Number 90 Bar in London. Visit the This Floating World website for more details, and Murray-Brown's website for more algorithmic art.

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