FW: Company In Space @ The Royal Exchange Theatre

From: Tamsin Drury (tamsin.drury@mcr1.poptel.org.uk)
Date: 05/07/02


Apologies for cross postings

Subject: Company In Space @ The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, UK

[inter:face]02 VIRTUAL WORLDS...Unashamedly ambitious..Playfully
accessible.......Inevitably futuristic..... Cybernetic body suits, stunning
virtual visions and haunting illusions invite you to journey across the
spaces of the digital future in a series of live events that blend the real
and the fantastic. [inter:face]02 brings to Manchester the best in
Australian, British and Canadian collaborations in art and technology.


10th - 11th May      Company In Space: CO3 (AUS)
Friday 10th May 10pm & Saturday 11th May 10.30pm  FREE
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester information 0161 833 9833
www.digitalsummer.org/interface
www.companyinspace.com

In an extraordinary merging of live dance, animation, live cinema, and
electro-acoustic music, this landmark work turns the stairs and walls of the
stunning Royal Exchange Theatre into a dynamic mix of real and computer
generated stages. Wearing a motion-capture suit, a lone danceršs performance
is caught and transported into virtual worlds of startling 3D film
environments inhabited by constantly mutating virtual characters.

This show is the first time the Royal Exchange building has been used to
create an event outside its theatre . Timed to start as the audiences are
leaving the main house theatre it will be an extraordinary experience as
they are transported into another world built around them.

Company in Space are based in Melbourne. Founded by John McCormick and
Hellen Sky the company has pioneered applications of new technology to
movement. Since 1998 their work has been seen in Australia, Asia, USA, UK
and Europe in a variety of new media including live performance
installations, video and interactive virtual spaces.

Reviews...

.......In this performance Hellen Sky transgresses the usual boundaries
between human and machine.  Her body, replete with gyroscopic global
tracking device, potentiometer, battery, headset and light emitting devices,
stands in the dark recesses of the theatre aisle. Her monstrous cybernetic
body, complete with long umbilical cable is familiar, if not as strange as
the animated bodies projected on screen......˛

.... younger audiences  immediately relate the the technologies and VR
environments,   Film and live arts audiences are drawn the the performance
and the cinematic form of the work.  C03  is at the fore ground of new live
and virtual reality performance...  breaking  with many traditions of dance
allowing  the body to perform between the moments of the virtual and
physical worlds.   A choice is looming, but which direction to take...?



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