VIbrant Lives

What is #VibrantLives?

• An entanglement with bodies, technologies, and information through movement, design, and digital critique.

• A remaking, an act of “critical attention,” a gesture of generosity.

• A sweeping up of the torrential data shed that has become central to western culture in order to “give back” that data in a non-monetized, non-commercial form.

CONCEPTUAL INSPIRATION: Globally, people produce 2.5 quintillion (10^18) bytes of data per day. That’s roughly 3.5 million bytes of data per person, per day. Despite this torrential production, many people are only dimly aware of the volume and content of their own data production. Governments are sweeping up this information, all while arguing that such activity logging is benign, or even beneficial, surveillance. Nevertheless, it is clear that this is a highly valued (monetized) part of our lived experience. Critically commenting on this use of personal data, Vibrant Lives gives audiences a real-time sense of their own voluminous “data shed” (the data that we share as a part of everyday life). By blending vibrotactile interfaces for feeling one’s own data shed with an immersive performance installation, we bring attention to the boundaries erected by ideas of disembodied, abstracted, “immaterial” metadata, and people.

Vibrant Lives primary investigators: Jessica Rajko, Eileen Standley & Jacqueline Wernimont. 

Interactive Vibrotactile Interface: To engage people in their own data production, we explore ways in which haptic (touch-based) feedback can elicit deeper embodied understandings of what it means to “shed” or output data. To do this, we created an interactive vibrotactile interface that allows users to feel their own data loss via their personal mobile phone. This interface includes 1. a mobile phone application that allows users to interface with their personal mobile devices (Android and iOS), and 2. a wearable infrasonic subwoofer commercially known as a Woojer. Network data is captured, identified and redistributed back to individual phones via a custom server.

Performance Installation: The full performance installation as been presented in multiple instances and iterations including "Handmade Amplified" at 4bid Gallery in Amsterdam, "Spark! Mesa's Festival of Creativity" at Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, AZ, and "Fall Forward" dance concert at the ASU Galvin Playhouse in Tempe, AZ. All iterations incorporate a multisensory collage of image, sound, movement, and bodies that includes, 1. interactive vibrotactile interfaces to be worn on the body or felt in sculptures, 2. realtime movement composition, and 3. ambient soundscapes. The performers engage participants in simple real-time composition scores and perform improvisational scores inspired by the technical, theoretical, and cultural implications of personal data. As with all improvisational structures, negotiations are made in the moment. The collective mind of the group is expressed through multiple bodies and actions. The dance begins to create its own real-time logic (or composition of shifting meaning), and both participants and performers alike can easily engage or be aggregated into this activity. Vibrant Lives creates a space in which participants can fluidly enter into an embodied experience of their own data, participate as they choose, and leave when they are ready. The purpose of this installation is not to hold people captive, but provide a multisensory space in which people engage in a physically and tactually heightened experience, on their own terms. No participant is required to engage with any of the activities, and witnessing is offered to those who may not want to actively engage. 

FALL FORWARD DANCE CONCERT
Click here to visit the "Fall Forward" dance concert gallery page.