Strategies for mapping liminal space

::choreographic system
::performance engine
::immersive theatre
::dark island
::spearhead

Bonemap is resolutely philosophical media and performance, a liminal terrain between the creation of reality and the magic of representation.

Bonemap’s collaborative body::media research theory and experimentation integrate immersive media experiences, sonic and corporeal performance with generative audience participation to reveal new modalities that elucidates an interdisciplinary creative practice.

Grounded in intermedial processes that provide curious tacit logic, the creative team will construct and conceptualise the works visual and linguistic formation between the cartography of the map and the embodiment of the territory.

The story is to chart a magical geography of mysterious terrains, intriguing expressions of mnemonic pattern and graphic structure linking perceptions of cultural tenure, identity and place.

Using emergent spatial practices of media installation and choreography, the suggested system of mediatisation privileges the unique moment of ‘theatrical liveness’ by structuring a sensory feedback array with zones inhabited by the audience and performer simultaneously, together and apart. This immersive theatre development is proposed to prototype and test wearable mobile devices that deliver the scenographic and dramaturgical structure as multi-threaded content to the critical location of incident between a performer and participant audience. This suggests new modes of realtime telematic interaction as performative, dramaturgical and scenographic experience and practice.

The practice of mapping is central to the extrapolation of space to a linguistic shape. The cartography of spatial relationships is based on the system of width, height and depth within which things exist and function. From this calibrated position a meaning is assigned to linguistic forms through cultural repetition and familiarity. For example the cartographic meaning of the term theatre includes the mapping of auditorium and stage or audience and performance. Suggesting that the linguistic shape of the word theatre, as a space for aesthetic representation, can be envisaged, through common parlance, as the proscenium stage or the cinematic movie theatre. The preceding descriptions are an idea of theatre with a clear and culturally defined demarcation of receptive audience and representational production. Bonemap's interest in these considerations is to have a conceptual relationship to expanded theatre and expanded cinema.

Context for the exploration of spatial relationships between reception and representation have been approached as a set of territorial possibilities. The linguistic meaning of theatre, in common sense as suggested, is not so useful in describing the form of experiential representation developed through Bonemap's presented creative work. The expectations of attendance, participation, engagement and spatial demarcation enacted by audience and production have been mitigated through the influences of the intermedial process. Cast as a series of action zones that can be assigned through a compositional architecture; territorial zones inhabited by the participants within the work; interactive zones that are cell-like intermedial elements intrinsically recombinant. Reflective of generative ecological principals, the metaphor and ontology is less of theatre and more of nodes and modular participatory structures.

Cartography is also about the colonization of territory and the notion of describing space so as to claim it. Mapping is then an authorship within the compositional role of design. Cartography in this process demonstrates an aesthetic practice, a territorial aesthetics. The design cartography may appear as a discrete process however the consideration of multimodal elements is a critical input to the articulation of the mapping process. The drawing of plans and elevations provides understanding of the aesthetic and technical quality of a space and as such is a critical element in the production process. The functionality of the space to accommodate the work is determined through the mapping process. Aesthetic considerations are processed along with pragmatic technical functionality. The modular intermedial form of the work suggests the spatial recombination of nodes, including addition or subtraction, to be viable for different spaces and representational environments.

The floor plan and elevation of the space are documents that temper temporal responses to physical design and dramaturgical strategies. The graphic floor plan and elevation are useful as temporal maps representing spatial relationships and particularly critical for assessing and determining physical distances and volumes. The mapping process is active. Cartographic documents, although resembling static form, are simulacra for active processes, spatial action, proximity and volume.

 

Research residency includes Russell Milledge and Rebecca Youdell artistic co-directors of Bonemap in collaboration with sound artist Steven Campbell and software programmer Jason Holdsworth at the The Block, Creative Industries Precinct Queenslnd University of Technology (QUT) 2013.

Sponsors: Centre of Contemporary Arts, The Block CIP QUT, School of Creative Arts JCU