proxy

proxy is an interactive dance performance in augmented reality. One to three avatars enter the viewer’s surroundings and can be approached through a smartphone or tablet. Their movements and responses bring the encounter into the physical space occupied by the audience.

The avatars respond to facial expression, approach, distance and the height of the device. The choreography adapts to the space around the viewer. Looking at the performance becomes an action within it, with the viewer’s position changing the relationship to the digital dancers.

The avatars share Charlotte Triebus’s appearance while carrying the movements of Esther Siddiquie, Aaron Samuel Davis and Yurika Sophie Yamamoto. Their different movement qualities continue beneath a shared digital skin. The opening transformation and a mirror scene make this combination visible, bringing the dancers’ identities into the encounter.

Triebus examines how one body can stand for another and how identity, authorship and cultural appropriation enter the construction of an avatar. She considers identity theft and racism when looking at who can appropriate another person’s appearance or movements, how racialised identities are represented or erased, and who retains agency over a digital body. Brigitta Muntendorf’s interactive binaural soundtrack accompanies these changing relationships. Developed with MIREVI, proxy follows kin_ and continues the series’ questions about agency, intimacy and the boundary between observation and surveillance.