Prototyping for movement with mobile phones

Playtesting

I’ve been spending a week with dancer and artist Nea Landin at a residency initiated by Danscentrum in a new studio in Stockholm called Söderkupolen. We met in a coding course at Konstfack and have similar interests in instruction based performances. In the residency we started working with real-time multi-user web technologies. Instructions are distributed through the participants mobile phones. These ideas have a lot of potential and I think we are only in the very beginning of something very exciting. Even if the instructions are simple they can mobilise big audience numbers in collective action.

Prototype screenshots

We drew some inspiration from a really nice article (in Swedish, in Hjärnstorm) by Rasmus Fleischer, outlining some anthropological insights from Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History written by William H. McNeill.

Some snippets from McNeill:

Moving briskly and keeping in time was enough to make us feel good about ourselves, satisfied to be moving together, and vaguely pleased with the world at large.

“Boundary loss” is the individual and “feeling they are one” is the collective way of looking at the same thing: a blurring of self-awareness and the heightening of fellow-feeling with all who share in the dance.

Co-hosting The Unquiet Veil

This week I’ve been working with Áron Birtalan in a part of their PhD project Your Bones Hold the Shape of What’s to Come. The piece is titled The Unquiet Veil – A Living Person’s Guide to Death Magick in Four Unfinished Songs. As iwth many participatory proposals it’s somewhere between a workshop and a scenario and we are guiding the participants through different aesthetically informed activities.

The Unquiet Veil is a low-key role-playing experience / fictional workshop where players are guided through playful and mystical activities in which they develop their own practice of ‘everyday death magick’, make a pact with an imaginary entity, and create a spellbook that they take with themselves after the event.

The experience brings together pretend-play magick, electronic music, office protocols and playful more-than-human imagination. It also features a synthesizer that casts spells, a band of singing undertakers and lots of metaphysical bureaucracy.

The piece is available for touring. More info here.

Coded poetry at Twisted shout #1, Fylkingen

Twisted Shout Poster

I will show my 9-page hell poem the void is positively charged at Twisted shout text-sound-festival at Fylkingen. The list of live acts is juicy:

* Gå på stället vocal duo
* Casey Moir vocal
* Beatboxer Mathias Yilbar
* WOL performance duo
* Performance/talk by Ilmar Laaban expert Jan Malin from Tallin
* Pyspunka – performance piece by Teddy Hultberg

You are very welcome!

Ladda ner Ekstasis till mobilen!

Nyxxx nya scenario Ekstasis är släppt för iOS och Android.

För att spela Ekstasis behövs

  • Fyra deltagare.
  • Ett avskilt rum, till exempel ett rymligt kök eller ett vanligt vardagsrum.
  • Ett bord med fyra sittplatser.
  • Hörlurar kopplade till era mobiler. De får gärna släppa igenom rumsljud. 

Du kan även söka upp appen på respektive app-butik. Den är gratis.

Ekstasis – app-premiär 3 december!

FYRA VÄNNER OCH EN DEMON

Fyra vänner möts i samma rum och tar på sig hörlurar. Appen drar in deltagarna i ett scenario om längtan efter närvaro, vänskap och förändring.

Ekstasis presenterar en situation där du som deltagare med trygga ramar får utforska hur olika krafter tar kontrollen över dig och dina vänner. Ni ger upp ert handlingsinitiativ men får en upplevelse av en annan sorts frihet. Som deltagare följer du manus, ett manus som bara du känner till. Ni lyssnar och rör er tillsammans, men också i varsin egen bubbla. I glipan mellan manuset och det egna utförandet ges deltagarna möjlighet att reflektera över sina egna rörelser, tankar och känslor – ett sätt att se sig själv utifrån.

Verket görs för att upplevas med hörlurar på, av fyra personer i hemmiljö, när som helst, och distribueras genom en app.

Ekstasis är resultatet av ett samarbete mellan scenkonstkollektivet Nyxxx och speluvecklarna Pusselbit Games. Medverkande konstnärer: Ebba Petrén, Elize Arvefjord, Gabriel Widing och Leo Låby. Upplevelsen skapas med stöd av Kulturrådet och Region Gävleborg.

PREMIÄR 3 december

  • Release av appen på Apples App Store för iPhone och på Google Play för Android-telefoner.
  • Fysisk release av appen Sionsborg, Buntvägen 1 i Ljusne kl 18
  • Digitalt eftersnack för de som spelat på premiären, kl 20.

Mer info på Nyxxx

Ekstasis in progress

Ekstasis Icon

Me, Ebba and Elize from Nyxxx is working with Leo from Pusselbit games to produce a 4-player synchronized app scenario under the title Ekstasis. It is written for four friends and can be played/performed at home with standard mobile phones and head phones.

This time we decided to do the voice work ourselves so we have been in Bagisstudion making recordings including instructions, dialogue and a demon.

Recording in studio

The script was written over the summer by me and Ebba. It is revolves around a feeling of loosing control. This feeling is manifested by an inner demonic voice possessing the roles of the scenario one by one.

Here is a prototype, made in Unity, with a Firebase connection to interconnect the players:

The players can make a few choices that forks the story. Will you resist or let go?

Find out on December 3rd when the app is released on iOS’ App store and Android’s Google Play.

The project is funded by Kulturrådet & Region Gävleborg

Artes Participativas

Cover

A Portuguese/Brazilian translation of Deltagarkultur has dropped in the shape of Artes Participativas.

Thank you Tadeu Rodrigues Iuama for translating it and to Luiz Falcão for a proper re-enactment of the original shape and form. It is published by NpLarp and Editora Provocare. The book was written 2008 by Kristoffer Haggren, Elge Larsson and Andrea Nordwall.

Read more about it and get the digital version

Documentation of Hör så tyst det är (Listen, how quiet)

Hör så tyst det är tour was interupted due to covid, but quite a few shows were performed this fall, before it was cancelled. The piece was made y Nyxxx and commissioned by Regionteatern Blekinge-Kronoberg. I did conceptual development and directed with Ebba Petrén. Text by Tova Gerge, composer Elize Arvefjord, scenography by Sofia Romberg, light by Kerstin Weimers and acting/dancing by Gabriela Anselmo.

Trailer by Andreas Omvik

Press photo by Olle Engqvist:

Process documentation by Linda Himsel