Tanya Voges

Tanya Voges met visual artist Kellie O’Dempsey at The Synaesthesorium, a laboratory led by multimedia artists Tim and Mic Gruchy, as part of Critical Path’s SEAM2011 symposium and workshop series. In the course of their meeting, ideas were sparked for a collaboration exploring dance and live drawing, improvisational scores and audience participation.

Where does the idea for Vestiges come from?

Vestiges comes from Tanya’s choreographic research ‘Retracing Steps’ on audience participation and Kellie’s research into performance drawing and new media integration. Vestiges is the meeting point of this research and is a metaphor for memory and the (drawing) line that fades.

How has your research developed over the course of the residency?

The research process allowed us to develop a series of strategies, in the form of a three-way dialogue that underpinned our exploration of memory, drawing and audience participation. We worked with mentors Mic Gruchy (digital media), Kate Stevens (cognitive psychologist) and Martyn Coutts (dramaturg) across their fields of knowledge. The time with them has brought richness into the big questions we had surrounding the new media possibilities in dance and drawing.

Your research relies a lot on technology. Can you name some programs that you worked with? We worked with LiveFeed camera, TagTool digital drawing device, voice recording and wireless headphones for verbatim, live audio mixing and live improvisation with electronic music.

What were the challenges that you faced during the research period?

There were many technical challenges! We had great difficulty staying true to choreographic scores while developing the technology. We need to revisit the scores and examine the choreography between technology, performer and form and process what went down. As the choreography is dependent on the audience’s contribution, a lot of it had to be imagined before the performance. Managing the changes when the data input from the audience arrived was challenging. We dealt with the idea of bringing Kellie into the performance – in some of the previous tests, she was rather “behind-the-scenes” – this time we integrated her onto the stage so her movement and drawing became part of the performance. This new element in work we found to be quite successful.

Where to next with this research?

We hope that in the next stage, we will be able to develop a stronger form and concept that can be adapted to each unique site and new audience group. We are currently applying for further funding to take this to the next stage.