Ryan Clayton & Emilie Morin

The Spectre Animates our Bones is a work of braided dance. Emilie and Ryan choreographed a movement piece which each of them performed individually and recorded through motion capture technology. Each of their individual captures has been mapped onto the same virtual object, animating its virtual body through space. Presented as a dual-channel video, viewers can stand within an undulating 3D scan of the performer's kitchen and watch the performance from multiple perspectives. Although the artists’ performances for motion capture are not directly visible in the animation, the human quality of movement injected into the virtual form generates a distinct experience of performance for the viewers. It is a braided performance in that each movement strand is limited to its own characteristics, but braided together, they create a whole that superimposes itself to produce new meanings while still maintaining the characteristic movements of each individual. Motion capture technology is deployed in this piece to question human agency and movement: can performers possess qualities that make them undeniably recognizable? Can virtual movement act as a stand- in for these unique human agents? The choreography was built with these main questions in mind, finding ways to confuse the viewers’ eyes into a blurred vision of virtual and "real" movement. With Emilie’s professional experience as a dance performer and Ryan’s background in solo and collective performance art, the duo also examines how to position the dancing body in a traditional gallery space. Dance and performance are often associated with the ephemeral, compared to the groundedness of the art object. Our virtual forms become an archive, rooting a dance performance in the gallery space, and suggesting that what contemporary artist Brendan Fernandes calls the "footmade" is as valuable as the "handmade".