Poly-media dance work goes Wireless

With an unsettling clarity on the peculiarities of human behavior (once removed), Wireless proposes that privacy is an invention without a future.

Created by Lisa Wilson (Co-Director/ Choreographer) and Paul Charlier (Co-Director/ Composer/Software Designer), this poly-media dance piece explores ideas around the desire for connection and loss of trust; ‘We’ve lived with surveillance for thousands of years. Our ideas about privacy, on the other hand are relatively recent.’

Inspired by the revelation that Apple was storing iPhone user location history, these creatives set about exploring just how that could impact presence by choreographing dancers with smart devices attached. Using in-built motion sensors to trigger and control music, the resulting emanating light (the type that keeps you awake at night) becomes the trigger and the proof of existence. Such a marvelously complex idea produces a stunning yet simple result as if the light particles have been dancing around in front of us all this time just waiting for us to notice. The flowing control of professional dancers (Craig Bary, Joshua Thomson, Gabriel Comerford, and Storm Helmore) belies the great strength and skill of their form.

“A lot of people don’t understand the potential of what they’ve got in their pocket.”

Wireless, takes the mechanisms of our ‘reality’ obsession and turns it into a visually stunning and evocative multimedia performance with the creative assistance of Bruce McKinven (Designer), Nathan Sibthorpe (Video Artist), Jennifer Flowers (Dramaturge,) and Ben (Bosco) Shaw (Lighting Designer). Keep your eyes on Charlier and Wilson, operating in a wholly unique creative space that balances somewhere between art and science. Hopefully we get to see more from them very soon.

Wireless played at the Judith Wright Centre with assistance through the Australia Council for the Arts and Creative Sparks – a joint initiative of Brisbane City Council and the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.