Express Yourself on the Battlefield

Express Yourself on the Battlefield explores the economic shift taking place for dance practitioners through the use and sale of choreographic material in video games such as Fortnite. The video examines how the dancing body can be digitally extracted by devices such as smartphones, as well as social media networks. Davies investigates how dancing – which has always acted as both product and service – is now being separated through motion-capture technologies and distribution networks, over which gaming corporations hold a monopoly. Since the creation of this work, Davies has been collaborating with lawyer and dance anthropologist Jorge Poveda Yanez. Together they are rethinking how dancers can attain agency in this new digital economy where dances can be bought and used in online spaces. Their recent article, Dancing Someone Else’s Movements Using Someone Else’s Body, published with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, sets out possible strategies for dance practitioners, such as protecting dance works under source code copyright, standardising motion-capture as a form of fixation and using blockchain technology as evidence of ownership of a work.