Choreographic Camouflage
Liam Young and Jacob Jonas
Choreographic Camouflage is a new vocabulary of movement that has been designed to disguise the proportions of the body from the skeleton detection algorithms used by modern city’s surveillance networks. The project is a performance collaboration between director and designer Liam Young and acclaimed choreographer Jacob Jonas.
As the necessity to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID has restricted the effectiveness of facial detection systems body tracking and gait detection has now become a critical form of surveillance. These programs scan massive databases of collected images and CCTV footage, searching for predefined human forms and proportions that suggest two legs, a torso, two arms and a head. Working with dancers from The Jacob Jonas Company a series of new dance movements have been developed to distort the proportions, symmetry and form of the body in order to render it invisible to the body detection software that is now being rolled out by cities around the world. The white lines we see are a visualization of the code mapping and remapping the body, searching for an image of the figures its been trained on. As it fails, and the body vanishes it blurs and is lost in a flurry of flesh. Through the eyes of the machine many bodies become one, entangled, with fractured limbs, fuzzy frames and lost connections.
Credits
Director: Liam Young
Choreographer: Jacob Jonas
Technical Lead: Shuruq Tramontini
Original Score: Forest Swords
Vocals: Jack Barnett
Director of Photography: Horacio Martinez and @Pannyhire @stewart_addison_ep
Colorist: Sarah London
Stylists: Enrique Agudo and Tylo Stewart
Makeup: Michael Anthony
Jacob Jonas The Company
Managing Director: Jill Wilson
Executive Producer: Tonia Barber
Assistant Choreographer: Anibal Sandoval
Featuring Jacob Jonas The Company Performing Artists: Joy Brown, James Blackston, Miguel Lopez Jorge, Emma Rosenzweig-Bock, Mike Tyus, Jill Wilson
Production Assistants: Ainslee Robson, Kidus Hailesilassie, Mariana Curti, Miriam Kuhlmann
Supported by @strpeindhoven
Liam Young and Jacob Jonas
Liam Young is a designer, director and BAFTA nominated producer who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. Described by the BBC as ‘the man designing our futures’, his visionary films and speculative worlds are both extraordinary images of tomorrow and urgent examinations of the environmental questions facing us today. As a worldbuilder he visualizes the cities, spaces and props of our imaginary futures for the film and television industry and with his own films he has premiered with platforms ranging from Channel 4, Apple+, SxSW, Tribeca, the New York Metropolitan Museum, The Royal Academy, Venice Biennale, the BBC and the Guardian. His films have been collected internationally by museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria and M Plus Hong Kong and has been acclaimed in both mainstream and design media including features with TED, Wired, New Scientist, Arte, Canal+, Time magazine and many more.
Jacob Jonas The Company is gaining international acclaim for its visceral performances and visual content creation. The Los Angeles based dance company has toured nationally to venues including The Kennedy Center, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, and Hollywood Bowl, The Music Center, and Jacob’s Pillow. JJTC is a leader in visual content has partnered with organizations including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Center, LACMA and the Whitney Museum; with artists including Kanye West, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Emmanuel Lubezki, Vanessa Beecroft and Liam Young; and worked for brands including Sony, Nike, COS and James Perse. The company has been featured on NOWNESS and in the Los Angeles Times, LALA Magazine, Cultured Magazine, and Angeleno Magazine.
Forest Swords is a composer and electronic producer from Liverpool UK. Known for a unique blend of jagged hip-hop and R&B beats, looping guitar lines and manipulated samples, his evocative and emotional music reflects the sprawling Wirral landscape of river, coastland and woodland with all the haunting melodies of nearby city Liverpool’s enviable pop history. Forest Swords has released several acclaimed albums and has recently collaborated with the Norwegian National Ballet for a unique performance at the Oslo Opera House.
