Hinterlands
Rebecca Evans
Saturday 16th Nov, 6-9:45pm
Inspired by microorganisms called extremophiles that live on the edge of habitability, in some of earth’s most inhospitable environments, Hinterlands is a mixed reality headset experience on the speculative futures of human evolution. Movement, spatial sound and mixed reality create a space that unfolds differently for yourself, other participants and the dancer. Through an invitation to move, you will explore our entanglement with the natural and digital world and possibilities for surviving, evolving and becoming.
Wearing a headset you will see both the world around you and a mixed reality layer. At certain points, the dancers' movements affect the augmented layers through the use of a motion capture suit. One dancer and multiple audience members navigate this space together. An experience that considers how extending participants' kinesthetic and spatial awareness in MR changes their appreciation and connection to self, others and the environment.
Credits
Hinterlands is a concept created and directed by Choreographer Rebecca Evans in collaboration with Lead Creative Technologist Clemence Debaig of Unwired Studio, Animation and VFX Alexander MacKinnon, Creative Technologists Rebecca Evans and Jon Higgins, Dancers Ania Varez, Jan-Ming Lee, Anna Kaszuba and Antony Daly Luna, Sound Artist Christian Duka, Dramaturg Joanne Skapinker and Intimacy and Consent coordinator Mira Loew. Mentoring and support from Alexander Whitley and Naomi Smyth.
Project development supported by partners UWE Bristol/Bristol VR Lab, Knowle West Media Centre and The Studio. Supported through Resident 6 by Studio Wayne McGregor. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Further touring and presentation support from MyWorld’s Springboard Fund, managed by Watershed. MyWorld is a creative technology programme in the UK’s West of England region, funded by UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Strength in Places Fund (SIPF).
Rebecca Evans Saturday 16th Nov, 6-9:45pm
Rebecca Evans has created digital dance experiences since 2014 in the UK and abroad with her company Pell Ensemble. Her work uses interactive and immersive technologies combined with dance. Examples of this have looked like audiences on tablets changing the dance, sound, and projection on stage (Upload/Unplug 2017-19), spatial interactive sound and movement work in the round (800 Lifetimes 2021) and live streamed motion capture in augmented reality headset experiences (Hinterlands 2023). Spanning the wide spectrum of interactivity, Rebecca’s practice is a continued exploration of the varied forms digital dance can take.
She currently is exploring how digital and movement offers ways to appreciate our mutual dependency as part of a human, environmental and technological ecology to speculate on new futures and ways of being. This is often done through dystopian/utopian worlds that play with time underpinned by a neurodiverse perspective considering different intelligences and ways of sensing. She brings her experience as an embodied practitioner to deploy choreography as a technology within interdisciplinary digital spaces to more deeply consider the interactive potential of performer/participant/digital elements spatially and narratively.
She is currently a Studio Wayne McGregor Resident 6 artist, a 2018/2019 Studio Wayne McGregor Questlab Network artist and a The BENCH fellow in 2016/2017. Rebecca recently completed her MA in Virtual and Extended Realities at UWE Bristol (Jan 2023-Dec 2023). Her work has been commissioned by 2Faced Dance, Wilton’s Strike, Spontaneous Combustion Festival, The Vaults, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Art*VR, Digital Bodies Festival, Bedford Creative Arts, DanceEast and London Borough of Culture. She has been a visiting lecturer at University of Bedfordshire, Bath Spa University and University of Bristol.
