Contact/Sense

When we feel and sense through machines, are we still ourselves? In a mixed reality where embodied actions and blinding visions are part woman/part machine, the tactile surface of plants is a portal that conjures augmented materialities into existence. At the beginning of the Contact/Sense performance, a single performer sits at an agave attenuata plant, modulating its bio-electrical impulses that have been transposed to audible sound via MIDI. In synchronicity with, and activated by the performer’s hand gestures, bespoke software causes digital augments (designed using augmented reality and computer vision techniques) to fill two large screens, making the HMD display worn by the performer visible to the audience. Negotiating their new and de-limited VR infrared vision, the performer gets up from the agave and walks toward a row of reactive plants, whose leaves they similarly ‘play’ to visually trigger digital augments in combination with a real-time sound scape. The head mounted configuration (VR headset plus Leap Motion) investigates the potential for using the Leap Motion gestural interface attached to a VR headset to produce a new style of performance in mixed reality.