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Year of Premiere: 2002
Upcoming
Performances
For details of upcoming Closer
instilations, please click here.
Creative Personnel Credits
Introduction
Closer is a screen-based dance installation. Completely
interactive, Closer combines real-time video processing
with eight floor-mounted sensor pads that respond to audience
members using their bodies to modify the moves of an on-screen
dancer.
Concept
Conceptually, the creation and the visualisation of the choreography
come from the artists’ desire to allow themselves and
the audience to get as close as possible to the performer.
Dance is usually experienced from the passive distance of
theatre seats. The audience sees little more than the shapes
bodies make on stage, and this is primarily what the choreographer
has to work with in constructing a dance work. The minute
complexities of the body – the ripple and flex of the
skin and muscles, the hair, the pores – often remain
unseen in the traditional theatre context but are central
to the choreographic palette of Closer. The body
and motion of the dancer is expanded to completely fill the
installation space with a ‘micro-choreography’
of subtle gestures, physical details and violent impacts.
As the audience plays with Closer, they become aware
of the reflective relationship they share with the dancer
and their interplay creates a constantly changing audiovisual
environment. The installation literally brings the audience
closer to the work in every sense - closer to its creation,
closer to the subtle details of its movement and closer to
the body of its dancer.
The choreography in Closer is granular and, while
carefully considered, it is constantly transformed and reconstructed
by the audience. In a sense, Closer redefines the
space as a choreographic instrument, which is played by its
audience to create new works every time. Closer might
also be thought of as an investigative tool, one that allows
the audience to explore in more and more detail the structure
and intricacies of the movement and the body of the dancer.
The audience’s interaction with the work, via large
physical actions, is very different from the usual ‘mouse
and keyboard’ interface that usually defines multimedia
installations. As they activate the large wall pads, their
bodies are pushed into a kind of physicality that is especially
unusual in a traditional gallery context. They literally impact
on the work.
Media
Response
“One of the best things at the annual AWESOME Festival
for Young People was body-bashing eight sensor pads aligned
to Chunky Move’s video, Closer.
Arranged in a room, these life sized sensors, when thumped
with body parts made performer Nicole Johnston respond on
the screen...whole families found themselves jumping from
sensor to sensor, involved in a dance of their own”
THE AUSTRALIAN
“Closer generated some sweat and a bit of heat from
those who were technologically under-whelmed or grumpy at
the very idea of tossing a woman around on a screen. It’s
a bit like walking into a gym that specialised in Pilates
but in which the reformers are vertical – big leather
quilted pads torso-high on stands and facing various directions
dominated by a screen where a dancer (Nicole Johnston) waits
to be activated by you pushing or hurling yourself against
the pads. Your actions also triggers sounds, so you compose
and choreograph at once,“ REAL TIME.
“Audiences can alter the progress of sequences choreographed
by Gideon Obarzanek for Chunky Move’s Closer, in which
Cordelia Beresford has filmed Nicole Johnston in characteristically
forceful movement that makes even more of an impact for being
larger than life and in close-up. Sensor pads allow the audience
to use their weight to change the image and the action. There
could be as much live, in situ, activity as screen action
-– but there wasn’t on opening night when the
dance itself proved so engrossing that noone showed much enthusiasm
to intervene… Be there – and be your own choreographer,”
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD.
“Should we direct Johnston to the ‘Daggy Dancer’
selection then bounce off our pads to create a sequence of
moves so dorky they would make Mr Bean proud? Or should we
rather use the ‘Collider’ section to mash her
pale face into dark walls and watch her tumble from one impact
to the next? It seemed kinder to switch to the ‘Fluid’
menu so she could move mercurially across the screen. It was
empowering. It was engaging,” The SUNDAY AGE.
Web Documentary
Find out more about the creative process behind Closer via
Chunky
File 1
Installation History
For details of Closer’s Performance History, please
click
here
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