Gestural Publics [work in progress]
Gestural Publics is a multimedia performance and digital archive that exposes the pressures of conformity latent in stock motion (generic, stereotypical motion capture clips used in games, 3D animation and AI).
In the performance, dancers try to physically replicate stock motion; the task is unforgiving and essentially impossible, and their failures become transformative material: the live mocap transforms the recorded motion capture in real time. This produces an archive of absurdist, alternative motions and generative models that preserve the echoes of the live bodies that intervened in their disintegration. Together, the performance and archive use stock motion and motion capture as methods for exploring ambient disciplinary methods that condition the movement and presentation of bodies, both live and digital.
Gestural Publics is actively seeking presentation partners for 2027-2028.
“The world, and thus worldview, presented by stock motions is one of sameness: standardized bodies tirelessly replicating standardized motions through digital worlds formed and decorated by standardized objects and materials. Such standardizing practices claim to be representative of the totality of the ‘real’ world, but in actuality represent no one; instead, they represent a fantasy (ideology) that people move with frictionless ease and regularity. This has political implications: that a “normal” body is compliant, controllable, and predictable.”
Model Behavior, system:go
Process diary for Gestural Publics
Project Collaborators
Jesse Perlstein (music)
Bree Breeden, MK Ford, + Peter Pattengill (performers)
Wantong Yao (Technical Research Consulting)
Presentations
March 2026: WIP showing at All Too Human, Ammerman Center Symposium on Art and Technology
Funding + Support
Creative Capital
UCLA Department of World Arts + Cultures/Dance
The Ammerman Center for Art and Technology