Lamentation: Dancing the Archive
Lamentation: Dancing the Archive allows audiences to manipulate a volumetric (3D) video of Martha Graham’s iconic 1930 work, Lamentation, with their own gestures and movement. Lamentation is an early modernist distillation of grief through the body. Graham’s display of raw angst, radical for its time, is timely today amidst various catastrophes that parallel those that Graham responded to. The user engages with this work through embodied channels, fostering closeness to this work and building bridges from past to present.
// programming: C#, touchdesigner
// interaction design
// installation & media design
// AI motion tracking
Lamentation: Dancing the archive premiered July 2025 at Dancing the Algorithm at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Exhibition film by Nel Shelby Productions. Full film and installation credits here.
Lamentation: Dancing the Archive is conceived by Xin Ying of the Martha Graham Dance Company and created collaboratively by Xin Ying, Katherine Helen Fisher, Alan Winslow, and myself. It features performances of Graham’s original choreography by Xin Ying and Lloyd Knight.
This project is supported by The Martha Graham Dance Company and a Google Artists + Machine Intelligence Faculty Research Award. Music for the installation composed by Myles Avery, with motion graphics by Shimmy Boyle and technical consulting by Shimmy Boyle and Mingyong Cheng. Additional support was provided by Evercoast, New York University, the Barnard Movement Lab, UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, Standard Vision/SVstudios Los Angeles, and Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.
Top image of Xin Ying at SVstudios LA by Caroline Haydon. Photography of Jacob’s Pillow installation by Christopher Duggan & Cherylynn Tsushima.