Transhumanism

Robotics is a natural starting point for illusional dance. In order to successfully execute the robot you must employ individual isolations and maintain muscle control. On the most basic level you move one body part at a time while all the other body parts remain motionless. So move a single joint, limb, or muscle individually then stop completely then do it again. Moving one piece at a time. Move, stop, move, stop etcetera. A basic but very powerful building block in illusional dance.

Aside from the actual physical movement there is the imitation that the movement is based on. You must choose what type of robot you want to imitate. Maybe an old fashion robot with jerky stops. Maybe a robot that behaves more like a puppet. These are classic examples. I feel these ideas have already been explored sufficiently in the 70's and 80's when the robot and later popping were fashionable. Instead I have an idea for a more modern approach, the transhumanist movement.

We are already at the point where human beings are modifying their bodies with surgeries and pharmaceuticals. For example actresses get plastic surgery to maintain their looks, mentally ill people use psychopharmaceuticals to stabilize their mood, athletes use performance enhancing drugs to push their physical limits. I want to delve deeper than what is currently available though. More into the realm of futurism with the ideas of nano-technology, genetic modification, and cyborgism. With these tools a transhumanist would seek to artificially evolve and extend their life maybe to the point of becoming posthuman. Simply a mind within an advanced machine.

So my idea is to imitate the movement of a person who is part cyborg with nanotechnolgy or artificial machine body parts sculpted to look like human body parts. To move in such a way that gives the viewer a feeling of something being off. A slight robotic edge ingrained within natural movements. Usually when someone does the robot it is a theatrical display with big swinging and jerky movements. Hydraulic looking most of the time. I want an uncanny effect. The same one would receive from looking at a vary realistic doll or puppet. From Wikipedia:

The Uncanny (Ger. Das Unheimliche -- literally, "un-home-ly") is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange. Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize.

I am not for or against transhumanism right now. I can see both positive and dangerous consequences of artificial human modification. I simply want to imagine and interpret the uncanny physical movement of someone who has been modified. I also feel like the morality of transhumanism adds an intriguing element for someone to consider when they view my dance.

As a final note I would like to present some sculptures by Ron Mueck to show other physical representations of the uncanny in a different medium. (Also because they look cool.)