Body editing: Dance biofeedback experiments in apperception

Abstract

Body Editing is a dual gesture-based and EEG platform that transforms movement, gesture and brain wave data into visual and audio feedback with which dancers engage improvisationally. The platform, uniquely, offers a creature that responds in emergent fashion to the dancer’s movement, allowing for improvisation. The emergent algorithm directing the creature’s response is informed by Karen Barad’s understanding that intra-action in emergent systems is a form of performativity. The wireless EEG monitor provides intuitive musical sounds corresponding to brain wave data that signal to the dancer moments when she is dancing in an unthought or apperceptive manner, in contrast to moments when she is thinking the interface and thus learning, but not improvising. Dancers describe this experience as performing duets with the emergent creature.