Wayne Mc Gregor - Fascination With Technology and Science

Fascination With Technology and Science

McGregor started playing with computers when he was seven and it was natural for him to incorporate the cyber world into his own choreography. Collaborating with state-of-the-art designers, he experimented with projecting computer generated images onto the stage. In Sulphur 16 (1998) his dancers were dwarfed by the presence of a shimmering virtual giant and danced with a company of digital figures who wove and shimmered among them. In Aeon (2000) digitally created landscapes transported the dancers to what seemed like other dimensions and other worlds.

On specific occasions McGregor has used technology to alter the conditions under which his work is viewed. 53 Bytes (1997) was created for simultaneous performance by two sets of dancers in Berlin and Canada and it was watched by audiences in both countries by live satellite link. In 2000 McGregor aimed for a wider global public by transmitting a live performance of his Trilogy Installation over the internet.

Wayne McGregor Random Dance has been the vehicle for McGregor’s ongoing fascination with the mechanisms of the human body. In Amu (2005) he explored the functions and the symbolism of the heart, in Ataxia (2004) the connection between brain and body movement and in Entity (2008) the links between artificial intelligence and choreography.

During Entity rehearsals, he and the dancers worked alongside six international cognitive scientists and technologists from esteemed institutes including University College London, University of Cambridge, University of California, San Diego and Imperial College London. In January 2009 they traveled to University of California, San Diego and created a new piece of work under ‘lab’ conditions, Dyad 1909; fueling the search for new creative decisions on the part of McGregor and new findings in the brain/body relationship for the scientists.

Read more about this topic:  Wayne Mc Gregor

Famous quotes containing the words fascination with, fascination, technology and/or science:

    The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

    The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

    The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.
    John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)

    What is done for science must also be done for art: accepting undesirable side effects for the sake of the main goal, and moreover diminishing their importance by making this main goal more magnificent. For one should reform forward, not backward: social illnesses, revolutions, are evolutions inhibited by a conserving stupidity.
    Robert Musil (1880–1942)