unbetitelter Tanz (or spectral relationality in psychosomatic crisis), 2025
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sound Julie Zhu
tech Daniel Bisig
framed aluminum vs. dance studio portable mirrors, (no-input) mixing board, outdoor construction vs. photo-studio standing LED lights
In unbetitelter Tanz (or spectral relationality in psychosomatic crisis), Zander Porter and Julie Zhu fuse movement and sound through multi-modal, machine-learning mappings. Zander performs the network activity backlog of a post-internet cyborg (“a” body), while Julie navigates the movement-synchronized beatings and shrieks from no-input feedback. Resonances of both artificial and autistic intelligence generate questions of intelligibility and source for the exported solo. The performance manifests a literal and psychic mirror-matrix for the corporeality of the machine in a constant state of learning and unlearning “dance-expressions,” considered alongside historical inquiry into connections between Ausdruckstanz and the Holocaust as well as butoh and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“unbetitelter Tanz is a live duet between body and instrument created with composer Julie Zhu. Zander Porter’s gestures are tracked and mapped via motion-tracking and lightweight machine learning to modulate Julie’s no-input mixer, a feedback instrument that ‘plays itself.’ This live video performance is a system of learning and unlearning. Movement shapes sound, sound reshapes movement, and the mapping evolves in its turn. Sitting between artificial and ‘autistic’ intelligences the work shows agency and perception split across human and machine.”
— Clarisse Verbeek (University of Antwerp) & Arthur Saint-Remy (St Lucas School of Arts Antwerp)
The performance was initiated in residency at Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside (California) in 2024, supported additionally by Leonardo/ISAST with Arizona State University in context of Leonardo@Djerassi 2024 (with accompanying profile published in Leonardo for MIT Press) and Megan Nicely (residency guest). Technical-technological components, improvisations, and experimentations with motion capture + sound and gesture recognition + motion continuation occurred while Zander and Julie were together in residency in 2025 at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (accompanied by Daniel Bisig) at the Zurich University of the Arts. A corresponding performance-test “pre-premiered” in the Immersive Arts Space with documentation shown in a VR exhibition with Bounding Box (Antwerp) and for the 12th SPA conference Vanishing Acts: AI, Performative Knowledge & Sustainable Memory at University of Malta (Valletta).
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