Vector is a suite of dance works comprising a 360 VR film, interactive immersive installation, and a live performance work using avatars and custom-built audio-visual effects to highlight embodied attention. Named as the audience favorite in Doc Edge XR 2024 festival in New Zealand, Vector has been enjoyed by audiences in France, Columbia, Peru, Argentina, Australia, Canada, USA, Bulgaria, and more.
Embodied attention/sensory awareness is an invisible internal process, yet often drives dance creation. Vector uses custom-built coding to translate these internal processes into VR design effects and ignite audiences’ own multisensory awareness. Different aspects (body parts, visual feedback, aural feedback) are highlighted to indicate the direction and magnitude–or vector–of a dancer’s attention in both the film and installation.
Vector 360 is a five-minute VR film experience that allows audiences both to step inside the dance and to view the movement from a distance, providing an ‘inside out’ look at how dance is made, while challenging traditional theatre space, perspectives, and viewing habits of dance audiences.
The accompanying immersive participatory installation, Vector: Interact, uses projected, real-time responsive technology to allow audiences to create their own Vector choreography. Audience members will, one at a time, be able to move, engaging their own embodied awareness while generating multimodal (aural and visual) digital effects in a projected screen image, viewable by themselves and any others in the physical space of the installation, creating a sense of connection and exchange between the physical and virtual sites.
Vector: Live is an experimental dance work that delves deep into the nuances of embodied attention and interaction, drawing on feminist and posthumanist approaches. It uses these audiovisual VR effects to explore aspects of embodied attention and the possibilities of interaction. Vector: Live not only integrates the digital and physical spaces but also accentuates the distinct affordances and advantages of each, inviting audiences on a compelling journey at the cutting edge of contemporary dance.
Artistic Director Rebecca Weber (PhD, MFA, MA, RSME, RSDE, RSMT, Prov. Prof. DMT) makes live and digital dance work investigating intersections between dance, science, and somatics. She is a Senior Lecturer in Dance Studies at the University of Auckland and a registered somatic movement educator and therapist and Dance Movement Therapist. Weber’s choreography has been presented internationally and supported by Creative New Zealand, Dance/USA, Dance/UP, World Dance Alliance, Decoda, Mascher Space Co-operative, Rebecca Skelton Fund, Bates Dance Festival, Tempo Dance Festival, Wimbledon Space, and others.
Co-director Joanna Cook is a dance artist, researcher and multimodal choreographer based in New Zealand. She is a PhD Candidate at the University of Auckland exploring the possibilities of Multimodality as (feminist) Choreographic Practice. Joanna holds a PGDip in Dance Studies and an MA in Dance Studies with first class honours. Her recent works include 3R Dance Project (2020-current, co-created with Janaina Moraes), Fragments of Silent Skin (2021), Expanding Flesh (2022), and Spooling Womxn (2022). Joanna creates work that is experiential, immersive and engages with modalities such as: movement, artist books, soundscapes, printmaking, installation, photography, voice, poetics, video documentation and live performance.