From Emotional Skin: Performance-Space Expression - The Body as Interface and Human / Environment interaction by Sonia Cillari: How can you have some kind of identity that simultaneously allows you to know something, allows cells to configure their own relevant world, the immune system to generate the identity of our body in its own way, and the brain to be the basis for a mind, a cognitive identity? All these mechanisms share a common theme. (F. Varela, The Emergent Self, 1991)

As a media artist and architect, it fascinates me to explore how human beings experience space. How we, as perceivers, reconstruct the internal and external world by means of our sensory system. And how our senses achieve the process of consciousness in order to identify these worlds. I’m interested in knowing how we individually generate empirical concepts of the world, thus relating new impressions to existing ones. In other words: how the interaction between a person and his/her surroundings arises. The core of my exploration is the creation of real-time systems in order to instigate interactive processes. Against the rationalist notion of objective space and body, my work includes sensory and perceptual mechanisms in immersive and augmented environments.

The last few years, I have been specifically interested in a field of research concerning the body as an interface, while at the same time developing a ‘performance-space expression’ in which the personal experience of space is an illusion, and in which gestures, visuals and sound also play an important part. When I say ‘performance-space expression’, I am referring to the creation of artificial spaces, each segment of which contains potential realities. And I’m referring to artificial spaces mirroring or not something which we interpret as already existing in nature. Indeed my investigation deals with a quasi-obsession which exercises illusion in searching for ways of transcending local event s. A quasi-obsession to reveal our existence as a potential attractor and container of interconnected events.

Lately I’ve been developing new works in relation to my investigations. The results are environments created by way of devices which in real-time register the range of the human performers’ body signals . This cause to continuously generate mutations of the environmental initial conditions. My concern was with realizing that the boundaries of self extend beyond our skin. The idea of what skin consciousness is, how presence, proximity and touch can re-direct the way we understand ourselves and others is specifically what I’m interested in. Focusing on the subject of the body as an interface, my inquiry into sensors and interfaces led me to experiment with electric field-sensing technology. Its ability to detect presence, proximity and touch has enabled an exploration through the interaction between the body and space. This investigation results in a knowledge both sensory and kinaesthetic. The generated visuals and sound are a way to draw one in, but the interfaces are about the moment of sharing and contact, when the interaction occurs through our senses.

A mutual element of the works is an experimental praxis revealing a sense of instability and impermanence. With a peculiar interest into mathematic models, I was searching for new way of visualization, observations of behaviors, explorations in a psychoanalytical way of looking at things. Interactivity is been used to explore the possibility to distance oneself from its personal environment. As to play with ones own identity, developing a certain freedom to provoke experiences of extension. From our lonely subjective position to gain access to undiscovered imaginative shared phenomena…

An objective reality of matter doesn’t exist. What exists is a reality continuously created by the presence and observations of man. (Quantum Mechanics Fundament) More >>

Neutro Project (Space-time Shared Physical Environment) explores the application of interactive electronic strategies to generate a physical environment, spatial result of a collective action and communication. It’s a temporary living building which utilizes the interaction between audience and a system of integrated locational sensors to generate and transform lights and sound continuously. Considering spatiality as an environment not receiver but instead generator of dynamic events, Neutro explores chaotic intervals between elements of a continuous system. It’s a catalyst of space-time fluctuations between people. Its physical space is conceived as an organism with various oscillatory components. When it goes over cyclic stress limits, the continuous rhythm will loose its deterministic periodic behavior, and enter into an irregular dynamism, no longer controlled, then chaotic. Audience will interact with the space in order to analyze the information it contains.

Conscious Space 01 is a participants-responsive environment which focuses on the relations Body-Body and Body-Space, which are ones of interaction and movement, not simple presence. It explores the conscious and unconscious relation between the participants and their relation with the environment. This relies on mapping wave energy impulses, actions, movements, attraction and repulsion and on patterning the responsive changes generated by the sensor system which reads the bio-information of the participants’ body relative to their presence, proximity and touch. The only input devices are the bodies of the performers which act as antennas standing on the interface. The space is designed to provide them with an intuitive interface which facilitates full body interaction. Each 3D graphic model and sound field corresponds to the movement of a body-antenna and embodies his virtual extension, constantly interfered from the presence and the movement of other bodies on the interface. As they touch and move closer or far away, their electromagnetic activity generates flowing algorithmic organisms and audio compositions. Videos.

The interactive performance Se Mi Sei Vicino (If you are close to me) is a practical research into Body-Environment interaction and the possibilities of using the ‘Body as Interface’. A core element of the work is a sensor floor on which a performer is standing, functioning as a human antenna; when coming close to or being touched by members of the audience, the movements of the bodies are registered as electromagnetic activity. Surrounding the floor are large projections showing computer graphics, which change their form according to fluctuations in the electromagnetic field. The relative distance between the bodies determines what can be seen and heard. ‘Se Mi Sei Vicino’ has to be considered in relation with the tradition of performance and installation art, which problematizes the distinction between active performers and passive spectators. The fact that the audience is requested a full bodily commitment that includes movement and touch besides sight and hearing makes that the boundaries of passivity and activity are blurred; everybody becomes a potential performer. Videos.

Sonia Cellari is an Italian media artist and architect who lives and works in Amsterdam. Her work involves the creation of sensory and perceptual mechanisms in immersive and augmented environments. Her artistic investigation examines how consciousness, perception and identity emerge in such settings. She was artist in residence at V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam 2004), Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (Amsterdam 2004-2005), STEIM. (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) and Netherlands Media Art Institute /Montevideo/Time Based Arts TBA (Amsterdam 2006). Over the last years she has been specifically interested in a field of research concerning the ‘Body as Interface’. Her interactive installations, that are at the intersection of architecture and performance art, have been exhibited and presented internationally. She received the Honorable Mention at ‘Prix Ars Electronica. Interactive Art’ (Linz, Austria) in 2007 and at ‘VIDA 9.0. Art & Artificial Life International Competition’ (Madrid) in 2006.