CANE: a responsive environment dancework

SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology announces the premiere of CANE, a responsive environment dancework to be performed at Sheafer Laboratory Theater in the Bryan Center on the Duke Campus. Conceived and directed by Thomas F. DeFrantz Inspired by Jean Toomer's experimental 1923 text of the Harlem Renaissance, CANE explores memories of African American sharecropping held by a technologically-devised canefield. Created by technologists, dancers, and visual artists, CANE suggests possibilities of shimmering mediated histories mixed in real-time via a specially-constructed responsive environment.The sound environment for this work manipulated audio files from the Library of Congress archive of Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938. Processed through Supercollider and Max/MSP to respond to their own recurrences, these voices of memory became actors to interact with the live performers and prepared soundscape for the work. A Wii-mote that interacted with Isadora software allows for the manipulation of visual materials in response to physical gestures by the audience engaged with the interface. In all, CANE suggests ways to rethink how environments hold history, and how technologically- mediated environments can tilt simultaneously toward what has been, and what is yet to be. The performance lasts approximately one hour. Tickets are $12/$5 Students and Duke Employees