Glitching is a performance and interactive installation art project that re-describes characters’ movement glitches, disruptions and imperfections, derived from contemporary sports and action computer games.

Year: 2012
Exhibitions: ‘Human Race: inside the history of sports medicine’ Pathfoot Gallery, Stirling; Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, Inverness; City Art Centre, Edinburgh; Institute for Sport and Exercise, Dundee; Govanhill Baths, Glasgow (2012)
Performances: ‘Glitching’ Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling; WHALE Arts Agency, Edinburgh; Inspace, Edinburgh; NEON, Dundee (2012); ‘Glitch’d: Purposeful Mistakes’ Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh College of Art (2013)

Video Documentation: Glitching interface - 2mins 39secs (below)
Glitching live performance at Macrobert Arts Centre (2012)

Links:
Glitching blog - https://glitchchoreography.wordpress.com/tag/beverley-hood/

Gaming characters of the 21st century have an extraordinary embodiment, fluidity of movement and naturalness, becoming more and more realistic and convincing, thanks to constant improvements in technology. However, there are always exceptions; disruptions, imperfections and glitches, whether through unexpected programming errors, forced “cheats” or the users’ inability to control the characters in seamless game-play. The Glitching project focused on these disruptions captured by gamer on YouTube, as a reminder of the artificial nature of gaming character’s movements. Beverley collaborated with professional dancers to re-describe these awkward digital movement disruptions, playfully scrutinising their relationship to real bodies. The potential and limits of how these highly trained performers could enact and interpret, such foreign and unnatural movements was collaboratively devised into physically and digitally performed choreographic sequences. The resulting material was developed into a live performance and interactive installation.

Appropriating the premise of home entertainment dance and training games, Glitching employs the motion-sensor controller Microsoft Xbox Kinect, large-screen display and a pseudo-gaming interface, to create a full-body, skeletally controlled, interactive installation ‘game’. The audience is invited to step into the digital shoes of a ‘lead dancer’ character, and attempt to follow the awkward and intricate, glitch choreography performed by the dancing troupe on screen. In conjunction with the installation, there was a series of Glitching live performances featuring dancers Tony Mills, Hannah Seignior, Felicity Beveridge. The performance was a five part attempt to play the Glitching ‘game’, using the interactive installation as backdrop.

The project toured public funded museums and galleries throughout Scotland during 2012, as part of The Scottish Project, an official part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. The exhibition presented historical artefacts alongside newly commissioned artworks to examine the relationship between sport, exercise and the body, with audience figures in excess of 33,000. The work was shortlisted for the Update_5: New Technological Art Award 2014, at the Zebrastraat -Foundation Liedts-Meesen, Ghent, Belgium. Papers about the work have been presented and published at conferences including Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference 2012, Melbourne, Australia, and Physicality 2012, at British HCI 2012.

Credits: Tony Mills (lead choreography and dancer), Hannah Seignior (choreography and dancer), Felicity Beveridge (choreography and dancer), Hemal Bodasing (programmer), Martin Parker (performance soundtrack composer), Chris Davies at Interactive3 (motion capture support), Gill White (‘game’ interface design), Video Computer System ‘Golden Shower’ (in-game music)

Funded by: Glitching was created as an Artist Commission, from the Scotland & Medicine partnership, , for the exhibition Human Race: inside the history of sports medicine, curated by Dr Andrew Patrizio, with additional funding from a Creative Scotland, Visual Artist Award and Edinburgh College of Art.

Photography by: Chris Scott, Louise Blamire, Kim Beveridge and Beverley Hood