World Premiere
Medium | Digital Film
Duration | 8:05 min

The dance performance and film present a new vocabulary of movement that is designed to disguise the proportions of the human body from the skeleton detection algorithms currently used by modern city surveillance networks to track and identify individuals. The work engages with the context of these systems as deployed against protestors in Hong Kong, where Chinese authorities developed software to follow an individual by mapping their unique walk or gait. The necessity to wear masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic has restricted the effectiveness of facial detection systems. Body tracking and gait detection have now become the dominant forms of surveillance in Asia and soon globally. These programs scan massive databases of collected images and CCTV footage, searching for predefined human forms and proportions that suggest two legs, a torso, two arms and a head. Working with dancers from The Jacob Jonas Company, a series of new dance movements have been developed to distort the proportions, symmetry and form of the body, in order to render it invisible to the body detection software.

Supported by STRP Festival, NL

Director | Liam Young
Choreographer | Jacob Jonas
Technical Lead | Shuruq Tramontini
Director of Photography | Horacio Martinez and Pannyhire
Jacob Jonas The Company Managing Director | Jill Wilson
Executive Producer | Tonia Barber
Assistant Choreographer | Anibal Sandoval
Featuring | Jacob Jonas The Company Performing
Artists | Joy Brown, James Blackston, Miguel Lopez Jorge, Emma Rosenzweig-Bock, Mike Tyus, Jill Wilson

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