the body in\verse
Alan Macy, Mark-David Hosale, Alysia Michelle James
Currents 2021 (Virtual) Livestream multimedia performance. June 19th, 2021
The body in\verse is an online, interactive performance that combines biophysical sensing, emotive state sonification and visualization, and generative poetry to create the scene.
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The performance provides a deep dive from the world outside of ourselves, that is dissociated by mediated technology, into the interoceptive abyss of our emotive sea. A biophysical sensing system measures the emotional affect of the performer, and then uses that data to drive the sound, abstract imagery, and a generative poetry algorithm. Emotional affect of the performer is assessed through arousal and valence measures derived from correlation of the performer’s heart rate and heart rate variability. An algorithm generates poetry using conversations that take place with the audience as source material. The poetry source material is then algorithmically organized according to its sentiment (positive to negative), and mapped to the emotional affect of the performer driven by the emotional affect assessment from her biophysical measures.