digital body

Paul Sermon, «Telematic Dreaming», 1992
Telematic Dreaming (installation view) | © Paul Sermon

Paul Sermon, «Telematic Dreaming», 1992
Photography | © Paul Sermon

«Telematic Dreaming» (1992) turns a bed into the support of high-resolution images that might show a partner, intimately alive although being thousand kilometers away. The light-intense projection of the other results in a remarkable suggestion which turns the touch of the projected body into an intimate action. Sermon aims at expanding the senses of the user, while it is obvious that the other cannot really be touched but that only swift, decisive, possibly tenderly reactive movements can experience the suggestion of touch—a moment of contemplation, as many users observed. The synaesthetical, sensual impression lets the hand and the eye fuse, and it is this effect that characterizes this work as well as the works to come in the following years, in collaboration with Andrea Zapp.
Oliver Grau

SUSAN KOZEL

Susan Kozel is a performer, choreographer and writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia and London, England. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Essex (UK). In addition, she has been trained in movement practices such as yoga, pilates and improvisation, and in dance forms such as butoh, modern dance, ballet jazz and classical ballet.

Susan Kozel has worked as Assistant Professor with Interactive Arts at the Technical University of British Columbia, and as a Lecturer & Researcher for the Department of Dance Studies, University of Surrey (UK). She is a founder of MESH Performance Partnerships (1), HEAR studio for Arts Research in London, and the London Butoh Network. As a writer she is widely published, with numerous articles and essays to her credit. She writes about the physical experience of digital technologies to create new philosophical paradigms.

Susan Kozel has received numerous grants and awards for her projects, including the National Touring Programme grant from the Arts Council of England, the Canadian Cultural Innovation Initiative grant, and the University of Surrey Choreographic Laboratory Grant for new work.

Through her work, Susan Kozel researches the physical and philosophical vocabularies emerging from the convergence of dance and media technologies.

Her choreographic works have been performed in many countries. Among them is an interactive installation/performance called Contours (1999), which has been exhibited in venues in Europe and the United States. A performance for a limited number of audience members, Contours captured the dancers' movements by means of infrared cameras and computers, which translated the kinetic information in real-time into digital imagery. The piece aims to create an intimate "transorganic" environment that provokes an awareness of the body's permeability, and the interrelationship of the visual, aural and kinetic senses.

Her most recent work trajets (1999-2000) (2) was co-produced by the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts within the Canadian Creative Innovation Initiative Program (CCII). trajets is a video-dance installation that integrated dance, digital imagery, sound architecture and networked mapping techniques in a responsive environment. The piece was co-directed by Gretchen Schiller and Susan Kozel.

Susan Kozel is now working in collaboration with Thecla Schiphorst on whisper, a participatory installation that addresses issues of preconceived physical responses to an awareness of new senses.

Dominique Fontaine © 2002 FDL