Jitter Final Report

		>>link to Project Proposal>> Ayesha Hameed blackout http://www.ayeshahameed.net/jitter People and Roles: Ayesha Hameed: Concept Design, Set Construction, Lighting Design, Performance Design, Performance. Adapted from Jean-Sebastien Rousseau’s Jitter Patch and jit.mean. What is it: This project explores the development of a system that architecturally requires the movement of the performer to complete and link the component parts.  There are several registers under which it operates: black on black: this project explores the different qualities of blackness that are created in the installation.  The motion patch creates a blackness that the performer counterposes with black paint, black graphite etc. The lighting design is structured to explore this relationship as well, the two patches provide light to one another, and a single spotlight provides dramatic shadows that the performer uses in her act of painting herself.  These blacknesses accumulate until all of these registers end up saturated in their respective qualities of blackness.  This is a very technical description of how the blackness works, as the obvious cultural and social dimensions of this colour are ingrained within the very mechanics of the design of this system where form and content are developed together.  gesture and system: the system requires the set of developed  gestures to complete it.  This is a multilayered/complex performance event structure using two jitter components: motion tracking and mean.  In the first instance the performer is drowning in a sea of black that she has to counter by constant motion that is Sisyphean as she is adding black, which the motion tracking cannot read correctly.  Consequently there is less and less information being provided to the camera leading to the shutting down of the system. In the second patch, projected behind the performer, is a mean of a growing cache of video.  It starts in lightness with the absence of the performer and ends with darkness and traces of the moving performer.  The projection of this patch is visible in the other patch creating a sense of embedded temporality in the system, where the immediacy of the first patch absorbs the slow moving time of the second.  The projection of the second patch is also painted over repetitively in black, an accumulation on top of another accumulation. sculptural and painterly elements: there are multiple levels of painting – where the performer paints on herself the wall and the floor; as well as the painting of black by the motion patch and the accumulation of the jit.mean patch; thematically then painting as performative gesture is central to the system. This is also a sculptural performance event where the spectator watches the closed system from several possible angles Diagrams of installation: Software architecture. Examples (patches and /or video) showing the proposed effect.   How does it engage the human participant in live interaction? - This is a closed system where the spectators are outside watching the performer interact with the monitor. - Collapse of time: live and jit.mean combined and looped into one another - System of erasure and dissolving - Designed for specific performance event but with jit.mean has the potential to leave traces of live performance after performance event for others to explore afterwards. Milestones / Timetable: prototype/video sketches Oct/November installation December Deliverable: Documentation of Performance Event; analysis of qualities of blackness, gestures explored by performance. Resources needed: 2 I sight cameras 1 television monitor 1 rear projection screen 1 projector 2 laptops drawing supplies and incidentals References:   Brecht on gestus   Bruce Nauman Art Make-Up 1967-8 Anna Devere Smith