GMU:Human and Nonhuman Performances II WS15/Emilio Aguas

Proxemics saving our personal space a Cultural shock

Been a foreigner trying to adapt to a change, understand different culture patterns creates invisible barriers.

Personal dimensions of space - Eduard T. Hall graphics

I want to provide a test field to make people a little bit uncortable and also break those barriers. sharing something about my cultural background as simple the way we greet it's easy and says a lot of us; when someone feels threatened or not very comfortable try to avoid contact, it's easier in really small places as elevators or corridors to see this type of behavior.

If I succeed in breaking this barriers with some of the transmediale participants it' would be nice to record their facial expressions when they do it to compare it with previous facial expressions recorded of people from another cultural background .

It's a sociological and anthropological experiment push it through the capacity of technical reactive space.

Setup & Performance

For the setup of the installation i will need ca. 45 minutes to one hour, because i will need to calibrate the cameras, the projector, the kinect and put the furniture in front the projection wall and also to do all the plug in for the VGA wire around the space.

The performance will be held in a narrow space, where the people have to seat down in a sofa in front of the screen projection, the installation detects the people and triggers the video loop projection (greetings in different cultures and facial expressions) , when they are watching the projection i will approach to them with a cardboard sign that has written on it "free hugs, it's your choice" to see which is their natural behavior. This with the whole idea to exacerbate the problem of cultural shock and cultural patterns in personal and intimate space.

Everything described above will be recorded for documentation purposes.

For every person it will take around to 30 second to 1 minute to see the response if I am lucky enough to manage a lot of people this will take approximately 45 minutes to get a lot of data and facial a body expressions from the different viewers and actors of this interactive- performative installation happening.

Technical details

-Installation-

• Projector beamer about 2000-3000 lumens
• 2 Laptops with vlc or quicktime for video play (I will provide one of them)
• Kinect V1 or Kinect V2 with all the cables and plug ins adapters for mac laptop
• VGA cable ca. 8 mt. long
• VGA mac adapter (I will provide)
• wireless web camera
• A set of speakers (standard stereo) (mini Jack cable)

-Documentation- (This will be provided)

• DSLR Camera
• SD card
• Camera Lenses
• Tripod

-Space Installation-

• A low light room or closed space with (7X2X2) mt. long, deep and high
• Little sofa for 2 people
• 2 High shelf (over the sofa for projection against the wall) (next to the sofa for recording and people detection system)
• Industrial duct tape
• At least 3 electric outlets
• electric extension board (I will provide)

-Performance-

• Myself
• Cardboard sign (I will provided)