Wetware
A dance where I wear my heart on my skin.2021
Solo Dance
Wetware is a solo dance presented in a pitch dark room, where a sensor connects my heartbeat to control the size of a single beam of light.
Being trans, I’ve spent most of my life dreaming of morphing and transforming my body.
As poet Anaïs Duplan writes, “… I’m not opaque. I’m so relevant I’m disappearing.” The past half-decade has brought increasing visibility for trans people coupled with increasing violence, both interpersonal and legislative. I wear my heart on my skin to ask: what does visibility mean? What does it mean to be seen in one’s own light?
In this dance, I put myself in a position of simultaneous vulnerability and power. My pulse is made naked to the audience, yet I subvert the gaze and shape myself in my own light. As I negotiate ways to regulate my heart rate and move in response to the projection, what emerges is a duet between myself and my heart.
Being trans, I’ve spent most of my life dreaming of morphing and transforming my body.
As poet Anaïs Duplan writes, “… I’m not opaque. I’m so relevant I’m disappearing.” The past half-decade has brought increasing visibility for trans people coupled with increasing violence, both interpersonal and legislative. I wear my heart on my skin to ask: what does visibility mean? What does it mean to be seen in one’s own light?
In this dance, I put myself in a position of simultaneous vulnerability and power. My pulse is made naked to the audience, yet I subvert the gaze and shape myself in my own light. As I negotiate ways to regulate my heart rate and move in response to the projection, what emerges is a duet between myself and my heart.
Following its debut as a solo, this work is now in process as an evening-length ensemble piece.
Developed in the Fall of 2021 at NYU ITP.
Mediums: p5.js, p5.serialcontrol, Arduino, Electromyography sensor, projector, tripod, body.
Read more about the technical and conceptual development process here.
View from the makeshift ‘tech booth’.