Orbital

An interactive video installation questioning the Cartesian belief that movement is experienced with respect to a static and universal background. "It is the coast which slips by if we keep our eyes fixed on the rail, and the boat which glides along if we look at the coast" Merleau-Ponty M. 1945. The Phenomenology of Perception. In Orbital a circular image depicting a dancer is projected onto the floor of a gallery space. Both the movements of this dancer & the point of view react to the motion of the public around the projection. All of these movements: the viewer, the dancer and the point of view, are intimately linked but at the same time take on a form of dynamic disjunction. Through experience we know that in order to witness the other side of an object, we simply walk around it; however when a viewer walks around Orbital these expectations become confounded. Moving around the work may cause the viewpoint to change in accordance with their own movement; on the other hand the viewpoint may equally well take an altogether different path or even follow the viewer around; it might even twist or rotate at the same time. In Orbital all that is certain is that one movement affects another, eccentric orbits perhaps, or maybe a gravitational tussle between orbiting bodies.

Commissioned by Woking Dance Festival team. Presented in 2010 at: Oxford City Gallery, Oxford; The Lightbox, Woking; The Place Theatre,London; and, Stone Squid Gallery, Hastings. The piece develops on previous work by Nic Sandiland such as Remote Dancing (2004-7) and Doing (2008) as an investigation into new technological interfaces which aim to extend the physicality of the body and create a visceral dialogue between live and mediatised movement.