“Science,Fiction”

Through a combination of the temporal qualities of video and the architectural dimension of its physical installation, Thater’s work explores the artifice of its own production and its capacity to construct perception and shape the way we think about the world through its image. Natural diversity, wildlife, and conservation have been persistent themes in the artist’s work, and she has dedicated herself to an examination of the varied kinds of relationships humans have constructed with animals. While her in-depth studies of ecosystems and animal behavior propose observation as a kind of understanding in itself, her ethical position is implicit in the work, which, while subtly political, provides views of the sublime in all its incarnations—stunning, beautiful, and simultaneously terrifying.

CARTE BLANCHE – CORPS DE WALK
Corps de Walk combines shapes and emotions in a unique, almost extraterrestrial “walk” by androgynous creatures. It makes a number of references to Killer Pig, Sharon Eyal’s first choreography for Carte Blanche, created in 2009. In Killer Pig, a piece for female dancers, Sharon Eyal plays with multiple incarnations of sensuality with a minimalist style and intense physical expression. She pursues that approach in Corps de Walk, but this time will all the company dancers involved. As with the previous piece, the costumes suggest androgynous nudity. She has collaborated with the Israeli musician DJ Ori Lichtik for many years, and once again here his music underpins her potent choreographic language, whose rhythm constantly evokes a beating heart.

Simple Harmonic Motion study #5d

Behind the different incarnations, at the heart of the project lies the concept of creating complexity from simplicity. Through the use of custom software, a number of ‘agents’ are created and assigned a simple behavior. Each follow an extremely simple repetitive pattern of movement and sound. On their own, each agent is relatively monotonous, basic and mechanical. The repetition duration, motion and sound of each agent is precisely tuned such that the collection of all agents moving together, creates a unique, evolving and complex composition – both visually and sonically. The seed of inspiration comes from the motion of pendulums and other fundamental oscillatory phenomena which exhibit simple harmonic motion. The project extracts and amplifies these complex patterns, both through visual abstraction and emphasis; and also through sonifying the phenomena and creating musical patterns driven by the same equations that dictate the behaviour.