Ultraorbism

Ultraorbism is an interactive distributed action between two networked spaces in two cities: Barcelona, Spain and Falmouth, United Kingdom.Both spaces are open-plan, with a backdrop of a large main screen in the center and a subsidiary screen: the main screen acts as the central area for the story, and this is where the consequences of the various interactive processes engaged in by those acting in both venues are shown; the small screen shows the details of these interactions.The story is a linear interpretation of the first of the two books of True Histories by Lucian of Samosata (a Syrian writer who lived in the first century AD): it is an impossible journey on which everything is invented, with references to the mythology and literature of the era. A journey is recounted with the overlapping of various levels of images, some of which are produced dynamically during the performance, and others come from the image bank: taken together, they make up the iconographic narrative. The music and lighting are also interactive and coincide with the story of the image.

Ultraorbism is a media performance work created by applying the artist’s unique worldview to Lucian of Samosata’s True Histories. The artist’s performances and animation, in which he combines his body with machinery, are internationally renowned, but the participation of i2CAT (a foundation that researches next-generation Internet) and a group of dancers gives this work a more theatrical quality. The work consists of two different performances held simultaneously in Barcelona, Spain and in Falmouth, United Kingdom, with interactive music and lighting linked to networked video images. The drawings the artist makes on stage and the actual, primal performance, in which he flips over a stack of paintings as the story unfolds, are spectacular. Also, the ways he integrates the highly advanced visual environment with the dancers and audience in each venue in these festive and new experiments are deeply alluring. (ISHIDA Takashi)