[ISEA2010] Artist Statement: Norah Zuniga Shaw — Synchronous Objects, reproduced

Artist Statement

Installation, 2010

Based on original material from Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced (2009) by William Forsythe, Norah Zuniga Shaw, Maria Palazzi: synchronousobjects.osu.edu and on display in the PACT Café.

In Synchronous Objects, reproduced Norah Zuniga Shaw brings visitors into an encounter with the deep structures of a dance and the generative ideas contained within. A world premier developed for ISEA2010 RUHR, this multipart installation is a spatial and temporal re-imagining of its web-based antecedent, Synchronous Objects created by William Forsythe, Maria Palazzi and Zuniga-Shaw at The Ohio State University’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design. Focusing on the celebrated ensemble piece One Flat Thing, reproduced (2000) choreographed by Forsythe, the project reveals the interlocking systems of organisation in the dance through animations, interactive graphics, and other parallel virtual manifestations. Choreography is commonly understood as inextricably linked to dancing and to live performance. But both the installation and the screen-based original start from an expanded view of choreography, asking, what else might physical thinking look like?synchronousobjects.osu.edu

By Norah Zuniga Shaw in collaboration with: Marc Ainger, Shawn Hove, Joshua Penrose, Julian Richter, Petra Roggel (Goethe ­Institute München), Benjamin Schroeder, Lily Skove & Stephen Turk.

  • Norah Zuniga Shaw (US) Norah Zuniga Shaw is an artist based in the U.S. whose work centers on choreographic knowledge as a locus for interdisciplinary and intercultural creativity. Synchronous Objects, her most recent collaborative project with William Forsythe and Maria Palazzi, was launched online and at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2009 and featured in the N.Y. Times and Communication Arts. Zuniga Shaw is currently presenting on the work as part of a global tour produced by the Goethe Institute. She continues to create new installation and stage works and to lecture on her research at such venues as SIGGRAPH, Chicago Humanities Festival, Spring Dance Utrecht, Harvestworks, and Sadler’s Wells. She is director for dance & technology at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design.

Full Text with images (PDF) p. 132-135