COMMIT!

COMMIT! is an interactive performance in which a performer (Ladenheim) executes hundreds of dramatic falls in an hour, while the audience uses a web app to vote on whether they believe the performer has truly committed. After rounds of falling, an avatar replica of Ladenheim reads the audience's feedback aloud, while the live performer adjusts their actions in response. Throughout, motion capture and custom sensors collect data on each fall in an attempt to discover (and justify) the most "committed" fall there is.

Using gamified interactions to control a durational performance, COMMIT! explores the shifting boundaries between technological control and societal expectations. Through the performer’s repeated attempts to "commit," the piece highlights tensions between physical effort and digital representation, as well as the audience’s role in shaping and judging the performer’s actions. In this way, COMMIT! critiques societal pressures to demonstrate resilience, adaptability, and perfection. The work emphasizes the inexact and often reductive nature of data collection and digital mediation, inviting reflection on how technology distorts and constrains identity and agency.

 

// interaction design
// installation & media design
// choreography
// mocap
// sensor fabrication
// programming: C#, processing, arduino

COMMIT! was created in collaboration with Mollye Bendell and Timothy Kelly. The project received support from the Media Design Practices Postgraduate Fellowship at ArtCenter College of Design, the Barnard Movement Lab, the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance, and the MAXmachina Lab grant.

Photography by: Jill Steinberg. Produced by Media Art Xploration.

Video footage available upon request.

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