NEVER LET ME GO - Eva Davidova

Eva Davidova & Will Pappenheimer

NEVER LET ME GO is a an Augmented Reality Trans-Species Dance Performance, and an immersive, interactive installation. It centers on a continually changing AR crocodile, which bonds to a performer and the public, who in turn transform into folkloric beings. The audience walks into a surround (3+ video wall) space created by projections of live AR iPad cameras pointed inwards, creating an alternative, immersive double view of the room with the audience intermixed with the virtual AR elements.

Never let Me Go
An AR Trans-Species Dance Immersive Installation

Space description:
The audience walks into a surround (3+ video wall) space created by projections of live AR iPad cameras pointed inwards towards the center of the space. This creates an alternative, immersive double view of the room with the audience intermixed with the virtual AR elements. The projections will be offset, and a layer of virtual water will be added to both expand and confuse the resulting physical surrounding.

In the process of creating the installation, we will experiment with iPad-based MoCap, interactivity, programming, and bridging between different software.

NEVER LET ME GO prototype – documentation of AR elements, tracking human body movement and attaching an animated crocodile. Other costume additions and object generating elements are attached to different parts of the performer body. The entire scene is captured on an iPad and then sent to a projection. This is a simplified prototype, however, it contains also samples of conceptual and aesthetic elements that will be further developed for the full-scale project. An animated crocodile attaches itself to the performer/participant as it changes its skin color to reference different species of the animal world. The performer/participant takes on a hairpiece reminiscent of Bulgarian Kukeri folk costumes. From their right hand, the performer/participant generates Davidova’s Horsewoman icons, which fall to the floor and begin to fill up the space until the performer/participant pushes them them around with their feet. These are just some of the elements that will build both a performer participant character as well as crocodile character and their bonded dance. If another performer or audience participant walks in front of the bonded pair the crocodile and costume is transferred to a new host.

The crocodile, an ancient survivor of mass extinction events and a purveyor of trans-species that changes it’s skin. Bonded to the crocodile in the AR space, audience members shed confounded mini beings and objects in an effort to rid themselves of current social problematics. The movement of the audience-crocodile pair affects the movements of the crocodile around the participants, resulting in a dancing couple. The crocodile character is complex, signaling both the danger of mass extension, and the becoming of a vital partner to it’s human cohort. Its character is that of a spirit animal, or exorcist warding off the limitations off its human partner, as well as the problematics of contemporary environmental degradation. Taking on virtual appendages, the crocodile’s audience partner becomes a healer themselves, and an expellant of evil related to the many forms of cultural shamanism. Inspired by the Bulgarian Kukeri and other traditions in which people “augment” themselves to perform cleansing and transformational rituals, the installation couples danger with joy to address interspecies relationships, ecological degradation and the capacity of intervention in reality through ritual and imagination.

Though this project is designed four public participation it will also be performed as rehearsed choreography for a dancer or dancers.

In the final project three iPads and projectors will track, transform and project the virtual view as it mirrors 3+ views of the space and its participatory audience or performers. The resulting space is both immersive and confusing since performer/participants see themselves reflected from multiple views in the projections while the virtual elements are integrated into a mixed reality scene.