Data Sensorium is a transmedia performance work developed through a research residency organized in collaboration with metaLAB (at) Harvard. Artist and designer Lins Derry will lead a week-long residency at ArtLab working with Researchers Jordan Kruguer and Maximilian Mueller and collaborators from Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE)
Data Sensorium pushes the dance discipline by experimenting with data embodiment as a creative methodology. While similar methods have been researched, such as data visualization in design and data sonification in music, data embodiment has yet to be explored in dance. The content, environmental migration accelerated by climate change, makes realizing this work urgent. In 2020, more people migrated due to ecological disasters than human war, and 30 million of those displacements were due to floods, storms, or wildfires. Data Sensorium draws attention to this critical issue while simultaneously innovating data embodiment as a creative methodology in dance. Through data embodiment, these artists, designers, and researchers will explore the stories that data tell through performance. Data Sensorium will tell the harrowing tale of disaster displacement in relation to climate change in this first iteration.
Lins Derry is an artist and designer working in human-computer interaction, data visualization, and choreography. The body is often her site for investigation and intervention in design and performance. Her current work explores how choreographic interfaces can increase the kinetic and spatial interactivity between humans and technological systems. In addition, she researches how scientific datasets can inspire humanitarian responses via a performative process that she calls data embodiment. In 2020, Lins graduated from the MDes, Technology program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Lins has performed professionally with dance companies based in New York, San Francisco, and Montréal and is a Principal with metaLAB (at) Harvard.
metaLAB is an idea foundry, knowledge-design lab, and production studio experimenting in the networked arts and humanities. metaLAB is located at Harvard University and Freie Universität Berlin.