The first cohort of structured Master’s students in the Department of Performing Arts (DPA) in 2024 have all enthusiastically embraced their two first-year modules. One of these modules is Embodied Technologies, which requires students to conceptualise and manage a project that involves a technology as a composite performer.
This is intended to be a collaborative project where the artefact is a digital video recording that is curated into an online exhibition of the works.
All the students collaborated with a variety of other creatives and discipline specialists.
Primarily, all collaborated with the Department of Visual Communication students to document and edit their works, whilst other role-players included undergraduate Performing Arts performers (musicians, dancers and actors) and technicians (costume, lighting and sound).
Other collaborators included the technology as performers and their owners/creators – such as the use of the TUT Department of Biomedical Sciences’ skeleton; and an extensive project collab between the Departments Architecture and Industrial Design, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering (Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment) and Medical Orthotics and Prosthetics, Department of Sport, Rehabilitation and Dental Sciences (Faculty of Science) to design and build a functional counterweight performance device.
The projects ranged from capturing the sounds made by an induku (a Zulu word that translates to stick or staff) to reveal emotions; an immersive light and sound display as a healing multisensory experience; stop motion and digital storytelling; “into-self” an inside out perspective on identity where the skeleton dances; and exploring the weighty issue of diverse body types by rendering them appear weightless on the counterweight device.
This module has stretched the students to think beyond their usual creative processes, encouraging collaboration and exploration with technologies.
Students are excited by their results and some are keen to further explore these modes and practices – and devices – in their discipline advancement research projects they will be embarking on next year.