NEWS: Alexander Whitley – Overflow @ Dance City

Image by Tom Andrew

In a world in which human motions and behaviour are the most valuable raw material for the modern economy, what happens to our sense of identity and humanity? Digital creator Alexander Whitley addresses this question at Newcastle’s Dance City on Saturday 26^th March in his audio-visual dance exhibition on the rapid development of data flows.

The profit-driven data-logging of our physical forms by big tech companies is transforming the flesh and pulse of our bodily movements into algorithms and data flows. Whitley looks to capture this transformation via sound, light, costume and dance.

Using facial recognition, Ana Rajcevic creates personalised skull-like masks for the dancers in a ‘creepy and cool’ representation of the digitalisation of human features. The blending of human and digital is also explored by the Children of the Light, whose kinetic light installation sways with the dancers “like another character added to the scene”.

Whilst dystopian, Whitley’s choreography is future-looking, not negationist or paranoid: “although there are negatives, there is still potential for good”. Whitley aims to keep the creative space open-ended, exploring the tension between what is lost and gained by digital development. Dance is an elusive, fluid medium suitably representing the cryptic undercurrents of big data collection and its unknown yet profound implications on our minds and bodies.

This exhibition is relevant post Covid-19 and looking forward to an empty, waiting ‘metaverse’ and Whitley promises to dramatize this space of uncertainty and opportunity with skill and originality.

Alexander Whitley: Overflow is at Dance City, Newcastle on Saturday 26^th March.