2021
Boermans’ interdisciplinary research practice explores video, sound, sculpture and photography. Derived from a fascination of movement, relational aesthetics and the affective potential of a “politics of technique” (after Guattari) the exhibition, Ecologies of Movement is a first-frame of “future-potential” to suggest the concept of affective ecologies to confront the effect of digital media upon the human condition. In considering a new ecosophy (after Guattari) Boermans’ practice explores the process of gesture exchange (activated in silence by curiosity and a desire to communicate), choreographic improvisation and deep learning, to enable a latent space or “affective gap” to thrive. Boermans looks to a “grammar of change” through new modes of perception (relational resonance) to question our relationship with digital technologies and their role in society. Seen as acts of silent activism (in the making) they are ways in which the aesthetic may be linked to the ethical.
Relational fascination was the preoccupation of participatory artists of the ‘60s and ‘70s; practitioners such as Lygia Clark, Allan Kaprow, Yves Klein, Rirkrit Tiravanija and John Cage spent their lives exploring relationships, connections and invisible worlds. Nearer to home, experimental film, sculpture and sound artist, Len Lye spent a lifetime engaging with relational aesthetics. Complete with playful exuberance and (in most cases) kinetic energy, Lye’s work reveals the intangible “Tangibles”[1]. Echoing Lye’s sensibility are the words of British sculptor, Tony Cragg: “the creation of objects and images don’t exist in the natural or functional world but are able to reflect and transmit information and sensations about the world and its very existence.”[2] Throw Rudolf von Laban’s description of movement as “a living architecture”[3] into the frame and Boermans proposes materiality in motion as a form of affective geometry.
Just as Nicholas Bourriaud (Relational Aesthetics, 2010) encourages us to explore art beyond individual expression and personal space towards social contexts and interdependent relationships between people, so the research study Gesture-as-Sign, as outlined in the final chapter of Boermans' thesis, aims to investigate “interdependent exchange.” By “interdependent exchange” Boermans means the interaction between an experienced moment, the memory of it, the actual video capture of it and its “potentiality” beyond its (original) source-timeframe.
[1] “Len Lye Tangibles.”
[2] Morris, “Inventing a ‘New Visual Language’ (2010)”
[3] Laban, Choreutics.
Relational fascination was the preoccupation of participatory artists of the ‘60s and ‘70s; practitioners such as Lygia Clark, Allan Kaprow, Yves Klein, Rirkrit Tiravanija and John Cage spent their lives exploring relationships, connections and invisible worlds. Nearer to home, experimental film, sculpture and sound artist, Len Lye spent a lifetime engaging with relational aesthetics. Complete with playful exuberance and (in most cases) kinetic energy, Lye’s work reveals the intangible “Tangibles”[1]. Echoing Lye’s sensibility are the words of British sculptor, Tony Cragg: “the creation of objects and images don’t exist in the natural or functional world but are able to reflect and transmit information and sensations about the world and its very existence.”[2] Throw Rudolf von Laban’s description of movement as “a living architecture”[3] into the frame and Boermans proposes materiality in motion as a form of affective geometry.
Just as Nicholas Bourriaud (Relational Aesthetics, 2010) encourages us to explore art beyond individual expression and personal space towards social contexts and interdependent relationships between people, so the research study Gesture-as-Sign, as outlined in the final chapter of Boermans' thesis, aims to investigate “interdependent exchange.” By “interdependent exchange” Boermans means the interaction between an experienced moment, the memory of it, the actual video capture of it and its “potentiality” beyond its (original) source-timeframe.
[1] “Len Lye Tangibles.”
[2] Morris, “Inventing a ‘New Visual Language’ (2010)”
[3] Laban, Choreutics.
2020
Gesture As Sign Research Study (Stage 2) in collaboration with the Department of E Research (CeR), The University of Auckland.
An arts/science research study in association with Andrew Leathwick and supported by CeR, to investigate deep learning techniques and gesture recognition to facilitate gesture exchange between participants. Over a period of 6 weeks a gesture recognition system was developed that was capable of successfully recognising over 30 gestures.
https://www.eresearch.auckland.ac.nz/project/an-investigation-into-leap-motion-device-for-gesture-as-sign/
Gesture Score
An arts/science research study in association with Andrew Leathwick and supported by CeR, to investigate deep learning techniques and gesture recognition to facilitate gesture exchange between participants. Over a period of 6 weeks a gesture recognition system was developed that was capable of successfully recognising over 30 gestures.
https://www.eresearch.auckland.ac.nz/project/an-investigation-into-leap-motion-device-for-gesture-as-sign/
Gesture Score
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The Symbiotic Habit: Telling Stories of Things That Matter. AAANZ Conference, Paper Presentation, Auckland.
Materiality in Motion, an interactive exhibition in collaboration with Clovis McEvoy, exhibited as part of Creativity and Cognition 2019, in conjunction with Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2019), San Diego.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3325480.3329172
https://vimeo.com/502899507
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3325480.3329172
https://vimeo.com/502899507
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Connected Bodies? Where do our bodies begin and end in a networked world? Paper Presentation, AAANZ Conference, Melbourne,
2018
Materiality in Motion. Poster Presentation. Arts in Society, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver.