VIEWERS WHO ARE SENSITIVE TO BRIGHT FLASHES OF LIGHT AND COLOR MAY WANT TO TAKE ANY NECESSARY PRECAUTIONS BEFORE WATCHING THIS PERFORMANCE
“The Strength of Our Attachments” is an interactive multimedia work for a single performer with an iPhone and a laptop running a patch I created in the MAX/MSP/Jitter environment. The audio is generated by an RTcmix code that reads the accelerometer in the iPhone and translates that movement into data. Those same movements are used to process the video’s brightness, contrast, and saturation.
The video is a recording of dancer Christine Rohde improvising a set of gestures based on holding an iPhone. The performer mimics these gestures in real-time. In a sense, the video serves as the musical score for the piece as it determines the gestures which create the sound and visuals.
The title comes from the dependence that we have on our mobile devices. The piece depicts the struggle of trying to live without our precious technological devices. The irony, of course, being that this piece would not be possible without the use of our devices.