FABRICATING PERFORMANCE

Inspired by existing notational languages in dance, Fabricating Performance evolves what have traditionally been graphic, symbolic systems and proposes a new way of interpreting and representing movement, through the generation of architectural-‐scale sculptures. To achieve this, we have designed a live custom - fabrication system, which combines methods of designing dance and architecture - and turns robots into creative collaborators.

Performance is presented as a process of fabrication. Reciprocally, fabrication is presented as a process of performance. A circularity of human body-gesture and computer machine-gesture leads to the construction of notational spatial artefacts. Space is constructed through the transforming conditions of dance, and performance is constructed through the transforming conditions of architecture. The project is a spatially interactive design system. Driven by the motivation of a participating performer/designer, body movement is tracked, analysed and translated into tool paths for fabrication by a robotic armature and an industrial CNC pipe bending machine. Discrete construction elements are fabricated in response to the dancer/designers performance. The generative cycle of construction encourages bodily interaction and the aggregation of a form of spatial notion that described repetition, rhythm and pattern. ’Fabricating Performance’ qualifies movement in space and raises questions of how these qualitative motion segments can be articulated in a quantitatively physical manner.