MENTAL DANCEis an art-sci  collaboration inspired by neuroscientific research  into our ability to adapt to  new situations.  Drawing on case studies of dancers Lucia Joyce and Vaslav Nijinsky, both of whom suffered from mental illness at the height of their dancing careers, the project seeks to demystify the language surrounding psychiatric diagnoses through a poetic mapping between  language, voice, music and movement using wearable sensor and AI technologies. Through experimental and speculative practice in the context of a digitally augmented 'laboratorium,' choreographer Carol Brown and sound designer Monica Lim in collaboration with two dancers and a singer, improvise with neuroscientific concepts including predictive coding and neural networks. These concepts have emerged from their dialogues with neuroscientist Marta Garrido and research being undertaken through the Cognitive Neuroscience and Computational Psychiatry Lab.   
Moving sound and sounding movement through a soma-technic system, the research performance tests the potential for a poetic calibration of neuroscientific concepts within an experimental performance system. Three performers; Jordine Cornish, Luigi Vescio and Austin Hayes become an empathy machine: Moving sound through gesture, currents of sensation shift perceptions marking threshold moments of change.  Audience are invited to attend to emerging and eruptive atmospheres, moods and affects. Due to be presented as part of the Mental Exhibition at the Science Gallery on 26th August 2021, this performance swivelled to an online research and presentational mode.

Collaborators — Carol Brown (Choreography & Artistic Direction) & Monica Lim (Interactive Sound Design)
Performers — Jordine Cornish, Luigi Vescio and Austin HaynesCommisioned By— Science Gallery Melbourne
Funding — Creativity and Wellbeing Hallmark Initiative

›MENTAL DANCE