Process

Coming soon… The Movement Alphabet gallery

Since our first three shows in late 2016 we’ve been busy preparing for the online launch of Movement Alphabet with a documentation film and online gallery of portraits. Watch this space – or join the mailing list and we’ll email you when it’s ready.

Movement Alphabet to debut at Tate Modern! More shows in November…

Movement Alphabet by Jan Lee and Tim Murray-Browne - a view inside the immersive interaction pod where the movement portraits are created in this participatory digital art installationWe’re excited to announce Movement Alphabet will debut at Tate Modern. Come join us on the evening of 28 October at the first in their Friday Lates series. We’re then showing around London the following two weekends. Here’s our full lineup: Read more…

The Story Sessions: Uncovering memories of movement at GAS Station

Movement Alphabet by Jan Lee and Tim Murray-Browne, interactive participatory installation mapping body movement into generative visuals. Jan lying on floor with Kinect in background during artistic residency at GAS Station, East London The past four weeks we’ve been developing Movement Alphabet during a residency at GAS Station in East London, a light-filled hall in a former Victorian school. In this next stage of the projects, we’ve been working with the voice to connect abstract portraits of movement with personal stories of their subjects. Read more…

Foreign scripts and familiar handwriting

One of the ideas that led us to create Movement Alphabet is the individuality carried in our handwriting. Handwritten text communicates character and mood. As the residue left by a moving body, we feel it in an embodied way as a kind of dance. Like prehistoric cave paintings and abstract expressionist painting, we can interpret without instruction because we can’t help but internally reconstruct the movement of the body that created these marks. Read more…

Digital Drop-in @ Victoria & Albert Museum

The V&A was the second place that we shared our prototype version of Movement Alphabet, an installation and live participatory experience for audience to make their marks and get their own algorithmically generated ‘movement portrait’ taken.  It was a surreal and exciting context to work, in amongst Renaissance paintings originally painted for the Pope in the 1500s… We landed like nomads, pitching up our ‘pod’, making the Raphael Gallery our home for the next 3 hours and building a comfy and inviting space for passersby to join us. Read more…

First prototype @ Curious Lab!

Tomorrow we’ll be sharing our first prototype of Movement Alphabet, at Curious Lab, a day of experimental artworks that invite the audience to interact and be a part of the work. Part of a festival curated by the Barbican, it will be held at the Rose Lipman Building where the Open School East resides, a new art school and community space emphasising co-operation and experimentation. Last week we have been testing the live experience on people we’ve bumped into during our residency at G.A.S. station, a venue that also has a community and experimental vibe, that holds classes, workshops and labs for a diverse range of learners and facilitators including ZU-UK Theatre, Rosetta Arts Centre, and Newham Adult Learning Service. Read more…

A Dialogue of Body and Gesture

Last week we finished our first iteration of audience tests of our new project, currently going under the working title of Movement Alphabet. This project is a new cross-discipline collaboration between the digital and physical worlds, where we invite people to explore how they relate to their own physicality and map their movements into a digital portrait. For these tests we were looking to understand how it feels for people who are not from a dance or movement background to be led in a one-on-one session by Jan through different physical tasks and discussions. Whether people are able to relax and move in a way that is authentic to the ordinary character they express with their body. To me, sat watching over the laptop during each session, the interaction between Jan and participant seemed to morph into a dialogue of body and gesture. During discussions of their earliest memories of moving, or how they imagine their physicality in the future, Jan responds through movement, leading the participant to do the same. It becomes a physical conversation of gestures, demonstrations and walking about. Read more…