Corposcopio: an interactive installation performance in the intersection of ritual, dance and new technologies

Corposcopio is a collaborative project that integrates two different worlds or territories: circle dances and new media technologies. Ancient circle dances are cultural manifestations present in different countries around the world. They have a great power of community integration and provide a unique experience of extended consciousness. In Brazil there are a number of amazing circle dances and one of the most popular is called ciranda, whose movements are inspired by sea waves. Ciranda is performed by hundreds of people and some participants fall into a trance. The purpose of the interactive performance is to stimulate, simultaneously, the perception of the media in contemporary reality and the collective body emergence. Corposcopio invites the participants to experience some circle dances and aggregates real-time image manipulation, software art, VJ and remix aesthetics. The transparent, ubiquitous and pervasive presence of computer systems in contemporary spaces is a quotidian fact. Nevertheless, the emergence of digital communities demonstrated the power of the human factor in the disruptive use of technologies. Human beings are social beings. Our depart point is to invite the participants to dance within the scenery of real-time image manipulation, ubiquitous computing and mixed reality. The performance itself deals with co-creation development and uncertainty. Each performance has peculiar characteristics hence it is an open system, open to receive the group interaction and participation. The experience stimulates an extended consciousness, a simultaneous perception of the individual body and the collective body. Our hypothesis is that each group will catalyze the emergence of an embodied consciousness of our mediated situation in a different way. As Bernhard Wosien (1988), one of the pioneer researchers on circle dance, has said, dance is a path to totality. In Wosien's view, circle dance has deep ritual characteristics and evokes a tremendous collective enthusiasm.