Website Impersonations: The Next Generation  is a new installation and performance series which utilizes Web code as choreography. Computer language is transferred
into "real life" transactions, re-used online, and re-sent onto stage. For SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 in Yokohama, Japan, which ran from Dec 17-19 2009, I set up an installation, which hosted the "hidden mechanisms" of several Websites. The performed Websites were fc2.com, google.co.jp, and yahoo.co.jp, which were listed as the three most used Websites in Japan (Alexa.org's web-ranking). A dancer (Yuka Takahashi), the audience, and I (starring as the three different Websites "personified") shaped the course of each performance, which took place within the "web-driven" environment.


 
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Website Impersonations: The Next Generation - fc2.com, google.co.jp, and yahoo.co.jp
 
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fc2.com "personified"...

Click for excerpt of live show. Click on thumbnails for photos.   

   google.jp.com "personified"...

Click for excerpt of live show. Click on thumbnails for photos.   

   yahoo.jp.com "personified"...

Click for excerpt of live show. Click on thumbnails for photos.   
Website Impersonations: The Next Generation juxtaposed a character personifying the Website itself with a dancer enacting HTML code. The "Website's" costume was inspired by its logo and colors. The performance used a further extension of the html-movement-library and built on the exchange of the solo-dancer's new interpretations of ongoing HTML code into movements, the translation of these movements into text by the audience, and by re-using these "instructions" into further movements by the Website-character herself.
The installation - running in between live performances - consisted of a continuous flow of HTML code deriving from the three websites and displayed video-captures of previous solo-dancers' movements. The audience while passing by could engage with the installation during the performance breaks, find out more about the project, and feed the library with more information.

The space consisted of a stage - similar to the "hanamichi" in kabuki theater (=the "flower-path", a place where often the most important scenes are happening) - which the solo-dancer inhabited. A stand with computers displaying the html-movement-library which the public could access was placed in the center of the space while in the right hand side area the "Website character" resided. There were three projections showing the live HTML code of the portrayed Website, the live input to the database, and the text which got pulled in from the database based on the code structure of the site.

Website Impersonations: The Next Generation is a further investigation into the juxtaposition of Web architecture translated into physical space, Web code such as HTML being used as physical expression and dance, and a humanoid creation of an abstract and virtual construct such as a Website which becomes "tangible".

Full Production Credits.