Kinetic Atmospheres and Immersion Architecture

Abstract

This presentation extends the author’s earlier work on dance technologies and in/audible choreographies to delve into participatory sensory architecture and augmented virtuality, introducing concepts of the material affects of flows and aural environments, and discussing the design of wearables used in immersive environments (kinetic atmospheres or ‘kimospheres’). Kinetic atmospheres are conceived as formative, not built/constructed in a stable form but responsive to movers or even ‘wearable’ themselves. Basing its investigation of such porous interactive environments for wearable performance in recent installations of the DAP-Lab, as well as acoustic-theatrical installations and contemporary choreographic architectures and objects, the paper explores the impact of audiophonic wearables on movement choreography and role-play within such kimospheres. Finally, it sketches more speculative developments of how bodies and wearables come to affect, and be affected by, kinetic, sonic and Virtual Reality interfaces – in the sense in which the composer Xenakis had envisioned reverberant multimedia architectures and spatial intensities to be live instruments, not static objects or envelopes. Birringer proposes to rework architectural, cybernetic, and hydrogeological theories of the liquid, and shift attention to liquid aurality and virtuality derived also from anthropological concepts of understanding the movement of water, mist, and vapor (immersion, animation, animateriality).