LAUSR

Suspended across a quadcopter, motion-capture system and data projection, Charon (Figure 1) is an interactive performance space, choreographed and articulated by contemporary media artist Sterling Crispin. Invested in the interactive implications of computer vision, Crispin sought to explore how algorithmically emergent devices are redefining what it means to be human. Online documentation of the work starts with a whiz as a Parrot AR.Drone rises from an x-marked tarp and begins moving through the technicallyoutfitted ‘virtual reality room’ at UCSB’s TransLAB. While it is difficult to extrapolate the bot from its connection to contemporary warfare, Crispin sought to explore poetic manifestations of the interactive medium, separated from its violent history. To this end, the drone surveys the scene, its initial gestures indicating its response to an underlying ‘virtual weather pattern’, that Crispin and his collaborators pre-programmed into the device. These parameters are invisible to the audience, animating the drone through a seemingly autonomous flight pattern. Shortly after taking flight, Crispin enters the scene, launching into an improvisational dance with the increasingly erratic drone. Delineated algorithmically, the bot interpolates the environment through projective and responsive functions. While it appears without reason, its behaviour forefronts the simultaneity of the actual and the virtual, presenting the drone as the instantiated mediation of both; its performative expression indexes the coarticulation of body and autonomous algorithm. In the background, a projector maps and displays the bot’s movement through space, composing a 3D model that will later be printed and displayed alongside the original digital capture as incongruous media works (Figure 2).