SCRIPTED BODIES

2022-26

3 hand-painted banners in various sizes

The Automated, Programmed Body. Scores, Notations and Behavior Trees.

In a series of hand-painted and drawn banners, I explore the relationship between choreographic notation and computer programming as organic and digital systems, respectively, for writing the movements and behaviors of bodies. I am interested in the choreographic score: a system of instructions that governs how a physical, organic body moves through space and time, in relation to how actions are programmed and executed within digital systems.

The works take as their starting point, and refer to, Labanotation, a system for recording and analyzing human movement developed by Rudolf Laban so that movement could be documented and reproduced. Read from bottom to top, the notations translate bodily movement into a structured visual score. In parallel, I refer to behavior trees, a programming system used to organize the actions and behaviors of entities or agents. In crowd simulation, for example, behavior trees are used to structure both individual and collective movement through branching sequences of tasks and actions, read from top to bottom.

In the banners, the choreographic score, the Labanotation, is read from bottom to top, while the programming system, the behavior tree structure, is read from top to bottom, bringing the two systems into direct relation with one another. The central banner shows the Laban body placed beneath a complex (referenced) behavior tree diagram.

My interest lies in bringing together these systems for programming movement and behavior: choreography and programming, notation and code, the organic body and the digitally programmed body.

The work was acquired by Haninge Municipality.