“Ember” was a multimedia performance encompassing live action and electroacoustic improvisation. Fiber optics created an affective weaving of visual and sonic engagement with video projection, exploring the materiality of light, shadow, and sound with the body through an interplay of digital and embodied gestures. “Ember” took place on the shortest day of the year—the Winter Solstice—cultivating a simulation of fire, both aural and visual, that plays at the threshold of light and darkness that the day encompasses.

Over the course of two hours, our bodies inhabited the image space as two slit-scan cameras selectively captured our gestures, projecting them live onto us. Our shadows interrupted the projection plane as refracted representations illuminated us. We maintained a steadfast presence in this flickering of lights and sounds, keeping our actions slow and methodical in order to encourage concentrated meditation. People were free to enter and leave as they wished, though many lingered throughout the duration of the work. We cultivated a synchronicity—David with his modular synthesizers and EL with her manipulation of the cameras and fiber optic skirt—feeding off each other while building intensity.

“Ember” was our first performance together. We customize our tools of light and sound in order to exploit them in performance events, bringing together our interests in combining live performance with digital and electronic media through the creation of multi-sensory events that are influenced by early pioneers of video and performance art, though re-interpreted using digital processes.