Enrica Beccalli

COMPLESSITÀ

ENRICA BECCALLI IN COLLABORATION WITH ROULA GHOLMIEH — Complessità is a cybernetic dance performance that, through the exploration of complexity and our role within it, investigates the potential of technology in modifying and altering the human body.

The human loses ownership of its movements and we enter a new dimension where the machine computes the moving human body. Complessità features an algorithm which, through a wearable device, controls a dancer’s movements, synchronizing it to the weaving of a flock of digital birds. The flock’s direction is transposed to the performer’s body through an electrostimulation of a specific nerve that maintains balance, forcing the dancer to sway either to the left or the right according to the flock’s movements.

Enrica Beccalli is an interaction designer and Fulbright scholar. Fascinated by the interaction between humans and new technologies, between individual and collectivity her projects are all about complexity, emotions and behavior. Selected by the Italian Fulbright Commission and financed by the department for International Affairs of the Italian Ministry of Education to earn a MFA in Design and Technology in Parsons, which awarded her further Scholarships for demonstrating ability in combining design and new technologies. Alongside her academic career she worked for multiple design research Labs and for ESPN+NYC Media Lab, on the future of live sport consumption. Her work Complessità has been showcased at the NYC Media Lab annual Summit, Tribeca Film Festival, NYC Creative Tech Week e Digital Design Days. Enrica’s work has been featured on The Creators Project, Agenda Culturelle, Loves by Domus. Awarded of the “Extraordinary Abilities in the Arts” American visa, she has been working for three years as Interaction Design Lead for a tech company specialized in online Identity verification, computer vision and machine learning and she recently joined Johnson&Johnson Design studio. Roula is a Lebanese Brooklyn based digital artist, designer and architect. Her work is at the intersection of arts and technology, ranging from installations for physical spaces to interactive objects and digital experiences. She focuses on the playful and unexpected; always pushing the boundaries of traditional narratives through the melding physical and digital. Roula holds a MFA in design and technology from Parsons NY and a BA of Architecture from the American University of Beirut. Her work has been exhibited at the Tribeca Film Festival Interactive, Creative Tech Week, SXSW and NYC Media Lab.

PHOTO CAPTION: Enrica Beccalli in collaboration with Roula Gholmieh, Complessità: a human at the mercy of an algorithm, video, 9’, recordings of Boids (bird-oid object), 2019. Courtesy the artist

Go Back

Subscribe to our newsletter