Nora Gibson
“The research that feeds my work draws from writings about consciousness, neuroscientific study, and meditation practice. Each involves constant reconsideration of the relation of body and mind, the role of movement in life, and what it’s like to be.”
Nora Gibson began her professional dance career at 13. She attended Baltimore School for the Arts, and earned a BFA in Dance from Tisch, NYU. Through Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet, her work has been commissioned by universities and developed through residencies in the US and abroad. Intrigued by questions of how dance could be expanded in theoretical scope, she began integrating technology into her work in 2018. Since then, her work was presented by the Fels Planetarium at the Franklin Institute (PHL), Vox Populi Gallery (PHL), Ars Electronica's Online Global Gallery, Contemporary & Digital Art Fair("CADAF") (NYC), Lightbox (NYC), and Urban Screens Production (AUS). Through this expanded practice, Gibson poses questions around body-mind duality, selfhood, and perception. During Gibson’s internship at the Biosignal Interactive & Personhood Technologies Lab, a neuroscience research lab at McGill University, she researched physiological markers of interpersonal synchrony in relation to aesthetic experiences. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Intermedia at Concordia University in Montreal.
“My first language is dance, and it is through this perspective of movement, space, and time that I see my world. In letting go of fixed ideas about the body, I can escape the solidity of the flesh and re-examine assumptions about the self. I use digital means such as visual programming, scanners, and biosensors to make these departures. I am interested in making experiences where we can forget ourselves.”
Transplant 1
by Nora Gibson
Bio-reactive Projection
Materials: rear projection; frames, LED lighting; visualization software
Size: 66’x 72’ (x4 frames) within a 780 SF space.
Transplant 1 (2022) contemplates the concept of “body” using immersive installation. The artist uses her physiological data - dance movement data and theta wave brain activity - to generate bio-reactive visuals and sound. A plexus provides an anatomical reference and a metaphor for the interlacing between body and mind. Mechanically, this metaphor is mirrored within the patch, where movement and brain data are interwoven. The small spherical joints of the plexus are textured with an imperceptible video - a genetic memory - of the artist dancing. The installation is run in real time, invoking the living animus of the body.
Much of the body’s functions, including thoughts, are not within one's direct control, and the boundaries of self are debatable. In Transplant 1, aspects of the artist’s body have been transplanted into another kind of body. Moreover, the biometric data is mediated by random noise generators within the patch, creating an autonomic system within the installation’s “body” that functions as choicelessly as our own.
The Dream
by Nora Gibson
This work is a multi-channel video installation for real-time brain activity data, animated projected visuals, and a sound score.