work_2019_Oracle — NiNi DONGNIER Artist

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Oracle---------Alt Text for the Future

2016 / 05:00 / choreography

2019 / 30:00 / choreographic performance / participatory

Alt-text (or alternative text) is closed-captioning for the internet. It provides a text-based description of visual content and is used by screen reading software to help visually impaired users navigate content.

Oracle---------Alt Text for the Future composes a visual art form—choreography—through language, allowing audiences to narrate the action on stage as an act of predictive alt-choreography.

Questions we asked:
Can we describe what we see with only words? Possibly. Probably not. Can language alter our experience of what we see? Maybe. Probably yes. Can we describe what we want and make it so, simply by saying it out loud?

How it works:
From their phones, audiences choose words and phrases that in turn describe, request, command and narrate the action unfolding before them. How the performers choose to respond is up to them. The piece unfolds in a loop of 4 sections that occur 4 times with the narration evolving along with the choreography to highlight how tiny variations in language result in big differences in meaning. Agree. You agree? Please agree.

By NUUM Collective (NiNi Dongnier, Tiri Kananuruk, Mimi Yin)

The behind-the-scenes role of Oz was played by Nuntinee Tansrisakul.

Photo Tachpasit Kunaporn

Thanks to Jordan Rickman, Sebastian Morales and Mana Contemporary

06/2019 Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ

2016 / 05:00 / choreography