Empty Fields is a sound + movement performance exploring the shift of diversity from the biosphere to the technosphere, as Ai exponentially increases digital artefacts and simultaneously draws resources from a world in ecological crisis.
During each site-specific performance, Austen becomes a hyperdimensional traveller whose movements spin sound worlds into the air. This hybrid cyborg lifeform is composer, performer and the source of an intricate universe of sound that elaborates in coexistence with the variations in the audience. The traveller creates a moving sonic environment where „Empty Fields“ are wilderness, biodiversity loss, land capture, border zones and a counterpoint to categorisation using fields of data.
The sound worlds, controlled with wearable technologies responding to Austen’s choreography, draw on field recordings of urban and rural environments and contested landscapes, which are at times augmented and adapted using AI software, melding corporeal and digital to highlight the changing soundscapes of our times.
Credits
Artist Kat Austen
Garment and styling: L’INHUMAINE
Studio Support: Daniel Hengst, Gyubin Lee
Empty Fields at Kiaf onSITE was produced in cooperation with Goethe-Institut Korea
Cooperation Partner: Urban Art Lab Seoul
Thanks to Ail Hwang
Photographs: Choi Yohan