Techno Aerial

In a past life, I studied Chinese acrobatics with the Beijing International Acrobatics Troupe at 北京国际艺术学校 and aerial arts with the amazing Anya Sapozhnikova at the House of Yes, when it was still a tiny collective house on Maujer Street in Bushwick.

A few years ago, I wrote an aerial musical about sex robots that achieve self-awareness during the Singularity, and managed to convince these lovely ladies to collaborate with me.

Sex robots in the Singularity

The amazing Lee Wilkins and Hilary Predko helped create costuming (later featured in Make Magazine), which I imagined would light up when I press my hand against the metal hoop, with the DIY conductive thread gloves I created in Hilary’s physical computing / wearable tech class at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

A song I wrote with a broken/partially fixed-up analog synthesizer: lyrics here.


Process

Here was the DIY work in various stages of progress:

Conductive Thread Conductive thread gloves


Drawings / Imaginings Drawings & Imaginings


Mannekin Mannekin


Accelerometer Accelerometer

Genius Lee Wilkins created patterns etched onto this costume using an accelerometer to track my spinning motion as I rehearsed on an aerial hoop at the Fly With Me studio in Toronto, taught by the wonderful Diane McGrath.

Make Magazine Lee featured in Make Magazine with this costume



Many thanks to my friend and fellow electronic musician and creative coder, Fabian Neves, for ideating with me on music.