‘It is easier to change the surface than to change the personality.’

If anybody managed to catch D.A.V.E (Digital Amplified Video Engine) at the Purcell Room on 7th or 8th March, they would have seen the immediate truth of this statement. The brainchild of video artist and composer Klaus Obermaier and developed in collaboration with choreographer and performer Chris Haring, D.A.V.E. suggested a limitless future in which ‘mankind will be in a position to eliminate the restrictions upon the natural body’. Acting alternately as live dancer and human projection screen for Obermaier’s fantastical moving images, Haring’s body was repeatedly transformed to bizarre effect, and with such precision that at times it was impossible to distinguish between what was real and what was projected as he switched identity and gender, developed amazing contortionist abilities and sprouted extra limbs and body parts. The exposition of the basic premise was perhaps not enough to sustain an hour’s worth of material, but as an example of collaborative talent and ingenuity, the results were fascinating to witness.

<small>[ 03 March 2003, 05:01 PM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

<B>D.A.V.E. (Digital Amplified Video Engine)</B><BR>Rating: 1* (out of -1 to 3*) <BR>by Luke Jennings for The Evening Standard<P><BR>D.A.V.E., or Digital Amplified Digital Engine, is a performance piece by cross-media artist and composer Klaus Obermaier and dancer Chris Haring. <P>Haring's body, claims Obermaier, is "the mediator of a utopia which proclaims that, thanks to futuristic technologies and implantation, mankind will be in a position to eliminate the restrictions on the natural body." <P>What this actually shakes down to is Obermaier projecting images onto Haring. The dancer becomes a living, moving screen, and seems to mutate as we watch.<P><A HREF="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/hottx/music/top_review.html?in_review_id=436017&in_review_text_id=390487" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A>

I was keen to see D.A.V.E, so I have to ask - did it have a linear narrative - what i mean is, did it have a plot or some kind of throughline? or was it simply dance and technology cleverly put together?

Hi Christine! Just to say that DianeP is out of London until mid-April, so you may have to be patient.<P>Un;ess one of our other readers can respond, which would be great.

Vivisector
By Judith Mackrell for The Guardian


If Vivisector had appeared at the Tate or the Serpentine galleries, it would be short-listed for prizes and given double-page reviews. This latest collaboration between choreographer Chris Haring and video artist Klaus Obermaier explores the physical and metaphorical possibilities of the human body. Within an hour, its four male dancers are flayed, deformed, transposed into luminous, jostling atoms and lent the serene radiance of classical statues.

The imagery in Vivisector is achieved by clever and mystifying technology. During much of the show, the four identically dressed performers function as blank canvasses upon which video and light effects are projected. So precisely do these projections remain within the contours of the men's bodies that they seem to change form and substance before our eyes. Some of these transformations attain a metaphysical poetry.

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Vivisector
By Debra Craine for The Times


THE technospeak is a little daunting. “The video-technological concept of moving body-projection” may leave you wondering what you’re about to see, but its realisation will leave you amazed. Never have I seen technology so cleverly integrated into dance as here, in Klaus Obermaier and Chris Haring’s Vivisector, which enjoyed a weekend of performances at the South Bank Purcell Room.

The Austrian duo (the choreographer Haring and video artist Obermaier) have concocted a dazzling game for dance in which video light and video projection work together to create “a new stage aesthetic”. Four male dancers (including Haring) act as human canvases on to which are projected video and computer graphics exactly fitted to the outlines of their bodies.

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Vivisector
David Dougill reviews for The Sunday Times.


It has become quite a thing among a new wave of contemporary dance choreographers to use digital technology and create an interplay between real and “virtual” dancers — Britain’s Wayne McGregor is notable in the field. But none of this prepared me for the wizardry of an Austrian production, Vivisector, at the Purcell Room last weekend, a collaboration between Chris Haring (choreography) and Klaus Obermaier (visual concept) performed by Haring and three other men. Their bodies functioned as canvases for stunning projections that clung to their outlines, filled their shapes, transformed and dehumanised them.

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