F E AT U R E S
An Underground Playground Discovering Barnard’s Movement Lab. BY KELSEY KITZKE
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efore I could step into Barnard’s Movement Lab, I had to take off my street shoes—a reminder that in some ways, this is a dance studio like any other. Upon entering, I wasn’t greeted by a typical studio’s floor-to-ceiling mirrors, wall-mounted bars, and panoramic windows. Instead, the Movement Lab features stage lights, sound systems, and six different projectors—four project onto the walls and two onto the floor. Even as I found myself struck by the artistic possibilities around me, the bottoms of my feet tethered me to the cool dance floor—an uncanny convergence of the digital and the tangible. Of course, this is just one of the University’s many state-of-the-art performance spaces. But what distinguishes the Movement Lab from other venues is its dedication to exploring the intersection of movement and technology. Tucked away behind an inconspicuous white door on the lower level of Milstein, the Movement Lab’s learning environment stands in stark contrast with the bustling study spaces and classrooms above. Curiosity in college is most often channeled toward predetermined goals: We learn new skills to complete a project, write a paper, take an exam. The Movement Lab, however, is designed to encourage “lateral exploration,” as associate director Guy de Lancey called it. Others used the simpler word “play.” The Movement Lab is a place for playing—with the technology, with bodies, with space, and prioritizing discovery over the final product. That’s how Noa Weiss, BC ’21, the Lab’s post-baccalaureate fellow, explained the eclectic array of equipment we came across during my tour. Weiss turned on the six projectors, each displaying a different looping video of a serene landscape. The videos are often used at the weekly meditative Stillness Lab, one of the most common ways that non-dancers interact with the facility. Jellyfish floated below me, a cat jumped through swaying tall grass in front of me, and lava poured down the volcanic rock to my right. When I mentioned that I couldn’t imagine what lava could
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possibly sound like, Weiss used the studio sound system to demonstrate its crackling. Oh, and these are the skeletons, he added, pointing to the two long black bags of complete human skeletal models. A human anatomy class meets here, too. First conceived during the development of the new Milstein Center, which opened in 2018, the Lab was proposed as a space on campus to give physical form to the intersection of art, movement, and technology. “We thought it should be like a sandbox,” de Lancey said, “just filling it up with all the latest technology.” The Lab’s equipment constantly evolves to meet artists’ desires. The result is a highly flexible space especially beneficial for the student artists-in-residence (SARs) that the Lab hosts each semester. Last fall, the Lab’s adaptability had a clear utility: In becoming somewhat of a film studio, dance majors could shift their thesis projects from the stage to the screen. But the Lab has since been able to resume a broader range of in-person activities. And as a space dedicated to the creative utilization of technology alongside bodily movement, the Lab is poised to challenge what the return to the “physical world” even means. As opposed to other “movement labs” on campus that understand bodily movement through scientific research, Barnard’s Movement Lab attracts more artists than scientists. Still, these artists represent a wide variety of artistic and technical backgrounds. Current SARs Eli Duncan, BC ’22, and Sophie Paquette, CC ’23, highlighted that the Movement Lab and its technology have provided some freedom from the restraints of their other artistic disciplines, allowing for a new kind of engagement with art and the physical body. A combined architecture and visual arts major, Duncan uses the Movement Lab to experiment with virtual reality. It’s a rare opportunity for him to act upon his passion for the crossroads of architecture and installation art. “It’s really exciting—the idea that you can just take anything that you make on the computer and then instantly
THE BLUE AND WHITE
