Audio-visual Performances - Sónar+D

ReOrientate ¿ReAlity? - AV performances - Sónar+D

De Kai / HK

  • Saturday 17 17:30 - 18:15

    SonarComplex - Indoors

ReOrientate is a Hong Kong based collective of international award-winning artists developing interactive VR, AI and cognitive illusions to irresistibly relate musical languages across space and time. Captivating, acclaimed, mind-bending live performances challenge cultures old and new, east and west.

In ¿ReAlity? the ReOrientate performers simultaneously create music through movement in both virtual reality and physical reality, visible to all. Movements in virtual reality are translated by AI into riffs that seem physically impossible. In parallel, movements in physical reality are translated by acoustics into riffs that seem virtually impossible — creating a hypnotic dance connecting realities from cutting-edge virtual space gestures to raw physical percussive flamenco gestures.

Music is language — cognitively, evolutionarily and neurologically. This emerges organically from ReOrientate's spellbinding conversation between four modes — of VR movement languages, Chinese instrumental languages, multilingual song languages, gypsy dance languages — across silk road, oceanic, and new world traditions. The premiere performance and accompanying talk explore how this uniquely and universally defines the reality of what it means to be human.

ReOrientate and its creator, Debrett's “100 most influential people of Hong Kong” honoree De Kai, feature at TEDx events in Hong Kong, Beijing, Guangzhou, Xi’an, Europe and the US, and at many international events including Clockenflap, World Economic Forum, Freespace, WOMEX, Detour, Burning Man, Shenzhen Biennale, Singularity University and Art Basel.

electronica/keys/percussion/VR: De Kai
flamenco dance: Clara Ramona
vocals: Gretchell Yaneza
erhu: Chan Pik Sum