Time To Wake Up
Video | Motion Capture | Photogrammetry & Unity programming: Freya Björg Olafson
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4k video | 6m30s
Installation / screening
2025
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Composer/Musician: Charles Quevillon
Audio originally from the stage work:
Love and Other Things: a drama for flower, clay and bone (2018)
Created by: Tedd Robinson + Charles Quevillon
Musicians/Singers: Sarah Albu, Maude Côté-Gendron, David Cronkite, Vahram Sarkissian, Matthias Soly-Letarte
Co-Produced by: 10 Gates Dancing and the National Arts Centre
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Additional voice and bells: Ylfa Ósk Magura Olafson, Freya Björg Olafson and Matt Magura
This video was commissioned by Jazz Winnipeg, for "Project Jazz" which had a number of artists working with moving images responding to local musicians' pre-existing music. The finished works were screened outdoors in Fall 2022.
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Screen recorded from a digital game environment I created to replicate my real-life live / work space from the last 16 years, this video engages with the striking song .
A 3D model / avatar of myself is animated through both game controllers as well as AI generated motion capture files in order to move within the 3D LIDAR scans of my studio space. The end result is a single-channel video that brings together machinima footage from the game environment and some IRL (in real life) video footage. This technical workflow allowed me to deepen my conceptual interest in replication, duplication, and iteration of the IRL ‘In Real Life’ / AFK ‘Away From Keyboard’ world.
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As mobile internet became widely used in the early 2010s, theorists discussed the error of "digital dualism," arguing against the notion that life online is less authentic than life offline. Curator/writer Legacy Russell embraced this criticism in their 2020 publication Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto in which Russell highlights the "real" openings and opportunities that digital tools and glitch opens up for people of marginalized identities. This quote from ‘Glitch Feminism’ has stayed with me as I consider tools technologies of representation; mocap, lidar scanning, photogrammetry, etc. “Usurp the body. Become your avatar. Be the glitch.” The movement towards web3 and the metaverse continues to grow, as the investment in the related tools/platforms increases; 3D replication/representation, with interactivity and responsive movement enacted through digital doubles experienced through immersive viewers will soon reach a broader public.
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“USURP THE BODY. BECOME YOUR AVATAR. BE THE GLITCH.”
- LEGACY RUSSELL / GLITCH FEMINISM: A MANIFESTO (2020)
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Contact Freya for the password to view the work online
Distributed by: VIDEO POOL MEDIA ARTS CENTER​​
Screening History
March 2025 Dancemakers & Fado - exhibition / screening
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