Downtown Los Angeles’s Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) will feature a double bill of performances under the title, The Body is the Interface. It functions as one component of the All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace program organized by Daniela Lieja Quintanar and Talia Heiman. On November 2, 2024, Kite, an Oglala Lakȟóta performance artist and composer will join Interspecifcs, an independent Mexico-city-based collective. The program will highlight concepts like the effects of machine learning technology, the art of noise, the human body, and Indigenous Cosmologies.

Kite’s performances and sculptures are heavily inspired by her history of creating body interfaces, with some even being generated by dreams and exploratory work in video and sound. In her piece, Wičháȟpi Wóihaŋbleya (Dreamlike Star), the motions of her body are transmuted and communicated through a custom computer into cutting-edge sounds. This is done through the management of two strips of braided hair. She interprets musical scores that have been translated into Lakȟóta visual language. The story behind this work is derived from women’s and two-spirit community members’ dreams. In this ideology, dreaming is thought of as a sacred epistemological technique. Here, the interface is her body. The machine learning software that is encoded with a Lakȟóta data set is trained by the physical story of her actions and gestures. 

Interspecifics’s research hones in on the idea of sound and AI as a tool for the exploration of patterns relating to biosignals and animal morphology. Their ultimate goal is to curate a method of communicating that extends beyond what is knowingly human. Their project, Ontological Machines, incorporates elements from this avant-garde research and the educational tools utilized. The concept of tradition also plays a huge role in the intersection that Interspecifics seeks to create, as their work is deeply influenced by their Latin American roots. The collective questions the world around them through a research thesis based on “the hard problem of consciousness and the close relationship between mind and matter.” 

Their project for REDCAT, Meta Sincronía 1.0, is a live performance with both auditory and visual components that process feedback and course through rhythms, beats, and melodies of the anatomical heart. A heart-rate monitor interface is physically attached to the outfits of three performers, which allows for transmission. Inspired by the Rarámuri instruments, they also use automated ceremonial leather drums. The beats are built to oscillate between that of the human self and the machine self, displaying a curious rise and fall from chaos to unison and back again.

You can find tickets here.