Materize

Sound-movement performance, 2024

Technology is no longer a separable part of our lives. Our devices move with us, listen to us, learn our rhythms, and sometimes seem to understand us better than other humans. But as machines grow more intelligent and more intimate, what happens to care, compassion, and connection?

In Materize, interdisciplinary artist Sól Ey explores the merging of human and machine. The performers wear Hreyfð, a custom-built electronic instrument that creates sounds with movement. Materize doesn’t ask how technology can serve us — it asks how we relate to it, and how it might relate to us. What does it mean to nurture a machine? Can technology learn to care? And what is lost when technological development outruns empathy?

The title merges “matter” and mater — the Latin word for mother. A reflection on formation, origin, and the ethics behind creation: Who gives life to technology? And who will care for what we bring into being?

Materize is the result of a longer research process on wearable instruments, ongoing between 2021-2024. The video below is from a demonstration performance at the Academy for Theater and Digitality (June 2022), where the first parts of the piece were developed. You can read more about my research as a research fellow at the academy here and about the wearable instrument Hreyfð here.

Credits

Composer, director, instrument designer and concept: Sól Ey
Choreographer: Alvilda Faber Striim
Costume designer: Daphne Karstens
Light design and programming assistant: Nathan Marcus
Performers: Abraham Rademacher, Paulina Šmatláková, Paulina Rewucka & Sól Ey
Mentor: Marina Mascarell
Producer: Bad Circuit
Dancers in development phase: Eli Cohen, Jin-Young Won, Joy Kammin, and Lukas Karvelis
Photos: Juliette Rowland
Video: Patrik Ontkovic

Past performances

Sound-movement performance, 2024

Credits

Past performances

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