About
Shifting Intimacies is an interactive/media artwork for one person to experience at a time. Each participant enters a large dark space containing two circles of projected film imagery presented within an immersive sound environment. One image floats upon a disc of white sand and the other on a circle of white dust. Participants’ movements direct and affect the filmic image and spatialised audio experience. Throughout the work a layer of dust (an artificial life form) slowly eats away and infuses itself deep into the imagery and sound. This immersive work invites differing states of meditation, exploration, stillness and play, creating states of shifting balance that produce a heightened awareness of the body.
Each person has 10 minutes alone with the work. Their movement through the space continually affects speed, quality, balance and flow within the work. At the end of the experience they are invited to climb a lit platform and cast dust back onto the images below.
The work uses a range of technologies including interactive video (Very Nervous System), body heat sensors, custom built electronics, image databases, real time computational synthesis software (Cycling ’74 Max), networking software, real time audio digital signal processing (Max MSP) and real time show control protocols. Controllable actuators also move physical material through the air.
Funded by an ICA/Capture commission for Capture4 and supported by Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster, Site Gallery and VDT. Shifting Intimacies has also been supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council and through Queensland Government via Arts Queensland.
Shifting Intimacies was part of the Over Many Horizons exhibition at UTS Art Gallery, Ultimo, Sydney in 2016.
Credits
Artistic Director
Charlotte Vincent
Artistic Director & Chief Executive (She/Her)
Charlotte formed Vincent Dance Theatre (VDT) in 1994 and has directed all the company’s collaborative work to date, on stage and on film. Vincent has also designed the work since 2005 and performed with the company until 2002. Vincent’s distinctive, contemporary choreography ‘stages ideas’ and embeds her own and her collaborators’ lived experience within the work, raising awareness of personal and political issues, breaking down the barriers between professional and non-professional performers and in VDT’s film installation and engagement spaces, between audience and participant.
Vincent is recognised as a sector leader in movement based socially engaged creative practice and creative health, particularly around her work with care-experienced young people and women at risk, championing gender equality and advocating for best practice to support parents and carers working in the performing arts. Her pioneering work on film ensired VDT were ‘covid ready and able to work through Covid and consequently allows Vincent’s work to be purposefully ‘applied’ in non-arts settings as well within conventional arts venues and settings.
Charlotte is an experienced speaker, lecturer and Mentor, working with early and mid-career artists to develop their creative practice and production work. Vincent has also worked as a director, dramaturg, and facilitator for other artists and companies, most notably Two Destination Language (Near Gone, winner Total Theatre Awards for Innovation and Experimentation 2014), Keira Martin (Here Comes Trouble Sadlers Wells Wild Card and Good Blood) and facilitating early R&D for Sue MacLaine’s Can I Start Again Please (2013).
In the past, Vincent has performed and collaborated with Professor Liz Aggiss as V&A Artefacts, curated an inaugural 4-week festival of experimental performance practice, Juncture at Yorkshire Dance in Leeds and co-hosted The Table, a forum to nurture dialogue across disciplines between established female artists with Dr Claire Macdonald. Charlotte sat on the Artists Advisory Group at Yorkshire Dance for several years and Steering Group for Dance UK’s National Choreographic Conference in 2013. Most recently she has been a driving force behind the development of the London Road Network in Brighton, a collaborative group of organisations and individuals working towards deeper interaction between arts orgs and grassroots organisations in one of Brighton’s more deprived areas.
Vincent is Safeguarding Lead for VDT, trained in Trauma Informed Practice, Mental Health First Aid, therapeutic parenting, and First Aid. She completed a Clore Leadership Short Course (2010), the Clore Programme for CEO/Artistic Directors (2011) and Clore Brave Conversations Programme (2013). Vincent is also trained in FA Football Coaching.
Vincent has written chapters and been written about in several Routledge Publications (resources) and PhD’s, and her work Art of Attachment lies at the heart of Dr Cath Lambert‘s imminent publication Troubling Adoption.
In 2023, Dr Vincent gained a PhD in Performing Arts from Canterbury Christ Church University, reflecting on VDT’s socially engaged practice, supervised by Professor Angela Pickard, Director of the Sidney de Haan Centre for Arts and Health.
Dr Charlotte Vincent lives in Brighton with her son, who loves mountain biking, fishing and gaming.
Performed by
Interactive Visual Designer
Interactive Sound Designer
Videos
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Press
“Keith Armstrong and Guy Webster collaborated with Charlotte Vincent and the dancer TC Howard to produce Shifting Intimacies for a show at the ICA in London in 2006. At the Brisbane Festival it is on for a few hours spread over four days. Bookings must be made. Single viewer at a time. Ten minute slots. They fill up pretty quick.”
Greg Hooper Real Time Arts, 30 August 2008
Audience feedback
“‘It was like interior journey as I was all alone thinking about my life and my thoughts. I felt really alone there. Frightening – scary – deep”
Participant ICA London