the stage performance at ZER01NE DAY 2022, S-Factory Seoul, 2022
HOLY MOTORS
2022
30-minute multimedia performance with real-time camera tracking, LiDAR sensor simulation
‘Holy Motors’ transforms autonomous vehicle sensors into choreographic apparatus, where LiDAR and computer vision become tools for reimagining the stage as a sensory field. The work investigates how technologies designed for navigation generate new conditions for movement, revealing how automotive culture has fundamentally altered human embodiment.
‘Holy Motors’ constructs a hybrid stage where dancers move within and against the logic of automotive sensing, their bodies performing simultaneously for human eyes and machine sensors. Through three sequences exploring intimacy/distance, mobility/flow, and space/dream, the work experiments with how vehicular and human movement converge.
The performance unfolds as technological scenography. LiDAR transforms the stage into three-dimensional point clouds—the same visualization autonomous vehicles use to navigate. Computer vision tracks and classifies movement, sometimes reading dancers as pedestrians, obstacles, or vehicles themselves. These misreadings become choreographic material, revealing the gap between machine and human perception of movement.
Dancers navigate between being surveillance subjects and partners in duets with invisible sensors, their movements shaped by computational observation. The work explores the automobile as a chamber that has altered human affect—the particular intimacy of cars, the meditation of highway driving, the violence in velocity.
Collaborative work by Min young Kim, Dongjoo Seo
Commissioned by ZER01NE
Creative Director/Producer Min young Kim, Dongjoo Seo
Choreography Joungyun Yum
Movement Research/Dancer Suin Kim, Seungyoon Kim, Jisoo Ryu, Sejin Park, Joungyun Yum, Dongin Yoo, Youngsang Ju
Sound Ken Pyun
Computer Vision Engineering Seonguk Seo
LiDAR Sensor Simulation Yejin Kim
Screen view of LiDAR sensor simulation, 2022
Excerpt of the stage performance at ZER01NE DAY 2022, S-Factory Seoul, 2022