In Choreographic Camouflage, Young teams up with choreographer Jacob Jonas for a dance performance and film that presents a new vocabulary of movement that has been designed to disguise the proportions of their body from the skeleton detection algorithms used by modern city’s surveillance networks to track and identify individuals.

Choreographic Camouflage reflects on the surveillance and tracking systems as deployed against protesters in Hong Kong, where Chinese authorities have developed a new technology that tracks individuals by mapping their unique gait or body movements. This surveillance system is gaining the upper hand not only in Asia but also worldwide, as the need to wear face masks against the spread of the covid-19 virus has greatly limited the effectiveness of facial detection systems. The technology scans huge databases of collected images and cctv footage, looking for predefined human forms and proportions that suggest two legs, a torso, two arms and a head. Working with dancers from The Jacob Jonas Company, Liam Young has developed a series of new dance movements that distort the body's proportions, symmetry and shape to make them invisible to the body detection software that is now being rolled out by cities around the world.

The film lasts 12 minutes and will be shown in continuous time slots during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. You will find Choreographic Camouflage at the Dance Studio in Area51, Strijp-S. Entrance is free of charge.

Director: Liam Young
Choreographer: Jacob Jonas
Technical Lead: Shuruq Tramontini
Director of Photograhy: Horacio Martinez and Pannyhire
Commissioner: STRP

The Jacob Jonas Company
Managing Director: Jill Wilson
Executive Producer: Tonia Barber
Assistant Choreographer: Anibal Sandoval
Featuring The Jacob Jonas Company Performing Artists: Joy Brown, James Blackston, Miguel Lopez Jorge, Emma Rosenzweig-Bock, Mike Tyus, Jill Wilson