WITCiH, the Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub, launched a podcast in May 2020. Hellion Trace’s Laura Kriefman was the first guest on the podcast hosted by Bishi, founder of WITCiH.
Laura and Bishi met through the Pervasive Media Studio and WeTheCurious’s WITCiH event, and have gone on to motivate and inspire each other in their work. Bishi has invited Laura to present about her work for The Rattle Collective, and the BFI, and saw Laura perform again as part of the Algorave evening at the British Library.
In the podcast episode, Bishi commented on the British Library event, describing Laura’s performance of Hellion descending down the main stairs.
“Laura made the most epic entrance down the main stairs of the British Library. It was so good. And it's actually on the WITCiH Instagram, because I was so proud of that video that I took on my phone […] I would describe it as Laurie Anderson meets Oskar Schlemmer.”
Bishi and Laura discuss a new project in the works – taking looped light and sound from a single performer piece, Hellion, to rework it into using five performers for a club experience.
“I’m obsessed with fusing movement and technology together."
Laura explained the performance in more detail. “It’ll be five performers dancing a whole Afrobeat/ techno, in a proper club, experience, but all generated live by these performers generating all the visuals in this space. You as an audience can move around and dance amongst them.”
The multi-performer performance has led to changes in the music.
“[It’s] been really exciting to be developing it alongside the slightly more electronica kind of avant-garde music that I create myself. I was looking at the more commercial, accessible style, and where that can tour to and what that is as an experience.”
This is the driving factor for Hellion Trace and its founder, the moment movement and technology intersect to create a new experience.
“I’m obsessed with fusing movement and technology together”, the Hellion founder said, “And I'm really obsessed with what the evolution of our relationship with movement can be as a consequence.
“[I think about] where we can perceive movement, so kind of like things like making industrial construction cranes do synchronised dance routines. Those cranes, those things, in our cities, are already inherently moving. They already have this extraordinary quality and combination of patterns, but we just don't see them as movement, as choreography, where they live in a different world. And so […] these big spectacles, they're about changing that perception of what movement can be. Some things are about changing our relationships of our own movement, to giving us a memory of doing something, whether it’s looking up, or playing together, or collaborating on moving in a different way.”
Hellion Trace is known for the Mass Crane Dance in Bristol, when Laura choreographed three industrial construction cranes in a synchronised dance routine to live music for a live audience of 10,000 people and 4,000,000 online.
Inspirations
Laura's work has been and continues to be inspired by women in tech and the creative industries, including Portrait XO, Cora Novoa and Chagall.
When talking about Chagall, Laura said, “She [Chagall] has an extraordinary mind, but she's also a really beautiful composer and what she's really found is this amazing understanding of how she wants to use these tools to allow her to tell the stories musically and visually that she wants to.
“I think there's something really extraordinary about the generation of young women, this generation of creatives at the moment who are exploring their own identity without it always having to be hyper sexualised. This can be seen within their creativity and within their visual storytelling, and in their musicality and in their stage presence in a very, very empowered way.”
Listen to the full Episode 1 of the WITCiH podcast to hear more about new Hellion Trace projects in the works.
WITCiH presents Creative Women in Tech
The podcast presented by WITCiH aims to further WITCiH’s work to elevate the voices of women in tech, and to talk in more detail about amazing projects, collaborations, and where possible, ideas and work yet to come. Guests to date include Lula XYZ, Di Mainstone, Adi Wade and Hannah Peel.
Anyone with an interest in that wonderful crossover space where creativity and technology meet, this is the podcast for you.
Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.