Benjamin Dunks
For The Box State of Emergency micro-commissions Benjamin Dunks has produced an image that captures his body movement in his daily life in lockdown.
Benjamin Dunks has been working in dance for 25 years, and for the past 3 years has been capturing movement through motion capture and accelerometry - manipulating that data into different formats to create visual and sound outputs. Dunks has also been using these technologies to investigate the impact of the moving and creative body in health and education sectors.
In his commission, titled Lockdown 1, the artist captures his own movement as he goes about his daily life in lockdown and then present that movement data as an image. The photograph has an abstract quality that meaningfully holds the essence of the artist’s body in lockdown and its evolving state of lockdown freedom. The exceptional situation provided a unique opportunity to approach the changing notion of walking, working and adapting using the digital visual reference.
How are we moving differently? Our freedom of movement within our homes is now governed by other rules, rules alien to us only 2 months ago. What is happening to the relationship of ourselves to our space, our bodies to our caves? What is happening to our bodies as we adapt, we communicate, we work, and we live?