cosine

cosine is an experimental multimedia performance created within the the Temple University New Media Performance Laboratory in collaboration with the Temple Architecture Design Studio. The work asked: What happens when architectural structure and kinesthetic communication come into direct relationship with one another? What type of resonating plurality can the senses perceive between simultaneous multiple tracks of visual imagery? What do we hear when confronted with a 24-layer collage of sound spiraling around an environment in 360 degrees? What is the threshold of our sensory perception and what happens when we push that envelope? How is our context for understanding communication and codifying meaning affected by a frame that is neither fixed nor singular, but continuously changing and dynamically recontextualizing itself and its contents? How are our minds, bodies, and senses reconfigured by Einstein’s pivotal discovery that the speed of light is the only universal constant, and by a communications technology infrastructure that is exponentially accelerating our cultural language toward this end? If Newtonian physics and corresponding notions of space and time provided the groundwork upon which the prevailing paradigms of the 19th and 20th centuries were constructed, what are the tenets of an Einsteinian paradigm that can give rise to 21st century modes of communication and understanding?

cosine is an exploration of the rheomode, a term coined by physicist David Bohm that describes perception according to the laws of the quantum wave.  cosine seeks to discover the language of the wave, both in terms of the structure required to communicate it, and the process of inner transformation required to perceive it. The laboratory of the cosine performance collaboration gave rise to the “architecture of the rheomode”: a template for a digitally-facilitated linguistic and perceptual evolution.

DIGITAL PERFORMANCE AND E-TEXTs
2001

The Architecture of the Rheomode

A publication based on the experimental immersive theater production of cosine. Published in the American Communication Journal Special Inter/Active Performance Edition and Body/Space/Technology. Honored with the American Communication Journal Article of the Year Award.

cosine Hypertext