PROJECT

The Singularity is near

First we build the tools, then they build us.
Marshal Mc Luhan

From 8th till 21st of September Sandy Williams is our guest in residency in wpZimmer. Sandy works with Loan Than Ha on a dance research focussed on the concept of the Singularity and on graphic mapping.

According to Ray Kurtzweil the Technological Singularity (or simply the Singularity) is “… a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed. Although neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts that we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself.”

The Singularity also refers to the theoretical emergence of super-intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the Technological Singularity is seen as an occurrence beyond which events cannot be predicted and past narratives no longer inform present situations. The Singularity Is Near is a speculation of the unimaginable; a research of accumulation and total inclusion. As with garbage, rabbits and information technology, over-crowding of influence culminates in relations and populations so complex that we are compelled towards fundamental change.

Inclusion merges with speed on a field of absolute association beyond which looms an event horizon where nothing can be predicted.

And we move, all of us, everything, towards It. The Singularity is Near.

Sandy Williams

1979 ◊ CA

Sandy Williams lives and works in Brussels. He graduated from P.A.R.T.S. in 2004 and works as a choreographer and a performer.

His earliest collaborations with Jan Ritsema focused on questioning the possibilities and expectations of the dancing body (Blindspot, 2005) and the future of energy and the hydrogen economy (Know2How, 2006).

In 2007, together with Andros Zins-Browne, he went on to create The Kansas City Shuffle, an audience participatory performance in which the viewers were invited to create the piece with the performers by engaging in covert and espionage style narratives. Participants transported secret packages, transmitted code words and surveilled fellow audience members. It was an experiment in social choreography by introducing the participants to potential narratives and allowing them to determine the course of their experience. It was film noir played out in real time by the very audience that was there to watch the performance.

Following this creation, Williams began his work with Rosas and for the next six years he concentrated on the craft of movement and performance. In this capacity, the topic of each creation was not as much his concern as how he could embody it; how his abilities, history and interests could serve the work. He became further fascinated by complexity and causality through the tailoring of one movement to the next and larger choreographic organizations of timing and space.