Ayaka Okutsu

Works for Live Art Danmark
2014 “EL-O”, two performances for Hitparaden 2, with Stina Hasse and Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath

EL-O Group Performance
The performance EL-O that Ayaka created for our performance art festival was realised in collaboration with Stina Hasse and Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath. Dressed in lab coats like old school scientists, the performers set out to raise awareness for the electromagnetic signals that surround us everywhere, in the air we breathe as well as in the things we touch. Because normally we cannot see, hear or feel electromagnetic signals, the performers converted the signals into light and sound, making their beauty accessible for human senses.

EL-O Solo
The second version of the EL-O complex shown at Hitparaden 2 was a solo performance by Ayaka. Dressed in a costume of glittering scales, she performed silently in the light of a video that showed mysterious objects, organisms and their movements in closeup. With a hand hovering over petri dishes, dark specks moving unpredictably like protozoa or virusses, the multi-layered video suggested experiments performed in a laboratory,  or human caresses for non-biological life forms.

About the Artists

Ayaka Okutsu
Ayaka Okutsu is a performance artist based in Berlin. Her interactive performance and staged storytelling focus on physical sensation and understanding of the body and mind. She has shown her works in many venues include Atelier Hotel Pro Forma in Copenhagen and District in Berlin.

A few more works by Ayaka, including a different version of EL-O solo, can be found on her Vimeo Channel.

Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath
Daniel is an Associate Professor at the ITU, Copenhagen, and member of the Center for Computer Games Research and the Pervasive Interaction Technology Lab (PitLab). Daniel writes, composes, codes, builds, performs and plays. He is interested in artistic, analytic, explorative, critical and subversive approaches to and practices of play. He teaches courses on game design, tangible interaction, and the edges of play. Daniel’s interactive works were shown at exhibitions and conferences such as DIAS, DeSForM and ISEA.

Please refer to Daniel’s CV here to read about some of his activities.

Stina Hasse
Stina Hasse is a multimedia artist, curator and theorist based in Copenhagen. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Affective Interactions & Relations (AIR) Lab at the Digital Design Department at the IT University of Copenhagen. In her PhD studies at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, she researched the politics and aesthetics of (synthesized) voices in media arts and design through practice-based research. Stina has presented her projects and given talks at BEAM festival (UK), Sound Through Barriers (US) and LAK festival (DK), and published articles in journals such as Body, Space & Technology Journal, and Cultural Analysis.

More info on Stina on her website.