An interactive audio group walk adapted to and through each visitor's social behavior and social choices, resulting in a collective somatic dance.

“Because of our desire for comfort, security and self-protection, we prefer to insure ourselves against the risks of love, than to put ourselves at risk. Love is threatened, with loneliness as a result. It demands real, sincere connection.” - Alain Badiou

Project description Common Good 3# - Senses of belonging | prototype phase 2022

Facts: 20 people per show go on a 45 minutes experience on a public square/location to execute a social interactive audio experience with the help of phones, i-beacons + gps tracking (or a silent disco system) and headphones.

Social artist Nadja van der Weide develops an immersive and interactive audio walk where participants enter a rehearsal with a temporarily created small scale ‘society’ called Senses of belonging. Group behavior versus individual behavior is investigated through a social experiment in public space. Senses of belonging has hat a prototype testing show at Sheffield DocFest in 2022.

Scenario: 20 people are standing on a public square where they just received headphones and a connected smartphone. They look at each other, slightly discomfortable, awaiting what’s to come. Beacons and the phone -on which they are listening to a comfortable and subtle audioworld- are tracking their behavior, and will influence the course of their audiowalk. They don’t know about this influence yet. They all step in their audioworlds and appear to be linked to another participant in the group. From there, they end up in a flow chart of social choices. The participants get audio assignments and choose if they follow, or not. Though their acting, somatic, dancing, physical, movement, verbal, or dancing choices they end up in several worlds: different reality bubbles. Each bubble has different assignments and experiences. As a participant you choose to stay in one world or not, and sometimes we -the makers- choose for you.

Intention: This experience is an exercise in meeting others and yourself in the safe space of an artistic setting, this is just fiction… right? The metaphorical dance of rapprochement and distancing will be performed, where the ultimate outcome is a big group of duo dancing strangers holding each other tightly and carefully. Lots of individual moral and social influences, will affect the participants choices upon their way towards this final dancing scene. This audio walk aims to make the participants contemplate on their choices, and makes them roam in comfortable and less comfortable social worlds. What are their senses of belonging in this Fluid society? How do they behave in community settings, and what does that tell about them? How do you meet yourself through the significant other?

Artist statement: We are well developed human beings and make our social choices subtly, so then, what is the potential of the grey zone to discover in our moral and social choices? Do we keep safe distance, or do we feel acquainted with everybody easily? Can we be really open and vulnerable? Do we long for radical difference or closeness and if so, how can we give space for that? Can we dive deep into the social raffle? For all of us, the answers to this are different. The way we create togetherness, is -just like bird swarms- affected by the individuals being part of that group. But in the end, we need to dance together.

Prototype: two storylines (to be expanded to three storylines and multiple decision moments
These two tracks start simultaneously, and offer the group a group starting moment. After the communal ‘inducement’ they get to choose to which storyline they want to commit. Red is different from Blue. After the decision moment, they follow their own instruction.