Premiered December 2014
Blind Contour is a walk-through dance installation investigating the space between perception and inscription. This project began with a collection of blind contour drawings of hands contributed by community members and the participating performing artists. Blind contours are task-oriented drawings produced by fixing your eye on an object, then tracking the edge with your eye, while simultaneously drawing the contour in a steady, continuous line without lifting the pencil or looking at the paper. This exercise encourages the simultaneous use of both senses of sight and touch, and disengages the judgement that can get in the way of authentic interpretation.
Once the many drawings were collected, a fifty-foot-long score of continuous line was made from all the separate drawings that was then interpreted by the 3rd Law dancers and digital media artist Darwin Grosse. This unique walk through installation spoke beautifully to the space between perception and inscription, the line that describes rather than divides and how gestural documentation reveals personal histories.
Blind Contour was originally performed as a thesis presentation at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC. It was then made into an installation presented at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.