My name is Amanda Tate Corso and I'm a visual artist.
My work is concerned with issues of identity and individuality and social culture in our digital era.
I feel that technology is kind of the lens through which we view everything right now.
It's how we visually relate to others.
It's socially how we relate to others.
It's how we analyze, visualize and present ourselves through social media.
We have technology in our pockets.
It's just part of everything we do.
For me, art and science are kind of one in the same.
I don't see them as being at odds with each other.
They're really the same discipline that they speak to each other.
And one deals with creativity, but the other deals with implementation.
I was interested in how to represent movement in a way that had longevity.
Ballet is ephemeral and it's in the moment.
And so kind of how to prolong those moments of the meaning or the meaningfulness, the emotion and the dynamics of ballet in a visual form.
I've created a robotic device that's controlled by emotion sensing remote.
And it's worn by the dancer to create a translation of their movements into lines on a page in paint.
And it's essentially acting as an artist's tool or an extension of the artist's hand.
And therefore the name manibus comes from the Latin word that means the hand.
I thought it would be interesting to use this artistically to translate one form of visual art that's very ephemeral into something that is lasting and has more permanence and can be analyzed in a different way.
I hope that this project can be a community builder and that it encourages people to participate in the visual arts as well as dance as a form of art.
And that it gives them a new way of looking and a new way of seeing and a new way of participating.
They could be part of a project that would make their marks on this collaborative work of art.
