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Artist Statement My first language is dance, and so my primary materials are the body and mind. In letting go of fixed ideas about the body, I can escape the solidity of the flesh and re-examine assumptions about the self. I use digital means such as visual programming, scanners, data, and biosensors to make these departures. I am interested in making experiences where we can forget ourselves long enough to reconsider where and what is the mind, to what extent the "self" is relational, and how BCIs and technology impact our sense of self. My work is a vehicle for a philosophical inquiry that is initiated through the experiential: where the mystery of consciousness has not or cannot be adequately explained through scientific methodology alone, I am investigating being through qualitative experience and quantitative intangible data. I am a believer in the power of beauty and shared aesthetic experience. I am a believer in the use of technology to promote a greater sense of well-being and connection. The aesthetic vehicles I create span interactive and immersive bio-reactive video, light, and sound installation, fulldome creation, and choreographic performance. The research that feeds my work draws from writings about consciousness, neuroscientific study, and meditation practice. Each involves constant reconsideration of the relation of body and mind, the role of movement in life, and what it’s like to be. Biography Overview: Gibson facilitates research-creation around the body-mind, selfhood, and conscious experience through immersive/interactive installation, choreography, sound installation, bio-reactive video light installation, and full dome projection. Her work in new media has been presented by Istanbul Digital Art Festival, Jacob's Pillow, (US), MUTEK (CA), Ars Electronica (AUT), the Society for Art & Technology (CA) the Fels Planetarium (US), Contemporary & Digital Art Fair("CADAF") (NYC), Urban Screens Production (AUS), and The Hexagram Network (CA), . Her work has been further supported through an internship with the BIAPT neuroscience lab at McGill University. She teaches at the intersect of performance & technology. Gibson is a devoted teacher, and has designed courses in Embodied Approaches to Research-Creation, Introduction to Digital Art and New Media, as well as an Introductory Workshop in TouchDesigner for Movement Artists. She has taught ballet, pointe, physical theater, and composition in the US and abroad, including Temple University, University of the Arts, the Zawirowania Festival, and many other institutions. Her work as a ballet teacher at Temple University garnered her the Outstanding Teaching award in 2018. She has also taught ballet and pointe classes privately at the Philadelphia Studio ballet for ages 8-18, and served as ballet mistress to Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers. As the director of Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet, a contemporary ballet company based in Philadelphia for a decade, Gibson's choreography was presented by New Dance Alliance at Joyce SOHO, at Dance Place in Washington DC, Philadelphia Dance Projects, The Williams Center for the Arts, and by the Franklin Institute, one of the oldest and most prestigious science and technology museums in the US. Her work has received consistent critical acclaim, heralded by the Philadelphia Inquirer as "the most authoritative work in Philadelphia. . ." Gibson’s innovative approach to ballet garnered her an invitation to speak to an audience of programmers and visual artists at the TouchDesigner summit at MUTEK in Montreal in 2018 about the making of her dome ballet, MANDALA. Gibson's choreographic work has been commissioned regularly by universities such as Tulane University, Bryn Mawr College, Alma College, and University of the Arts. Gibson trained in ballet at Baltimore School for the Arts under Sylvester Campbell of the Dutch National Ballet, and earned a BFA in dance from Tisch, at NYU. Gibson performed from 2010-2013 with Lucinda Childs in various iconic 70s works as part of the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage's Virtual Reconstruction project. As a choreographer, Gibson has been invited as a resident artist in the US and abroad, including the nEW Festival in Philadelphia (2009-10), the CEC New Edge Residency (2009-10), the Ellen Forman Memorial Award (2011), the PHL/Poland Artist Exchange Residency (2012), the Choreographers on Campus Residency, funded through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2014), Diepenheim Werkplaats (2016), Kaatsbaan (2017), and The Dance Visions Residency (2018). She earned an M.F.A. in Intermedia from Concordia University in Montreal. What the press is saying about Gibson’s work: “...Stunning” “If there was any amount of polished performance in the room that evening, it was the opening ballet with interactive visuals and choreography by Nora Gibson.” (Leslie Bush, thINKingDance) HUMAN explores artificial intelligence and technology’s complication of objectivity and otherness. It is a posthuman dance that uses the language of classical ballet to imagine new vistas, drawing on the strengths of its dancers, choreography, score, and staging. . . Gibson’s creative staging served HUMAN’s theme of the tensions between natural and unnatural, human and artificial. (Melissa Strong, Broad Street Review) 2018 . . What is ballet in the 21st century? This question is central to the mission of Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet (NGCB). If you love dance, you may have considered the same question. Is the timeless beauty of classical ballet incapable of expressing the experience of living in today’s hyperconnected world? I thought so — until I saw the premiere of NGCB’s HUMAN. (Melissa Strong, Broad Street Review) 2018 A mash-up of data-driven inquiry and aesthetic exploration, N o t h i n g T h a t I s N o t T h e r e is a science experiment in the guise of a ballet performance – as well as vice versa. . . . The abstract beauty of [this ballet] makes it a fitting piece for a science festival. The viewer must be curious and alert to what’s happening, but at the same time open about its sense and significance. It’s a dance I’d like to see again in order to investigate its underlying principles further. (Jane Fries, The Dance Journal) 2017 "...Ephemeral, her smartest, most accomplished work to date. She is truly someone to watch, a choreographer who shows a new and strangely poetic direction, a dreamer, a philosopher, a seer." (Merilyn Jackson, critic for Philadelphia Inquirer, on FB) 2016 "The polyrhythmic visuals and music mix in synchronicity, unraveling though time and space like glaciers gliding toward each other over millennia." ThINKing Dance, Zornitsa Stoyanova 2016 "poetically charged atmosphere " (Philly.com) "[F]resh, postmodern ballet" (Philly.com) "The precision and control in this piece is fascinating, disturbing and finally spellbinding." (The Dance Journal) "devotion to technique, razor-sharp dancing, and a laserlike vision of each work's arc." (Philly.com) "Gibson. . . is a serious choreographer who braces her works with the formalism of her ballet training, then isolates those movement phrases into still frames." (Philly.com) "severely focused intellectual beauty" (Philly.com) "[T]he most authoritative work in Philadelphia this year." (The Philadelphia Inquirer) Listed under Broad Street Review's "Critic's Choice: Dance Highlights" for 2010 and 2011 "innovative choreography and vividly met intent" (Philly.com) "unrelentingly dynamic movement." (The Philadelphia Inquirer) "Gibson . . . takes tedium . . .to the brink." (The Washington Post) ". . . exceptionally clean . . ." (The Washington Post) "spellbinding" (The Philadelphia Inquirer) "Gibson’s design of space . . . enlivens the composition; moments of explosive spatial shift punctuate the repetition." TheDanceJournal "a kaleidoscopic collage of movement" The Triangle.org, 1.28.11 | ||
professional certifications
