Within thumb movements

Are we going overboard in our urge to make everything more efficient? 

It strikes me that many actions in my life are becoming incredibly easy with the advent of digital devices. Everything seems to be possible with one thumb movement. When everything seems possible within one thumb movement, we also seem to lose the possibility to play around, make mistakes, discover and learn things.

Friction became a keyword in my graduation project. In my research, I discovered that the majority of software strives for a frictionless experience. An experience that is effortless. I began to see my thumb movements as a metaphor for how we interact with those frictionless experiences.

In the 15 minute performance Within thumb movements, four dancers embody the frictionless thumb movements we make all day. Because the dancers need to come up with a way to move from one dot to the other, they bring back play and cause friction.

Full research: www.thumbmovements.nl

Each dancer starts by devising a movement for ‘like’, ‘click’ and ‘refresh’.
Those movements are then maintained during the whole performance.