---
# System prepended metadata

title: Lecture by Joana Chicau

---

# Lecture by Joana Chicau
## Introduction

Joana Chicau is a designer and researcher — with a background in dance. She researches the intersection of the body with the designed and programmed environment, aiming at widening the ways in which digital sciences is presented and made accessible to the public. 
Her practice and exploration interweaves web programming with choreography — from the making of online platforms to performances and workshops.

In parallel Chicau has been actively participating and organizing events involving multi-location collaborative coding, algorithmic improvisation, discussions on digital equity and activism.

She is a lecturer and PhD candidate at the Creative Institute at the University of the Arts London.


* [Link to portfolio website;](https://joanachicau.com)
* [List of live coding projects;](https://joana.arts)
* [Screenshots archive;](https://www.are.na/joana-chicau/web-choreographies-other-stories)


## Influences and References  ✨ 👀 

![](https://i.imgur.com/8AD9XME.jpg)

'9 Evenings was the first large-scale collaboration between artists and engineers and scientists. The two groups worked together for 10 months to develop technical equipment and systems that were used as an integral part of the artists’ performances.' [Read more here](https://monoskop.org/9_Evenings:_Theatre_and_Engineering).
* [See program](https://www.fondation-langlois.org/9evenings/e/index.html)
* [Video trailler: 9 Evenings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-cgnK-kFoo)
* [Video: Open Score, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, 1966, edited circa 1997](https://vimeo.com/107488380)


![](https://i.imgur.com/DNhvi2K.jpg)

* [Image from Hacking Choreography by Kate Sicchio](https://www.sicchio.com/)
* [Video of Hacking Choreography](https://vimeo.com/92885158)


![Screen Shot 2024-03-02 at 22.24.55](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/H1t5w7WT6.png)


THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME is a practice-led research project exploring how theatre techniques can be employed to reverse-engineer cognition and emotions, to invent new forms of communication between human and machine, and to rehearse future societies.

* [Replica Institute](https://replica.institute/);
* [The Shape of Things to Come video](https://vimeo.com/371160085);
* [Related article](https://pan.ecphras.ist/Projects/The_Shape_of_Things_to_Come.html);

## The Web's Backstage 

![](https://i.imgur.com/MC9O6zJ.jpg)

> Live coding — sometimes referred to as “on-the-fly programming,” “just in time programming,” or even “conversational programming” — is about people interacting with the world, and each other, in “real- time,” via code.

Source: Blackwell, Alan F.; Cocker, Emma;  Cox, Geoff; McLean, Alex; Magnusson, Thor. Live Coding: A User's Manual. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022. [Available in this link](https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5495/Live-CodingA-User-s-Manual).

```javascript=101

// example of a JS function that uses randomness and make HTML elements dance:                                    
                                     
  function move () {
    currentNumber = 1;
    var element = document.querySelector("body");
    currenttime = setInterval(function() {
    element.style.transform="rotate(" + currentNumber + "deg )";
    currentNumber = Math.random() * 360;
    }, 800);
}
 move()  
 
 ```

**Web Choreographies** (2019) w/ Jip de Beer

![WebScreenShot12](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/rkggHbuFp.png)
Screenshot from a performance integrating 3D visualizations display of  live coded web environments.

* [Video trailer](https://vimeo.com/318721981);
* [Project's website](https://joanachicau.com/web_choreographies.html);


**Anatomies of Intelligence** (2018-) by Joana Chicau and Jonathan Reus

![](https://i.imgur.com/NdwwivQ.jpg)
Screenshot from AoI's virtual theatre 

Anatomies of Intelligence (AoI) is an artistic research project that investigates connections between the processes in anatomical knowledge and the “anatomy” of computational learning and prediction, datasets and machine learning models. 

* [Anatomies of Intelligence website](https://anatomiesofintelligence.github.io/);
* [Videos list;](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkRYCVc1KXTU1S47T_0GlUpKtz3MQkthA)



## Three Projects: on searching


### DAE

... is a file-based wiki system website developed in collaboration with the designer Simone Niquille, the computer programmer André Fincato, alongside the team and the commissioners at Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE). 


![](https://i.imgur.com/lPjtFXP.gif)


* [Link to DAE](https://designacademy.nl)

**Role:** Design and Concept; UX and UI; Digital Prototyping and Programming (HTML/CSS/Javascript);

**Main Users:** students (prospective/current/alumni); staff; industry practitioners;

###  Performing Patents Otherwise
... is a fully searchable database of more than 230.000 clothing patents. Alongside the conventional search function, the volume offers a range of other search interferences that introduce moments of serendipity, juxtaposition, mapping, fragmentation and poetic rendering, contributing entry points to the archive that challenge and enrich the unspoken conventions of computational search.

![](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/H1LPBqU4h.gif)


* [Link to Performing Patents Otherwise Analytics](https://patents.copim.ac.uk)


**Role:** Design and Concept; UX and UI;  Programming (HTML/CSS/Javascript);

**Main Users:** artists and practitioners from the field; curators; historians; anthropologists; broader audience interested in patents;


###  Choreographic Analytics
... is a local analytics engine for the ‡ DobbeltDagger website, in collaboration with Anders Visti. It presents an alternative form of documenting, analyzing, notating and archiving ‡ DobbeltDagger. Every search performed is an act of making a new choreography — which brings new relations and new links between words and meanings — building up on an ecology of growing choreographies.

![](https://i.imgur.com/k6w7fmR.gif)

* [Link to Choreographic Analytics](https://dobbeltdagger.net/publication/choreographic-analytics)

**Role:** Design and Concept; UX and UI;  Programming (HTML/CSS/Javascript);

**Main Users:** artists and practitioners from the field; curators; broader audience interested in digital arts;

## Current PhD research

*'New surveillance tech means you'll never be anonymous again. Forget facial recognition. Researchers around the world are creating new ways to monitor you. Lasers detecting your heartbeat and microbiome are already being developed...*' [Source: Wired Magazine 2019](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/surveillance-technology-biometrics)


![choreo-ser-recode.19a55b71](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/HJMytefpT.gif)

* [Link to Web-based Artwork](https://re-coding.technology/choreographing-you/): Choreographing You: Dear User, are you ready to move?, 2023, Joana Chicau

Contribution to 're-coding everyday technology' VOL. 1 contains 12 positions by artists, researchers and designers on questioning the default conditions and circumstances of everyday technology. 


 ### Further references
 
 * [TopLap](https://blog.toplap.org/)
 * [Flee Immediately Online Mag](http://www.fleeimmediately.com "Fleeimmediately")
 * [Critical Coding Cookbook](https://criticalcode.recipes/)
 * [ VCUarts Faculty Lecture Series: Kate Sicchio, Algorithmic Choreography](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhxqyRugEpc)
* [Brief intro to HTML + CSS + JS](https://www.internetingishard.com/html-and-css/introduction/ "html-and-css intro")
* [Guide to Web Console Commands](https://css-tricks.com/a-guide-to-console-commands/)
* [DOM Model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Object_Model#/media/File:DOM-model.svg)
* [Web Development Studio resources](https://github.com/JoBCB/Web-Development-Studio-2021)
* [& more references on 'Choreographic Coding';](https://github.com/JoBCB/Rehearsal_Series/wiki/References-on-Choreographic-Coding)