This webpage is a portfolio page hidden on my website - for further information about my work see: freyaolafson.com
MÆ – Motion Aftereffect addresses the perceptual and embodied implications of emerging consumer technologies associated with XR - Extended Reality. The performance is guided by internet-sourced monologues that feature first-person accounts of VR gameplay or VR pornography; some recount psychedelic drug explorations and out-of-body experiences, while others outline the how-tos of astral projection or 3D avatar physics customization. These intentionally diverse monologues situate virtual technologies alongside analog methods, like psychedelic and metaphysical explorations, as tools to expand individual perceptions of reality, time, and space. The performance references historical artworks that offer mediated experiences of the body, in particular Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus stage experiments (1920s) and Brody Condon’s video game work “Adam Killer” (1999) as well it reframes quotes from Al Hansen’s Fluxus “Lettuce Manifesto” (1966) and Manifest.AR’s “The AR Art Manifesto” (2011). These manifestos and artworks collectively shape the work’s inquiry into digital replication, transference, and the translation of human movement between screen, stage, and XR experiences. MAE-Motion Aftereffect was longlisted for The Lumen Prize for Art & Technology in the ‘B.C.S Immersive Environments’ category in 2021. more info
Below: I developed a single-channel video of the closing of the performance for dissemination with galleries, media art and experimental cinema festivals without the live performance component.
MÆ - Motion Aftereffect
60mins
Performance, Unity & Video: Freya Björg Olafson
Co-presence: Emma Beach
Sound: Emma Hendrix
Suggested viewing: The video to the left is a 3 minute trailer that overviews the 60minute performance.
Excerpt#1 - First VR - 6m53s
Excerpt#2 - Co-Presence - start at 36mins
Excerpt#3 - VR - 49m25s
Excerpt #4 - 'Field of View' closing scene - 53mins40s to 1h03m3s (total 10 mins)
2024 - 2026 PERFORMANCE DATES
Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers - January 30 - Feb 1st 2026
Mois Multi - festival international d’arts multidisciplinaires et électroniques - Quebec - February 2026
OFFTA - Montréal - May 31st and June 1st, 2025
Digital Arts Resource Centre - Ottawa - May 2025
WNDX - Festival of Moving Images - Oct 2024
PREMIERE
Prairie Theatre Exchange - Winnipeg, Manitoba - Nov 2021
RESIDENCIES
Prairie Theatre Exchange - Winnipeg
OBORO - New Media Centre - Montréal
PERFORMANCES OF WORK IN PROGRESS
CounterPulse - Combustible: ARC - Artist in Residence Commissioning Program w/ Yağız Mungan
San Francisco, California
30 minutes
Video Pool Media Art Centre
as part of survey exhibition 'Isolated Landscapes' curated by Kathy Rae Huffman
Winnipeg, Manitoba - November 2017
excerpts 20 minutes
'Body Double' explores live machine learning motion capture (MoCap) techniques; Olafson is extending research that began in April 2025, following my participation in the ten-day Choreographic Coding Lab (CCL) hosted by Motion Bank and the A&E Lab in the UK which focused on AI/machine learning in choreographic practice. My curiosity in integrating real-time AI motion capture into live performance using only a webcam comes from virtual YouTubers (VTubers) who real-time animate digital avatars to embody fictional personas. This intersection of embodiment, mediation, and digital identity resonates strongly with my earlier work AVATAR (2009), which examined vlogging culture on YouTube and was later published as a performance score /script by Playwrights Canada Press in 2020.
Freya acknowledges the generous support of Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council in the development of this new project.
NEW WORK IN PROCESS / DEMO
Body DOUble
Mocap, 3D avatar, video, performance: Freya Björg Olafson
performance demo: 3mins
SUGGESTED VIEWING: 0mins to 3mins - work in process / tech demo set up
April 2026
Technical demo of set up for new performance work
Presented at Gil Artist Residency in Akureyri, Iceland
GILFÉLAGIÐ / DEIGLAN Gallery
Documentation by kristjanHelgason
Technical Description: Running both a live webcamera and iphone camera to do facial and bosy pose tracking. The facial tracking data is sent via OSC to Unity, and the pose tracking is sent via VMC protocol to Unity. The Unity camera view of the live animated avatar is then sent to Isadora via syphon to be processed visually. The 3D avatar was created via lidar scan of a muscle suit costume from an earlier work of Freya's, the head piece was hand painted. The avatar was rigged by Freya.
This video was commissioned by Dancermakers and Fado Performance Art for ‘Future Dances’ a speculative choreography project with nine artists creating works for 50 years in the future.
3D avatars of Freya are animated in a custom game environment using keyboard controls and text-prompt-generated motion capture data. Freya’s avatars move through 3D LIDAR scans and videos from two personal archives: the exterior of Freya’s studio/live space (2006–2023), and performance materials from the archive of late choreographer and mentor Tedd Robinson, a monologue printed across pieces of canvas and bells strung along two ropes with handles.
Freya’s engagement with Tedd Robinson’s archival materials began through MULTIPLES, a collective process initiated in 2023 through Ten Gates Dancing Inc., following Tedd’s passing in 2022. Tedd Robinson (1952–2022) was a Canadian choreographer, performer, and educator, renowned for his distinctive solos alongside many collaborative works. He was an essential mentor and advisor on Freya's works AVATAR (2009), CPA [Consistent Partial Attention] (2013), and MÆ - Motion Aftereffect (2019). Tedd continually questioned the role of archives, not as static repositories, but as living entities that renew, regenerate, and connect across generations.
This video considers the potential of moving images, 3D scans, code, motion capture, and avatars as digital archival tools that support and expand how dance and choreography are experienced, created, taught, documented, shared, archived, and remembered. The work blends virtual camera footage from Freya’s game environment with real-life video, including footage of Freya’s child, Ylfa, ringing Tedd’s bells, and a cockroach in Freya’s oven. By bridging personal scans and video with the Freya’s derealized AI-Mocap animated avatar, the work blurs time: beginnings and ends, birth and legacy, presence and preservation.
TIME TO WAKE UP
Video | Motion Capture | Photogrammetry & Unity programming: Freya Björg Olafson
4k video | 6m30s
Installation / screening
2025
Composer/Musician: Charles Quevillon
Audio originally from the stage work:
Love and Other Things: a drama for flower, clay and bone (2018)
Created by: Tedd Robinson + Charles Quevillon
Musicians/Singers: Sarah Albu, Maude Côté-Gendron, David Cronkite, Vahram Sarkissian, Matthias Soly-Letarte
Co-Produced by: 10 Gates Dancing and the National Arts Centre
Additional voice and bells: Ylfa Ósk Magura Olafson, Freya Björg Olafson and Matt Magura
CPA [Consistent Partial Attention] offers a paradoxical meditation on what it means to be present in our contemporary screen-obsessed world. Developed through digital collage the CPA [Consistent Partial Attention] performance is guided by a video score of pre-existing / found Internet footage of individuals improvising in their homes. The performers sight read the choreographic score by referencing diverse sources and monitors. While the performers have familiarity with the digital dances, they can never fully know their ‘choreography’. Thereby CPA sustains as an exercise in ‘nowness’; the performers engage as interfaces in act of realtime translation of data / movement vocabulary from the video score. Through the rich confluence of sources we experience dance as a vernacular, learned language, permeating and crossing communities, provoking consideration upon the evolution of dance in the age of the internet. More info about the work, funders, and tour dates: https://www.freyaolafson.com/cpa-consistent-partial-attention
CPA (Consistent Partial
Attention)
Concept / Direction: Freya Björg Olafson
Researched & Performed with:
Lise McMillan & James Phillips
2016
3:55mins of excerpts from the 75 minute performance - has taken place in both blackbox theatres and gallery spaces
Below is a excerpts of a live performance over Skype in 2016, this was a condensed version of CPA broadcast from my studio in Winnipeg over Skype. I ran the live webcamera into Isadora which allowed me to composite, create scenes, adjust music and add text. I then sent the video into Syphon, which I then run into Manycam, which then I send to Skype.
Layered and colorful, almost as though animated, the body becomes a dreamscape in ‘Above | Beyond | Outside’. The video deploys an intriguing combination of SPF 60 sunscreen, clear UV reactive body paint, UV lights and strobe to reduce the dimensionality of the physical body to line. Olafson's physique is dissected and transformed, disappearing and merging with the screen. The live performance (video excerpts on the right) integrates Chromadepth 3D glasses for the audience, which isolate color fields - blue in background, yellow in mid ground and red comes forward in space to create a false sense of depth. more info on HYPER_ series
Written about in ARCHÉE - Arts Médiatiques & Cyberculture
“Not a Girl Dancing”: Gender, Spectacle and Disembodiment in the work of Loïe Fuller and Freya Olafson"
by Hilary Bergen - link
2016
Canada Dance Festival 2016 (Ottawa)
2015
Expanse Festival (Edmonton) March 12 - 15
Summerworks (Toronto) August 5 - 16
2014
WNDX - Festival of Moving Image (Winnipeg)
núna (now) Festival (Winnipeg) Premiere
HYPER_
Video / Performance / Isadora Programming:
Freya Björg Olafson
Lighting Design | Hugh Conacher
Music | Ghostigital, Davíð Þór Jónsson, Kippi Kaninus [Guðmundur Vignir Karlsson]
LE1F, Dubbel Dutch
60minute performance
2013
The development of this series is generously supported by:
The Canada Council for The Arts
& Video Pool Media Arts Center
The HYPER_ series received production and residency supports from:
EMPAC – Experimental Media and Performing Art Center (Troy, New York)
Studio 303 – Danse & Arts Indisciplinés (Montréal, Quebec)
Latitude 53 – Contemporary Visual Culture (Edmonton, Alberta)
with additional research residencies at:
Medea Electronic ‘Koumaria Residency’ (Athens / Koumaria, Greece)
Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, Florida)
Plug In ICA 'Summer Institute (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
AVATAR is inspired by the mantra, “I post, therefore I am,” referencing the way Internet users legitimize their existence by documenting their lives and uploading the data to personal webpages and blogs. In a striking audio/video/dance performance, Olafson's moves intimately through software, opening files on her personal computer and interacting with a built-in camera to explore methods of creating, validating, and disseminating one’s identity through the use of technology and the Internet. The performance inherently becomes a duet with technology as the artist makes use of live video feeds and projections to magnify, manipulate, and effectively broadcast persona and image. This series is based around the 60 minute performance but has numerous video works and drawings as extensions of the project. more info
Technical Description: this work was developed with both a live web camera feed as well as an external camera both run through the ‘Quartz Composer’ software, later updated to run on ‘Isadora’.
AVATAR Premiere in 2009 - toured until 2015
Performance / Audio / Video / Quartz Composer:
Freya Björg Olafson
Suggested Viewing: full length of video on the left
Note: Video to the left is 3minutes of excerpts from the 60 minute performance which has taken place in both
blackbox theatres and gallery spaces.
AVATAR received the Buddies in Bad Times 'Vanguard Award for Risk and Innovation' at the SummerWorks Theatre Festival in Toronto.
In 2021 AVATAR was published as a score / script in "Long Live the New Flesh: Six Plays from the Digital Frontier" companion anthology to "Digital Performance in Canada" published by Playwrights Canada Press edited by David Owen: LINK
TOUR HISTORY
Since its premiere, AVATAR was performed extensively across Canada, the United States, and internationally. In Canada, the work has been presented in Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, Nanaimo, Moncton, and Fredericton, as well as across the Atlantic region. In the United States, it has been performed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Fargo, North Dakota; Moorhead, Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois; and Syracuse, New York. International presentations have included Reykjavík, Iceland; Giessen, Germany; and Quito, Guayaquil, and Manta, Ecuador.
REGULATION OF DESIRE
Writer / Director - Noam Gonick
Choreographer Freya Björg Olafson
Dancers - Michael Walker, Joel Simkin, Elizabeth Lamont, Stephan Azulay, Katie Bonnell, Joshua Hidson, Tymin Keown
Made with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet & commissioned by Canadian Museum of Human Rights
During Canada’s “Purge”, queers were surveilled and it was the expression of desire – our physical need for bodies whose gender did not honour heteronormative codes, which was so dangerous. This ballet, which draws its title from Gary Kinsman’s book, illuminates the struggle of conformity, that push-pull within each of us to join the fray while striving for freedom to express our sexuality.
The characters include a lesbian recruit, performed by RWB Principal Dancer Elizabeth Lamont and an Ambassador accused of sharing secrets with a Soviet farm worker, played by Joel Simkin and Tymin Keown, respectively. The ballet’s storytellers are Katie Bonnell as Giselle in classical tutu spinning alongside burlesque pole dancer Michael Walker.
Men cruise forests, seeking anonymous encounters, thwarted by the Investigator and his Decoy (RWB Principal Stephan Azulay and Soloist Joshua Hidson). In the final chapter of the ballet, Lamont demands rank and honour from Azulay. She is triumphantly heralded by the group, signalling the challenge to federal policies based on the Charter of Rights and Freedom.
Note: this work was developed to be a five channel video installation, it has since been edited into a single channel version for cinema distribution rather - this is the version seen above.
This video was commissioned by Dancermakers and Fado Performance Art for ‘Future Dances’ a speculative choreography project with nine artists creating works for 50 years in the future.
3D avatars of Freya are animated in a custom game environment using keyboard controls and text-prompt-generated motion capture data. Freya’s avatars move through 3D LIDAR scans and videos from two personal archives: the exterior of Freya’s studio/live space (2006–2023), and performance materials from the archive of late choreographer and mentor Tedd Robinson, a monologue printed across pieces of canvas and bells strung along two ropes with handles.
Freya’s engagement with Tedd Robinson’s archival materials began through MULTIPLES, a collective process initiated in 2023 through Ten Gates Dancing Inc., following Tedd’s passing in 2022. Tedd Robinson (1952–2022) was a Canadian choreographer, performer, and educator, renowned for his distinctive solos alongside many collaborative works. He was an essential mentor and advisor on Freya's works AVATAR (2009), CPA [Consistent Partial Attention] (2013), and MÆ - Motion Aftereffect (2019). Tedd continually questioned the role of archives, not as static repositories, but as living entities that renew, regenerate, and connect across generations.
This video considers the potential of moving images, 3D scans, code, motion capture, and avatars as digital archival tools that support and expand how dance and choreography are experienced, created, taught, documented, shared, archived, and remembered. The work blends virtual camera footage from Freya’s game environment with real-life video, including footage of Freya’s child, Ylfa, ringing Tedd’s bells, and a cockroach in Freya’s oven. By bridging personal scans and video with the Freya’s derealized AI-Mocap animated avatar, the work blurs time: beginnings and ends, birth and legacy, presence and preservation.
TIME TO WAKE UP
Video | Motion Capture | Photogrammetry & Unity programming: Freya Björg Olafson
4k video | 6m30s
Installation / screening
2025
Composer/Musician: Charles Quevillon
Audio originally from the stage work:
Love and Other Things: a drama for flower, clay and bone (2018)
Created by: Tedd Robinson + Charles Quevillon
Musicians/Singers: Sarah Albu, Maude Côté-Gendron, David Cronkite, Vahram Sarkissian, Matthias Soly-Letarte
Co-Produced by: 10 Gates Dancing and the National Arts Centre
Additional voice and bells: Ylfa Ósk Magura Olafson, Freya Björg Olafson and Matt Magura
Additional works - optional viewing
Text provided by Will Pappenheimer:
Angsty Pool liquefies Michael Rees’ large abstract black and white crosshatched wall image into a rippling pool. Moving throughout the shallow water are five duplicate male base game characters in underwear, who perform motions of cleansing, lounging and occasionally looking out at the audience. Their movements are guided by a process of motion capture previously enacted physically by my collaborator, Freya Björg Olafson. As suggested by the title, the turbulence across the underlying image as well as the churning motions of the characters evoke conditions of anxiety even in the midst of the relaxing act of swimming. These conditions are meant to relate to troubling issues of identity circulating through contemporary culture, at the same time as the the desire to wash them away.
ANGSTY POOL
Collaboration with Will Pappenheimer
in response to Michael Rees’
Exhibited at Grounds for Sculpture,
Augmented Reality project
2m57s
2018
Below: 'Pool Scratch' Will Pappenheimer and Freya Björg Olafson, screenshot video of augmented reality, unofficial installation at the Guggenheim Museum, 2018, featured through the mobile exhibition app: ACTIVATAR
'Brief Encounters & Sustained Engagement' is part of Freya’s AVATAR series (2009-2011) exploring methods of creating, validating and disseminating one’s identity through the use of technology and the Internet. The series is inspired by the mantra “I post therefore I am”, whereby Internet users legitimize their existence by documenting their lives and uploading this media to personal webpages and blogs. The work in this series facilitates an inquiry into our desire to share and publicize our lives.
“Using a palette of gestures gleaned from online fetish videos, media artist/dancer Freya Olafson addresses the dual nature of sexual performance — both alluring and repellent. The seductive quality of Olafson’s stroking, gyrating and posing is undone by her use of a distorting fish-eye lens of her web cam. A necessary supplement to her performance are the live reactions of a Chat Roulette audience, which doesn’t seem to understand that her performance mimics not genuine seduction but the dried-out ritual that unfolds in strip clubs and the like on a nightly basis.”
Sandee Moore (Uptown Magazine)
This work is an extension of my video work: A/S/L (age/sex/location)
Brief Encounters &
Sustained Engagement
Audio, video, performance: Freya Björg Olafson
Gallery Installation: 16mins Played on a laptop placed on a plinth, under a plexiglass box
SUGGESTED VIEWING from 0mins to 2m55s
Format available: Digital file - DVD (NTSC or PAL)
January 2010
Technical Description: Through the manycam app I was able to override the Chatroulette platform and run a pre-recoded video to interact with viewers on the website. This video is a document of my engagements as I researched Chatroulette. Each time the video says -disconnected - it is the viewer who chose to exit viewing my video. In 2010 I performed this work live on Chatroulette at Platform Center for Photographic & Digital Arts with a live audience present. Curator J.J. Kegan McFadden oversaw the online interactions by operating the keyboard and mouse ie: skipping viewers as I performed as part of the exhibition 'Ritualiz’d '
