Sam Mcgilp

Dr Sam Mcgilp is a media artist working in contemporary performance contexts based on Wurundjeri country in Naarm. He creates collaborative modes of making with performers through playful and experimental interactions with media that expand the potential dramaturgies of live performance and interrogate the place of the body in our increasingly digital experience. Together with digital choreographer Harrison Hall he has created a body of work at the intersection of Dance and contemporary digital practice through films (Bonanza! - Chunky Move - MIFF 2021, The Venusian Slip - 2019), performance works (Running Machine - Arts House - 2022), hybrid digital/live works (Body Crysis – The Substation – 2022), as well as contributions to discourse (Taipei Performing Arts Centre's Adam Lab – 2021, ANAT Multiplicity Conference - 2022). He was a 2021 recipient of Creative Victoria's Creators Fund Grant to investigate motion capture as a methodology for creating expanded digital dramaturgies for live contemporary performance, and his projects have been awarded grants from the Australia Council, Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne and Besen Family Foundation.

He has worked extensively in collaborative, intercultural contexts including with NAXS Future (Taiwan), Lu Yang (China), Theatre Nottle (South Korea), Acchi Kocchi (Japan) and Kazuhiko Hiwa and Makoto Uemura (Japan). As well as with celebrated contemporary Australian artists such as Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, All the Queens Men and Yuiko Masukawa.

In 2021 he completed his PhD at RMIT University working with Chamber Made investigating Digital Iterations, distinct digital artworks that share an artistic inquiry with live performance works. This research was awarded the Vice Chancellor's PhD Scholarship, and the Emerging Scholar Award at the Arts in Society Conference (Vancouver).

Photo courtesy of the artist.