Coded Art

“James Harden doesn’t move like a dancer, so we wanted to focus on the intricacies and the very articulate characteristic movements that he has as an individual player,” explains Wendy on the phone from Australia. “He’s known very much for his step-back shots, which is when he has the ball, steps back and then shoots. We wanted to accentuate this very personal movement habit he has, and that was the conversation we had for the launch of the Harden Vol. 6 sneaker.”

Wendy has translated her “waterfall” effect from the city streets to the hardwood court for the remarkable projection. James Hardens’ blue shoes called Highlighter melt down the walls of the building and pull the focus to the superstar’s feet. “The clarity of the shoes is a big feature in the work,” Wendy adds. “So I focused on the colour of the shoes specifically.”

Last year, while showcasing a projection series at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Wendy experimented with projecting on the floor and the unexpected happened – people started breakdancing. She was thrilled. “I view projection as a source of fire for which people gather and tell stories,” she says. “Like early humans who gathered around a fire to tell stories, gathering around a light in the middle of the night to tell stories is something that I aim to conduct through dance and projections.”

But this more academia-driven approach to dance wasn’t always the path Wendy was walking. Raised in Australia by actor parents who encouraged her creativity, Yu dreamed of becoming a ballerina. However, her parents were reluctant to have her leave her studies to go to ballet school. “I always knew I was going to be a dancer,” she recalls. “So, from 13 to 17, I did full-time ballet in high school, and I was planning to go to ballet school, but my parents were like, ‘No, you have to finish high school.’” While frustrating at the time, it’s a decision she’s grateful for now. “I’m thankful that they had that determination because, in that period of your life, you might not be able to see so far into the future for yourself.”

“We’d sometimes have six hours in a space, and the idea was just to sit there and code together, and then share what we’d made at the end of it,” she recalls. “At the time, I was working with this programme called MaxMSP, which is node-based coding and programming, and it has interactive elements to it. I had these touch boards outside of the computer so that every time you made contact with someone else, something would happen on the computer. I thought it was a great way of communicating touch and intimacy.”

When Wendy decided to push herself outside of her comfort zone, her community rallied around her, lending their studios and equipment to help her create her work. Most importantly, someone offered her a projector. “I’d never worked with a projector before,” she says. “But I knew it hit something that I was fascinated by, with projecting digital design and interactive art. So I spent two days in the studio with this projector, and then I started to build a portfolio. A residency programme accepted that portfolio – and that’s how I ended up working with projections.”

Since her initial tests with a projector, Wendy has spent the last few years developing her recognisable “waterfall” signature effect. Although she’d prefer to remain “hush hush” on how she executes it, the digital manipulation causes her subjects to trickle down whatever surface they’re projected on, just like James Hardens’ Volume Six sneakers. “Each time I feed a new dance into it, I’ll adjust the creative coding slightly so that it enhances the dance itself but so it doesn’t overpower it. It’s just really about complementing what the dance brings in and of itself,” she explains. And while the technique has been so popular, and pushed her work into new realms both internationally and commercially, Wendy is looking forward to testing out new waters. “I want to develop more creative-coding focused work,” she admits. “The waterfalls have been welcomed, but it hasn’t given me much time to develop new works that focus on generative and creative coding. So that’s something I would like to bookmark and focus on in the future.”