[dance-tech] Re: Sensordance, etc........The language of technology - the technology of dance

Hi Matt and list,

I am not so much concerned about "sokal affairs" that may or may not deal
with morphogenesis as with generalised assumptions that clearly go along the
lines of technopositivism and technological determinism, and which pass
along unquestioned. Media art and dance-tech is more than ripe for this. I
wander if it is ripe for a sistematic challenging of those assumptions.

Your idea of extending the messages with links that clarify the meaning is
brilliant... (I will try to follow up when I find the correct links or
otherwise try to explain...)


> i'm assuming that you initially borrowed the term from biology. i
> would argue that basing your theory on scientific principles is a
> feature of modernism.

This is too much of a generalisation, clearly how you borrow the term will
have extreme consequences on whether you can be identified as modernist,
post-modernist, or post-post-modernist, or other. I actually started using
the term in very much of a metaphorical way, as the title and concept of a
performance, and I  am making no literal invocation of its meaninig in
biology. As you may know its use has spread over a variety of disciplines
(social morphogenesis, tectonics) etc, and in this process the meaning is
permanently subject to shifts. How you understand or interpret the eventual
shift that I bring into the term's possible meaning is part of the
contingency of the process, obviously.

> i'll also assume you know that emergence is also
> a property of gestalt psychology. regardless, form and form-change are
> organisation  (and if you will, re-organisation), sedimentation is
> organisation. emergence is organisation (the revealing of patterns).
> i made no claim that organisation means fixed, indeed science tell us
> few structures are fixed.
>
> morphogenesis as you are using the term does seem to be postmodernist
> verbal play ( as is your rejection of science and Truth).
> 'self-organising and adaptive' would be a simpler, clearer description
> of what you advocate.

morphogenesis as I am using the term relates rather to metarepresentation:
the process of how the very forms of our thinking, the representations of
the world, emerge, not to the description of the forms that the
representations try to represent. This is in so far as I know whether a
modernist nor a postmodernist approach. In so far my use of the term does
not relate to the mere self-organising and adaptive processes of emergence
of patterns, but rather to how we think and represent these patterns. Nor
does it have anything to do with verbal play (anymore than your own words or
anybodyelses may be always understood as verbal play) since it attempts to
understand that emerging process of thinking through the non-verbal.

To cast rejection of science and truth under the wave of postmodernist
verbal play I find again a gross simplification, you may as well explain why
and how you accept simulation to be the truth appart from the fact that a
certain hegemonic modernist and essentialis scientific tradition says that
it is the truth. Your believe in that truth is of course as justified as the
believe in any religion, which is totally respectful. (it is indeed the same
affect of naturalisation and embodied knowledge that allows to speak  of
truth in either cases). To me the truth of the body and of the world is
often more in the excess of discourse, so in specificity, in that which
makes the boundaries of discourse move, rather than in the inside of the
circles of discourses themselves.

> the truth is that much of your embodied existence is simulation and
> synthesis. i'm sure that looking at this text you only see one copy;
> yet you have two eyes. there are many more examples but this is the
> simplest to demonstrate.

simulation and sythesis have nothing to do with embodied experience but with
discourse and representation. Embodied experience is influenced by discourse
and representation, yet it is also the excess of discourse and
representation, that which challenges simulation and synthesis.

> they are, or are you suggesting that dance is a universal, non-verbal
> language. or if 'universal' is problematic, that embodiment is our
> translation tool. dance is a different construct to language (verbal
> or non verbal), which is why linguistic analysis of dance is flawed.
> neither is dance explicitly communication, although it does engage in
> modes of representation.

Dance is not universal, nor is verbal language, both are contingent and
specific, subject to permanent emergence that happens in multiple related
layers, because the sound cannot totally be separated from the movement, and
the latter from the image of movement. Verbal and non verbal elements of
communication are contingent discreet representations or territorialisation
of a continuum of communication in which all the elements relate and merge
into one another in different ways. That is also why linguistic analysis of
dance is obviously flawed, since dance deals more with the excess of
(verbal) language.

> if we look at communication, interpretation and representation then
> there is always a signifier. so if you consider your work to
> communicate something then its made up of signifiers, and arguably can
> be reduced to them. if you work from a score, or movement technique to
> create choreography you are performing signifiers.

A piece of music or a choreography can never be reduced to scores or
movement techniques: the music is not the score, nor the dance is the dance
notation, music is the porformance, and the signs of a score are only part
of the technology of music, the more significant part is in the specific
domains of style that allow you to perform in a specific way, since the
signs, as eventually read by a computer, have no meaning whatsoever in
themselves, they only acquire an instrumental meaning in a context of style
and performance. (similar can be said of a theatrical performace)

So dance doesn't relate to signifyers - the signs are instruments to relate
to other embodied layers of practice - dance is dealing with the excess of
signifyers, with that which the sings cannot contain, with the frontiers of
meaning, rather than with meaning itself.


> if motion really is  a priori, then it must be free from inherent
> meaning. if motion comes first it is a function / object without
> context (other than a displacement its own reference frame). a single
> dance can be read to have many different meanings, what remains
> constant is the motion. dance can be reduced to motion, even if
> dancing means more to the observer / performer than than pure
> movement.

Motion exists never a priori nor free from inherent meanings, nor is it
totally subdued to meaning: in every act of moving many layers of embodied
knowledge and practice  are taking place.

This takes us to a very old discussion: you assume that movement (therefore
the body, the world) exist a priori, without meaning and then comes our mind
and spirit and puts meaning into it (a classical modernist approach, nothing
wrong with it appart form the fact that I disagree...). I on the other hand
will go along the line of questioning that there is any sense in thinking
movement a priori since this would be a purely virtual phantasm: the reality
of movement, as far as we can experience it is never such, it is always
intertwined with other layers of experience and eventually understanding:
embodiment is this kind of kowledge of the body and that is why bodies move.



> form 'communicates' the structure of the object(s) and we can infer
> relationships with other objects, principles in forms we recognise.
> content is different from communication in terms of form. regarding
> the separation of form and content; the most effective analysis will
> look at the whole, and the constituent parts. how can we focus on
> transformations unless we undertake such a separation?


I don't think form communicates the structures of any kind of objects,
objects have nothing to do with communication, the principles we may infer
are purely contingent forms of our thinking. there is also no whole, so any
analysis that attempts to capture the whole of something is doomed to fail
at some point. You can only think fragments of an irreducible reality,
confined as you are to the contingency of your body-time-context.

The idea of whole is but another phantasm of our logocentric tradition that
attempts to reduce reality to discreet representation.

> i am unclear what you mean by 'communicating forces'. perhaps you
> could also explain the process of sedimentation; in some instances you
> seem to imply something fixed, in others not.

I am attempting to understand the world (and the body) as fields of
communicating forces: this would deal so much with the cosmic scale, as with
the atomic, biological, geological, and of course, social and cultural
scales. I propose that the forces of the world can be understood in terms of
communicating (indeed affective) forces, as opposed to merely physical etc.
and their specific "languages" (non-logocentric) are the effect of
sedimentation of the relations estabished over time at multiple levels. It
is perhaps an attempt to bring together a deleuzian view of the intensive
bodies with a foucauldian view of genealogy: the genealogy of the bodies is
not in verbal language and discourse, but in the multidimensional, open,
specific forms of "language" that eventually sediment and change. These
forces do not exist a priori, they exist in so far as we think them, embody
them, experience them, (the issue of their existence in discourse and verbal
language would be yet another layer of  discussion) - this I deal with in
the theory of metaformativity (multidimentional interplay of forces) as
opposed to performativity (postmodernist verbal play, the body as text).
Does this make it any clearer??


> > The instrument/technology is the (dancer's)body and the hardware and the
> > software, and the way in which you "use" it, or its language.

> instrument is object, manner of use is technique / form. language is a
> technology for communication.


It is precisely this modernist dualism that I am attempting to criticise.
(instrument as object, technique as  mind) - some composers will agree that
the musical instrument has no meaning whatsoever as an object, it is the
Ãcriture, and the technique that makes the instrument, it is the sedimented
use.

I totally agree with the notion of language as a techhnology of
communication, .....and the same I would say of dance....


> > Context sensitivity is often equally problematic since it assumes the
> > "truth" about the simulation of the context and of the body.

> embodiment employs the same assumptions.


As far as I understand it embodiment deals with the excess of simulation and
its truth, so with the constant challenging of these.


> its not what science can't explain, but what we choose not to. i was
> highlighting that in many sci art projects the choreography is
> inspired by the science, and in the process ignores its principles. if
> we could look to a better understanding of our own practice, and how
> it relates to the science we could contribute to science research.



I think we can go much further than  looking into how our practice relates
to the science, but also looking into how both challenge each other's
methodologies and why.


> in sci-art, art (as it has always done) uses science as an
> inspiration, (there is nothing wrong with that), but in the process
> becomes the 'public face' of science communication. it is easier for
> scientists to contribute to the art than the other way round. i don't
> think it should be that way.

I agree, sometimes science is not quite open to the methodologies and
uncertain truths of art, and sometimes artists are not inetersted in
understanding the methodologies of science.


> interesting, but how different is that from say, a custom made pointe
> shoe? our bodies have a common structure with unique organisational
> variations, many tools would be redundant replications, adaptive tools
> would be more useful.


The common structure is again a mere representation, there are infinite ways
of reinventing the "structure" of the body. The tools would be the
articulations of this differences and specificities.

Again we are dealing with the old discussion of before: there is no body a
priori: there are disocurses on the body and sedimented practices of the
body.

How would you think the issue of adaptive tools, how would they adapt,
according to what rules and principles, would these principles be
"universal", scientific? How would you articulate it in the software?
generative algorithms? Aleatory or deterministic models?



Someone else interested in giving us feedback? I wonder what the others
think of the debate!

thanks!

Jaime

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