[dance-tech] Re: more for the awakening list

Sorry this reply is late...I just finished up a workshop last week which left very little time for email.

I agree with many of Marlon's statements. Most artists are interested in the whole picture and there are some really good examples being made. I think that this not only comes from the past experience of those involved in this work, but also the 'second generation,' of dance artists working with interactive technology, of which I consider myself. We have grown up with technology everywhere (I learned how to email at age 10) and don't spend much time considering why we are using it but rather what we can say with it.

But I also feel Ludmila's concern when people start using terms such as "sensor choreographies" when referring to genres of interactive performance. It places the emphasis of the work on the specific tools and technology being used and not the overall work. For example, I am currently in a workshop with Camille Utterback whose work is interactive installations based on video tracking. She would not refer to her work as "video tracking art," but rather "interactive art." If people are considering choreography in regards to a specific system, then surely we can't define the choreography by just the technology employed.

Kate Sicchio



Marlon Barrios-Solano wrote:
Hello Johannes, Ludmila and list,
This is Marlon from NYC.
Thank you for starting a discussion in this quiet list.
(By the way the link to Sher's thesis does not work.)
I don't dare to comment about the specifics of this work but cetainly I think that yes, there are pressing issues about what we conceive as a dance or choregraphy and technology. The description in the site looks interesting and very complex.
As we all know, this issues about content/or the relativity of the aesthetic choices and taste (good art, bad art, beautiful, etc are irrelevant) in the level of reserach. and now we share links about the technology. We know that it works and it is much more accesible.
We have deconstructed dance many times but I get the sense that if we keep talking about dance and technology just as the making of performances we dont see the big picture of important relations between our ongoing embedded performance within the digital/interactive/game/cams (and trainings, etc). (politics, of course).
I think that we are in a a very important moment as you said. I think the most relevant change is that the performance is the process of making, using and re-making, audiencing, publishing and documenting. The whole communicational loop, The whole thing.
In the theoretical or epistemological level:
We have reached an awareness of the recursive "designing" of designing.
I think that for Imap:
"Choreo" and "graphos" have to advance to a more sofisticated dynamic (multiplayer) paradigm. I am curious to know about how you are approaching the design as a whole.

The moment that we stop to watch the dance of the other, or that moment we press a key have to have in the same ecological level of the system.
Distributed, mediated, coupled...multilocal...
The main reformulation is in the how we are designing the space of relations. ( is it probabilistic? Not in the content/movement/word (dramaturgy is a very heavy word). It is in how we can open new leves of levels of agency, control and autonomy of the elements of the system.
This might be too abstract but I think that at this point we are contantly designing simulations (with choreography+multimedia as simulation) and the main change is if the design is a close or open system. If we include the game paradigm/open system (improvisational dance, multiusers game, religious experiences) there is no choreograpgy ( as we tend to approach it), there are rules and cues, promts for actions ( previous experienece). We think more about experiential design---
pathways. There is no audience, there is one or many users.
Is the trained dancer a user? the choreograpger the user? are our users taking adventages of the computational/generative posibilities of the interactive technology.
Other point regarding the last comments:
I like to think about movement and technoloyas a "non-stop performance" not in a Shakesperiean way, it is more in an anthorpological way, post husmanist way..we live the story as we make it within the architectureand he perform the the physical practices that suports the story within the architecture (broad sense).
I just love this relations with technology:
I friend of mine started to post her video in You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=AsertyDances
Other example on non traditional dance yet choreographed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI
interesting coupling and patterned improvised vistuosity
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7533213853543163778&q=dance+revolution
This is a cool stuff happening here:
http://improveverywhere.com/home.php

I have been reading a lot in architectural theory and I would like to make reference to a very well known text of Rem Kool Has (Junk Space in Content) and an to Kazys Varnelis <http://www.varnelis.net/>
(http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/logistics-of-distance-interview-with.html).
I like Varnelis approach about the change in the notions of the public and the private.
So, I think "process" is hot again, as an unavoidable performance of shared private moments or a multilayered "junked" public exposure (in theaters or mediated) As part of the market of art practices.

Of course, I think that we are reaching the moment of "conceptual" dance and new media. We are aware that we are moving creatures within ever changing technologies with a strong tendency to couple with them and also to recognize contex/ also that we are extremelly good with metaphorical contexts.
i have found very important insights in the writings of the philosopher Andy Clark and the theorist N.Katherine Hayles.
I n a lighter note:
I call the swingwing effect the fact that dance is the by-product of the "coupling" with technologies (technologies witin the whole stuff that we call culture/memory)
So watch this video for a laught:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=229844839516237834&q=unstablelandscape
we will always atracted a by new toys and that is part of the fun.
Some toys will succed, schools will emerge... and so on an so forth...
I think that we are reaching the point that we are researching without the procupation of making good or bad art. We have to have time to find out how this new toy makes us move and direct, remember...what is the performance...
We tend to resist...because we tend to repeat what we know...
so,
I hope that we "don't go primitive" (how anthropologies used to say) with the toy and the stories.
peace...keep me posted...
marlon


Marlon Barrios Solano
embodied interactive design/art/dance improvisation/cognition
New York City
http://www.unstablelandscape.org
cell phone in USA: 614-4462175
Skypein: country code+1(916) 226-9062
Skype name: unstablelandscape
IChat name unstablelandscap

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