Hi Tony thanks for your response, and for your insistence on questioning these notions of interaction-interactivity and real time composition. I like your example, and will be glad to watch such videos on the relations between vj-dj's and club dancing. What would constitute real-time composition in your opinion (if you wouldn't entertain the idea that the performer wearing a sensor dress is able to "edit" the video and animations in real time and thus alter or affect the image movement by herself-himself, if we were to use film language)? such compositional action has surely been claimed (and i havn't really jumped up that much) for performers working in an interactive scenario affecting the sonic environment, playing the sound samples and sound parameters (pitch, timbre, frequency, position, etc) like an singrument in a programmed or generative environment; the same has also surely been claimed by performers working in telepresence and networked environments, and by those who've danced in SL, for example, no? with regards johannes birringer ----- Original Message ----- From: Anthony Schultz To: dance-tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 3:24 AM Subject: [dance-tech] Re: post / choreographic Thanks Johannes for being generous with your time and explaining things in a way I can understand. The piece itself is quite beautiful. The garments, the illustrations of the garments, the movement and the language you use to describe it is all lovely. There is a problem however with your claim of the work constituting realtime composition. Imagine this scenario: A dj/vj is rocking a party while a popper dances. The popper improvises to the immersive environment, responding to the music and visuals. They are playful with the texture and weight of the fabric of their sweatshirt as it bounces off their shoulders. They pull at their own clothing and respond to the tugging as if it were an external force. If you cant picture this watch some popping videos to see that this is part of their standard improvisational method. (I know you hate to watch videos online though given the fact that we are all responding to a video you posted it seems ridiculous that you would not.) The dj/vj sees the popper dancing. They take cues from the dancer so the mediated environment indeed responds to the dancing. This hypothetical scenario is nothing new. It happens all over the world every night though nobody jumps up to call that "realtime composition". It does however fit the criteria you describe; it is "interactional performance with an extended sensual complexity" and "dancers explore psychologies of character and how cloth behaves." The only difference I see (other than the academic vs club context) is that you are using garments with sensors. The work is good but if we are going to be rigorous we should not overstate our claims. "Realtime composition" (the philosophers stone of dance-technology) is coming certainly, its just not here yet. Lets not "cry wolf" so that we can properly identify it when it does emerge. Thanks again for sharing this performance work and your elegant language. Tony Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Hi Tony: Real-time composition is meant to refer to what i described earlier today as interactional performance with an extended sensual complexity, meaning the performers are invited to wear the sensorial garments (equipped with a range of sensors), explore the narrative storyboards through the tactile experience of coth and color and projective immersive environment (digital animations/video/sonic elements) in an open and unfolding manner, reacting to the subtle changes in the environment and enacting them (what we call wearing the space). It's not so minimalist, as the dancers explore psychologies of character and how cloth behaves and is sensed on the bodies, how it is heard (sound) and how it is moveable. It's a dialogue with the animate. If you see it as improvisation, what do you want me to say? we think of it as composing/revealing particular qualities of the sensorial garments which are the characters (and the cloth/flesh there meets the computational/data values generated and transmitted to the software patches) regards Johannes >> I have been following this thread regarding the your claims of "realtime composition." Perhaps I am missing something but I think your claims are overstated. In 100 words or less can you tell me how this work is more than minimalist dance improvisation in sensor garments. I like your language: "scientific methods of material construction and computational design that link the biological and the computational in a new narrative space" though the work itself is not fulfilling the promise. regards The Physical Scientist (Tony) Johannes Birringer wrote: hello Jeanette, list: it was interesting to read your reply to the discussion and your description of "en/traced" - I think you added some remarkable terms to the earlier dialogue, and it intrigues me how you speak of interaction or interactivity in terms of a conversation, synaptic connection in/between or synaptic meeting, and trialogue between yourself "as a highly trained enfleshed machine, the software/hardware elicting projected text and the the programmer." It's not often that we hear a dancer refer to herself as an "enfleshed machine" (is this also meant in reference to the Artaudian body without organs, is this your body disintegrated into the other "machines"?) --- and I am not quite sure whether Nathaniel Stern, whom you cite, uses the same terms when referring to the performance "composition of relationships." It appears that Nathaniel is referring to the software as an enfleshed machine watching you (could this be elaborated, what does this mean, what did the machine do when it "watched the form" ?), but both of you, I believe, are disussing emergent content and real-time composition, and - I gather - a kind of neural network or larger, collective consciousness in operation, perhaps in the manner in which Roy Ascott used to talk about this in his writings on telepresence and the telematic embrace. If the interactions are continuous, in the real-time performance (there is a need, it appears, to talk further about how we comprehend "real time composition" vis à vis choreography) and generate "sensorial flow", as you also say in response to my earlier propositions, what do you then call the compositions that occur in the trialogue, which you describe as "each 'machine' gazing and responding to the other, creating a new kind of consciousness that I had never experienced before"? The sensorial processes, if I understand you correctly, are indeed a matter of consciousness and perception, in shared real time circumstances that are experienced and manipulated by all three "machines" -- and that manipulation I assumed to be post choreographic, not subject to a determined structure for dancers (according to what was previously defined by Matt as choreography), it can't be caused by a "structure" at least in so far as, in my case, I don't understand structure to be fixed and causative. Real time composition - in my aesthetic understanding - is an open field of highly sensual complexity, implying, very much as you also suggest, that others become the subject, rather than the object, of our experience in a flow of multiple perceptual occurrences (in a living, animate space) unfolding continuously. This, my simple suggestion, is not reducible to "choreography" and structure, and the decentralization of the dancer (and of choreographic capture and the imposing of movement/direction) is of course also a decentralization of choreography and the enframing of dance by the choreographic. "Experimentalism" workshops (as Deborah Hay calls them) to foster other understandings of dance practice and real time composition have been going on for years of course. Deborah speaks of "becoming molecular", and she teaches various kinds of attention to presence and perceptual awareness, again in the sense of destructuring choreographic habits and visuality. When I spoke of sensual complexity in the experience of real time composition, i was trying to aim (in our discussion of the post-choreographic) at new planes of composition and interaction in the work we do. Self-organization, emergent enaction, adaptation and evolution (these terms we use are derived from biology, not dance theory and choreological theory) refer exactly to the machinic processes and human behaviors you mention, Jeanette, and I tried to posit for interactive performance what others have also posited (Mark Hansen, for examle, or Lars Spuybroek in his book "Machining Architecture"), namely that in complex interactions human and machine enactions can evolve in noncausal correlation with one another...... (see for example, Mark B. N. Hansen , "Embodiment: The Machinic and the Human," in Joke Brouwer, Arjen Mulder, Anne Nigten, Laura Martz, eds., aRt&D: Artistic Research and Development, Rotterdam: V2_Publishing/NAi Publishers, 2005, pp. 151-65. See also http://people.brunel.ac.uk/dap/machuma.html) In other words, my posts here were basically intended to be suggestive of a way of thinking and practicing which is more involved with physical responsiveness and adaptive processes (and how we integrate them collaboratively, as groups, as performers and writers) rather than with anything as dogmatic as I have been attacked with, in the dance tech net space where the postings had migrated for a while (http://dancetech.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1462368%3ABlogPost%3A12601). Sorry for any misunderstandings. with regards johannes birringer dap lab london Jeannette wrote < "design in motion" or "post choregraphic" thread. Here is an other view. I tend to agree with Matt on this "whilst the improvisation and composition may occur after the creation of a choreographic structure they are not 'post choreographic'" and also "the 'sensorial flow' is the outcome of the arrangement of hardware/software." I also tend to agree that there is not "structure as outcome" as Johannes put it but rather a synaptic connection as outcome, connecting the "points in space" and creating a "rhizomatic configuration" [Sadie Plant] and conversation between the Artaudian "body without organs" and electrical impulses. An open field of possibile synaptic meetings emerge. This I experienced in a work in which I danced/peformed/conversed/immersed myselfhood in. I was immersed in a "trialogue" between myself as a highly trained enfleshed machine, the software/hardware elicting projected text and the programmer. The outcome and parameters were not structure but more about seeing and eliciting - each "machine" gazing and responding to the other, creating a new kind of consciousness that I had never experienced before. My sense of corporeality was laid bare, not encased in a flesh, or skin. The innner and outer notion of myself de-materialized and I felt a fusion between the different hard/software. My selfhood, "I" was effaced with an-other sense of identity. My moving body felt was wholly integrated and enmeshed within the "trialogue". It seems to support Lakoff's notions of our "embodied interactions" with the world. This was probably also emphasised as I faced the screen, with my back to the audience, in order to "converse" with the other machines. This trialogue represented a new selfhood and I did not objectify myself for the audience. The conversation, the combination of different media became object. Here is a description of the work, en/traced, performed in 2001 for the Third www Conference held at the Genkor Art Gallery, University of Johannesburg, formerly the Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, South Africa. The software for the piece was developed by Nathaniel Stern, http://www.nathanielstern.com , a digital installation artist and was first used in entraced (2001). Here he describes this work: "en/traced, a collaboration with dancer / choreographer Jeannette Ginslov, is a composition of relationships between a highly trained human body, an enfleshed machine, and a real-time programmer. The three fractally realized parts form an extra-ordinary body whose organs are distributed between them. In the en/traced trialogue, the machine watches the form, eliciting text with its motion; the programmer watches the screen, beckoning these characters with his keys; and each answers the other two in turn. The relationship between the three bodies is also a body itself - an/other form of consciousness. This composition disrupts the usual relations of looking. Viewers are invited to see the spaces between and in 'seeing,' they are eliciting another new body between parts. This fractal composition begs questions of experience, relationships, consciousness and enfleshment." The real time composition or real time responsive choreography is what gets my attention. It is presented in the now, a state of presence is necessary. So yes a "sensorial flow" is what could best describe the act of real time choreography. Best wishes Jeannette Ginslov Director Walking Gusto Productions multimedia dance theatre South Africa www.wgp.co.za ----- Original Message ----- From: "Johannes Birringer" To: Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 10:31 PM Subject: [dance-tech] Re: post / choreographic Hi all: Our recent discussion of the "post-choreographic" seems to have ended in a bit of an unresolved state -- our attention shifted to "Glow" and "Silent Room" after Hélène urged us to look Skoltz_Kolgen & I became interested in what S_K call "contamination of the senses".. -- i'm afraid I did not fully answer Matt's very cogently argued points about the "technological and perceptual context of the sensors" in his February 20 post. Naturally, it would nice to hear from others. To refresh ::[Matt wrote] >> in «suna no onna» there are three elements which form the choreographic structure; scenario, scenography and sensors. using these elements the performers engage in realtime composition and improvisation. whilst the improvisation and composition may occur after the creation of a choreographic structure they are not 'post choreographic'. if we were to follow your logic then all performance would be 'post-choreographic' in that it resulted 'from', rather than 'being' the choreography. the sensorial 'flow' in «suna no onna» may be emergent but the 'data' itself is not. you have chosen the - type of sensors - location of sensors - sensor sampling rate - sensor sensitivity range - sensor communication protocol - affect sensor can have on the environment all these things are a mix of structure and form, the 'flow' is emergent content. this flow/content is derived from the actions of the performers, which the sensors /garments are designed to (continuously) sample. the 'sensorial flow' is the outcome of the arrangement of hardware/software. the fact that the performers can use this output as stimulus is irrelevant. the flow is a function of your choreographic and dramaturlogical structure. >>> I think Matt has argued quite fervently for a sustainable notion of "choreography" even under conditions of real-time enactment and composition, emergence and complexity within the dramaturgical arrangements for "sensorial flow" and thus, as I tried to suggest, within an undetermined framework for realization or manifestation generating a new performance each time such a "work" is produced. My notion of dramaturgy here is directec cleartly towards the sensorial and experiential, and a kind of "design in motion". Even as I agree with everything Matt lists above (referring to the sensors and the "design"), I still would not think of the performance techniques we work with as "choreographic" - I don't know what word to use. I never experienced the sensors to be predictable or behaving according to protocol, and if you suggest that all movement is always (Judson example) "adaptable" to specific and changing circumstances, thus following "choreographic rules", then I am at a loss for words again, as on the one hand it would make the term choreographic apply to anything (thus making it less useful , no?), and on the other it would exclude a fluidity in the structural itself. For me structure is not something fixed or determined as you imply in your examples. I can easily undestand STRUCTURE AS OUTCOME. that is what I thought was implied by my suggestion of the post-choreographic. Our performers are not working in the way you suggest, are not following rules nor adapting, strictly speaking, even to a changing sensorial & digital (virtual) environment. I was thinking that the real time composition of the actions and reactions to responsive behaviors in the projected (perceived, seen, heard, felt, touched.) environment creates an interfacial momentum that, unlike your structural argument, is much more molecular. >>but all 'moving' objects (physical or represented/mediated) in a >>performative setting are choreographed>> well. Not really, . You reply to my suggestions saying that "wanting to explore the sensate does not exclude the choreographic," and you may very well be right. All of our performance techniques and the real-time enactions were owed to the exploration of the tactile and sensorial garments as "characters," and we certainly did work off a narrative structure. But this structure did not determine the objects. We didn't think that the enactions and the sensorial processes were enframed by the choreographic as an apparatus of distribution and organization. That apparatus seemed to have receded from sight. ** I read production notes from Fahrudin Salihbegovic the other day, he had created a "digital performance" in Serbia and written about their struggling with sensors and digital environment programming. He comes to the conclusion that he had wanted to transform the theatre into a new cybertheatre of interactivity, but when he noticed that the sensors were not working, he thought they had nevertheless created a "dramaturgy of digital performance" for interactivity. He says that "it was proven to us that a performance can be interactive and at the same time be organized as a stable dramaturgical structure. We simply created a dramaturgical space for the interactivity, a framework for its safe use" (they ended up using a camera interface for Isadora video effects in "Waar is daar"). My point (regarding Suna no Onna) was exactly the opposite. We were not creating a safe structure. Although i might be deluding myself, since we had a scenario for sure, carefully "set in motion,." Yet i have also, like Fahrudin, experienced enough situtions where we or someone worked with brittle interfaces and ended up having a back up plan (plan B), to simulate the interactivity or play tape (as was done in the Trisha Brown touring of "how much......" ), some strange cases of bad faith indeed. Performing with the sensorial garments to create a "wearable space" can't result in an interfacial composition in the digital sense of enaction if the emergent flow is not changing the environment. If it does not change the environment, I am afraid we end up with uninteresting choreography, at least I would fear so in the context of the digital and the way it is explored through real time enactment and interactivity. I could be wrong though, Richard Povall has argued strongly for carefully rehearsed and well crafted choreography, if i understand him correctly, and Richard of course worked with Big Eye early on. Those were the days, the early adapter days. now the Royal Ballet does it too. ("Electric Counterpoint, Royal Ballet " : http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/dance/article3492122.ece) With regards Johannes Birringer DAP-Lab