[dance-tech] Re: IDAT in the blue sky
- From: "Birringer, Johannes" <johannes.birringer@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <dance-tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 01:40:30 -0000
Happy New Year to all :
It's always good to start a new year with a little debate, and now Jamie Jewett
has planted a seed that could be worth pursuing, a discussion not only about
future meeting points, events, workshops, conferences or festivals, for those
in the intersecting communities of dance/ performance/ music and art
technologies and digital media practices, but also perhaps this question
---whether we need these meetings and where we need them and how we construct
them---may need to go along with a necessary awareness of the historical
trajectores that lie behind us, that have emerged and diverged. "IDAT," I
suppose, was an umbrella name once used (in North America) for important
gatherings (conference-exhibitions) of the evolving dance technology community
in the 1990s, several (I believe four or five altogether) having taken place
in Canada and the US........ but as Simon Biggs correctly points out, not
everyone elsewhere knows that name, nor is that name a TM that belongs to
anyone who at one point or another took it upon themselves to host an
international dance and technology meeting...... and the more I think about
it, the less I remember, and i can't find an archive of these "idats." Which
is perhaps truly regrettable, although the "proceedings" were properly
collected in print and edited, the last one dating back to 1999 (held at ASU
and organized by John Mitchell and his team).
http://art.net/resources/dtz/dtz.html
I then looked up the dance and technology zone archive, and could not find many
references to "Idat" (prior to 1999), and the archive is incomplete and was not
continued. The dance tech mailist, initially initiated by Scott deLahunta and
Mark Coniglio many years ago, and then moderated for a number of years by
Scott Sutherland (at one point hosted at the OSU server, then migrated),
stopped operating in March-April 2005, and we were left with uncertainty as to
what that meant, or whether it had died or would be rejuvenated.
As far as it concerned me at Nottingham, in the (then) final stages of
preperation for the December 2005 Digital Cultures Lab, the communication
breakdown was a very negative experience, which could only be compensated by
the already grown, existing, and expanding networks that we are all part of.
In the fall we then started this new list. At some point, it also became
obvious to me that it was time to move forward to raise new questions and make
other connections, our performance field (and the research that feeds into it),
has grown quite complex and hybrid, and there is a constant and expanding
influx of younger generations of artists (and also students)...... but as Jamie
points out, if some of you are engaged in teaching dance/performance and new
media practices, new theories of collaboration, new interdisciplinary methods
of working, or in moving towards a PhD or shifting the educational patterns in
your departments or companies, then these histories of the field (and our
lovely bibliographies) may of course be of some relevance, even though I'd
suggest the existing ones
(http://art.net/resources/dtz/biblio.html)
http://www.notam02.no/icma/interactivesystems/dance.html
http://www.music.mcgill.ca/musictech/ISIDM/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_technology
http://dance-technology.wikiverse.org/
http://staging.greatdance.com/danceblog/
and many others that might exist on various blogs or dance websites (I do not
have a complete listing, sorry) , may often be out of date or abandoned or
sleeping. Blogs tend to be fresher, but how many blogs can one read in one
night?
As to creating an organizational structure for an "Idat" organization, yes,
that was attempted some time in 2002-03, there were elections, a board was
formed, but the Board disbanded, like rock groups sometimes do, after finding
it impossible to move forward and agree on how to move forward, and there was
no funding to underwrite the organisational formation, nor was there a
widespread agreement, in the first place, about the need for a formal
organisation. Dancetechnology.com and .org sites say 'coming soon' in front
of a blue sky, just as we have it here in Texas. As you all know, it takes
tremendous commitment anbd idealism to run a non-profit venture.
So i think, apart from the name "IDAT" which is used by other existing
organisations, and apart from what IDAT meant and once was, this may be a good
time to look forward, find out about yours and others' plans and objectives,
projects worldwide but also in smaller locations and not just the metropoles (
bibliographies and their implicit histories, see above, are often quite
euro-american and do not reflect the artistic work and the thinking being done
elsewhere), educational changes, curatorial challenges, research
implications....... , also reflecting on the cross-cultural emphasis and the
questions regarding dance and science which were featured at the Digital
Cultures Lab (http://www.digitalcultures.org).
I would be pleased to hear more responses, productive criticism (of our
existing platforms), and suggestions regarding the planning and implementation
of larger and/or smaller meetings, conferences and international workshops.
There is no central administration, and thus it will be hard to avoid overlaps
or scheduling conflicts. Our new dance tech list needs to grow as well, so
that messages can reach into all parts of the world. I heard at the DC Lab
gathering that a number of initiatives in our field are under way, -- in
Turkey, in Brasil, in Portugal, in France, then there is the MDF (Monaco Dance
Forum) looming in December 2006, there are other festivals and screenings
planned (as we heard from Doug), and it might be of a certain advantage if we
create a "platform" for a calendar of events.
More interesting, of course, are the ideas that drive such events, the new
artwork that is being created, the new sottware and the new
inter-collaborations that we see in such astonishing and manifold ways.
regards
Johannes Birringer
Mother Dog Studios
Houston, TX
www.aliennationcompany.com
-----Original Message-----
From: dance-tech-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of jamie jewett
Sent: Tue 1/3/2006 4:10 PM
To: dance-tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [dance-tech] IDAT?
Greetings All!
I am wondering what the current status is of IDAT -
I know that a while back the old dance-tech/IDAT situation was dissolved or
morphed into something new - and perhaps this is a process still in progress -
as the dancetechnology.com and .org sites say 'coming soon'
We were interested in beginning to explore hosting some version of IDAT or
something similar and as such I was trying to get in touch with people who have
been involved at the organizational/board level.
Obviously we are all benefiting from Johannes continuing to offer sites for
international discussion/exploration - such as the festivals he hosted at OSU
and just recently the Digital Culture Lab - are there other movements afoot?
trying to get in the loop -or start one..
best
Jamie Jewett
Brown University
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