[dance-tech] Sensordance / choreography / instrument + posthuman
- From: "Jaime del Val" <jaimedelval@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <dance-tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:53:43 +0200
small correction
> Hi there,
>
> I answer now the last post of Johannes on this thread.
>
>
> >>>(THERE IS NO MORE CHOREOGRAPHY, IN THE CONTEXT WE ARE DISCUSSING)
>
> Well, I guess in that practice there tends to be quite a bit of
> choreography, and if we take the term in a broader definition, as an
> écríture, as the shiftng repetition of forms... then I wonder how far our
> bodies can think in ways totally removed from choreography. Firstly within
> the dance circles, at least within all those traditions, western or not,
> that have a background in choreography, secondly within digital culture at
> large I believe there is a cult for choregraphy as one more important
> element of the globalised market: Why is it after all that people in the
> discos tend to dance in pretty much the same ways in New York, Hong Kong,
> Madrid or Sydney(and I often love to dance in the discos)...? There is of
> course a music-video industry that deals with choreograpy, and even when
> based upon traditions of improvisation, the fixed repetition of the videos
> become choreography... rather fixed and repetitive actually, but its
> implicit reproduction hides behind the façade of "free movement", it is
> actually a logo of the insdustry, so to speak, strenghtened by the fixed
> musical architechture that contaminates every space, public or
private......
> and then there is publicity, and tv and video games (I still remember
> someone's remark at the DCL in Nottingham last year about how kids salute
> each other in the manner of video-game charachters)... of course we can
say
> that culture itself, and the articulate forms of identity and normative
> subjectivity can be traced -throughout history- in terms of chreographed
> bodies (Susan Foster points in that direction in the article
"Choregraphies
> of Gender") but what is happening now at the level of the global standard
> market is something new. Should we distingish between implicit and
explicit
> choreography for the sake of this discussion?
>
>
>
> >>>(YES, I WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS THE 'INSTRUMENT" and HOW FAR YOU EXTEND
> THIS CONCEPT OR IDEA. INCLUDING THE PHYSICAL BODY/NERVOUS SYSTEM, THE
> SPACE, THE AUGMENTED REALITY/RESPONSIVE ARCHITECTURE, THE
GARMENT/WEARABLE,
> THE SOFTWARE, THE HARDWARE ?
>
> Yes i do extend the concept to all these elements or more... its is not
> possible to trace a priori fixed limits to what can be an instrument, or
> part of it.
>
> >>>BUT NONE OF THESE ARE MEDIA SPECIFIC AND CLEARLY CATEGORIZABLE, AND THE
> RELATION BETWEEN WEARING BODY AND VIDEO IS NOT THE SAME, NECESSARILY, AS
> BETWEEN PIANO PLAYER AND KEYBOARD (if you follow the musical association
if
> 'instrument'). What exactly is an interface instrument, and can one
> choreograph with it?
>
> The specificty of an instrument develops in certain contexts of sedimented
> use. And the sedimented use should also influence and feedback the shape
and
> limits of the instrument, make it more specific, define more precisely the
> momentary organicity for that Body without Organs.
>
> Regarding existing systems or parts (which may become eventual bits and
> pieces of our more specific instrument) I guess most of them can be seen
as
> media specific if studied under the light of the context for whith they
were
> developed, although this is not always easy to trace (I can't tell now the
> genealogy of each sensor for example, but tracing this genealogy would
help
> us to understand something of its specifity or of the changing forms of
> specificty it has aquired. however we needn't know this in order to give
it
> a specificty within an instrument we create. It is not possible to define
> exact boundaries for a instrument, because anything can be one, any given
> thing can suddenly be invested with the communicating forces, like lets
say
> when we start to make music with a fork... the complexity of the
instrument
> is qualitative and therefore has no limits.
>
> We could attempt to say that an interface instrument is an intensive body
> that has sedimented acquiring certain appearance of structure that is
> however only the effect of the communicating forces, and therefore always
> subject to change, the apparent material structure has no meaning in
itself
> whatsoever, it is an aftereffect of the forces just like the body itself
is,
> it sediments thorugh multiple improvisations, aquiring certain relative
> communicative potentials that shift over time.
>
> The specificity of the instrument is the specificity of the language.
>
> The relation pianoplayer-pianokeyboard, as parts of an instrument can be
> quite similar, if not identical to, that of a dancer and the
videoprocessing
> software... or it can be completely different. Like there are also very
> many, infinite, forms of understanding, articulationg, thinking and
> experiencing the relation pianoplayer-pianokeyboard. Yet there are
> sedimented traditions of piano playing that set up a framework for our
> understanding of the relation as something almost fixed and very specific.
> There is no such background for the relation between dance and video...
but
> dance has a background and the moving image has a background... there is a
> collision taking place between two distinct contexts or bodies of
> communication... this can take place in inifinite ways and I find this
> opennes wonderful... if explored in depth... it can lead to the
articulation
> of such an incredible diversity of instruments.... in this case the
> instrument will be articulating a "language of interaction" (I will leave
> the issue around interactivity, what it is etc... for another time,
although
> perhaps it is time to restart that one discussion), let's say a "language
of
> relations" between elements that were distinct to a certain extent, that
had
> developed under the framing of distinct traditions and disciplines and
> anatomies, and yet even inspite of that distinct differentiation of the
> disciplines our bodies are constantly breaking the rules, establishing new
> frontiers of meanings and potential relations... to me developing such an
> instrument is digging deeper into the oppennes of that associative
> process... but this is only one approach; I am curious to know about
> infinite others!...
>
> So in my case I want to explore my own associations between movement and
> sound and image, to start with, being both musician, visual artist,
> dancer-performer... so I built an extremely open matrix of possible
> relations between parameters, defining a vast amount of sound paramenters
> and image parameters, and also of movement parameters (or video analysis
> parameters). The more I work with it the more I articulate parts of its
> structure, and the more the language of relation (as well as the musical,
> visual, movement languages) evolve or sediment. This multilayer character
is
> fundamental as soon as you are working with relations of categories that
you
> have embodied as different... yet the more you work in between, in the
> relation of the multiple layers, the more the frontier between categories
> starts to shift.... and most interesting is it when you feel that you are
> hanging totally in between... in a new kind of body... perhaps then, and
> only then, you are starting to make, and to be a new instrument.
>
>
> Can there be choreography with an instrument that involves a dancer,
camera,
> sensors, video and electroacoustics, for example?
> Of course there can... It is again a question of sedimentation... but
also
> of discretisation.
> On the one hand I personally experience the need to start repeating,
perhaps
> choreographing, at a certain point in the process of developing the
> language-instrument, it is part of the process, improvisation is not
enough
> all the time.... and after a while repeating these eventual syllables of
> your new language you go back to improvisation, and so on... the more you
> work with the instrument in specific direction the more you are likely to
> generate the possibilities for a choreography (even if your intention is
not
> to make one).
> Then there is the issue of how you discretisise movement, which is what
> eventually makes a choreography possible: each dance tradition is
interested
> in different aspects of movement and ignores or codemnes the others, even
in
> modern traditions of "free movement", or conceptual or whatever: we are
> always confined within a shifting territory of how we think the body and
> experience being a body. So we can always define specific margins of error
> and discreteness that will work to a certain extent within the framework
of
> the instrument. This needs a lot of tuning and practice, I haven't come to
> that point yet.... If only we try to think how many centuries have gone by
> for the articulation of musical acoustic instruments, their languages and
> techniques... and now we want to articulate, build, tune, and learn to
play
> just in some weeks... in such a period it is not possible to develop the
> specificity, that's why so often we remain in a level of remix, or of
> "technical demonstration" which is no other than showing an existing or
potential instrument in collision with the dance. So I make a claim for the
long term periods of
> sedimentation! (whether we want to choreograph or not).
>
>
> Interface-instrument... mmmh, I think the intrument in some ways tries to
> surpass the idea of the interface. the musical instrument as i am
proposing
> to understand it has no explicit exterior, its meaning is only as an
> intensive communicating body, and in such a state the frontier between the
> body of the player and the body of the keyboard is irrelevant, even the
> frontier with the body of the listener who is embodying the music.
>
> This should take us onto a discussion on the genealogy of the concept of
> interface, its relation to a materialist tradition, the ways in which
> digital culture is relying and reproducing that tradition, and also a
> discussion on the posthuman... but I leave that for another occasion. I
will
> answer the other transubstation post later.
>
>
> Just a question for provocation (I will answer it myself later):
>
> Is dance-tech instrinsically posthuman? ----((and, how do we define
> posthuman, etc...?))
>
>
> regards
> Jaime
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