[dance-tech] more for the awakening list

  • From: Marlon Barrios-Solano <unstablelandscape@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: dance-tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 07:43:37 -0700 (PDT)

   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://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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