Ghislaine Boddington of shinkansen is moderating an ISEA-FORUM Chatterbox 3.0 and posed the following question: "What do you see as the most important development for dance interfaced with technology in the next ten years? What is your vision for the future of dance?" [My response to this question is below. If you wish to see some of the other responses you can join in the forum -- see the email of Tue, 14 Mar 2000 from Reinhold Grether <Reinhold.Grether@uni-konstanz.de> for details on how to link up.] The future of dance (as an extension of the 20th century art form trajectory) has primarily to do with how it is that MOVEMENT TRAINING PRACTICES overlap with CHOREOGRAPHIC INSPIRATION. These two things may or may not interface directly with technology. For my proposal today, I will focus on my vision for MOVEMENT TRAINING. Movement training ideas experienced a surge of development in the early part of this century as objective (observed) information about movement and neuro-muscular phenomena filtered into the dance field from scientific-medical explorations underway in the 19th Century. This information indirectly and directly inspired the specific dance training contributions of western movement analysts such as Rudolph Laban as well as the efforts of modern dance pioneers to develop training techniques for particular forms of expression (e.g. Martha Graham). In addition, an influx of cross-cultural information from Asia (different body/ mind relationships) arrived via various theatre/ dance practioners and other cultural conduits... contributing to developments in physical training around the mid part of this century. As we finish out the 20th Century going into the 21st, there are no such surges on the horizon as we recycle these existing ideas and techniques in contemporary contexts. My vision of the future of movement training ideas overlapping with technological developments sees the development of a "smart studio". Movement training from classical ballet to contact improvisation depends on a feedback environment, one which combines material and immaterial mediums: the floor, bars, and mirrors; the touch or voice of the teacher; observation/ analysis possible using video recording and playback; mind and body kineasthetic/ proxemic-haptic / proprioceptic feedback. What if this feedback environment were digitally enhanced? I am aware of experiments done in the Intelligent Stage (developed at the Institute for Studies in the Arts, Univ. of Arizona) by Jenny Denny testing Laban's theory of space harmony in an environment rigged up with sensors... but nothing else that I know of since then. Much of the focus on developing sensor/ trigger systems centers on their use in performance or installation. What if the focus shifted towards dance training environments and included the latest in medical research into biofeedback mechanisms like the "LifeShirt" being developed by a company in America for patient monitoring (http://www.lifeshirt.com). The LifeShirt system consists of a form-fitting, hand-washable, reusable shirt into which have been sewn an array of physiologic sensors and electrocardiographic electrodes. Imagine you are in a dance studio taking a class in 2020. The floor has pressure sensors that track your ability to change the orientation of your body center (and relative weight); posture acceleromotors sewn into areas of your clothing (so small you won't feel them) utilize aural feedback to let you know that you are losing energy in the turn because there is the wrong alignment between knee and hip. Running along the centre of the mirror will be a small graphic feedback letting you know if your breath and heart rate are remaining in synch. Spatially, a video recognition system (an advanced BIGEYE) will inform you that your shapes in an adagio conform to your internal sense of them or not. 3-D motion capture will be running alongside 2-D video recording and playback showing your movements from every dimension. Rather than waiting to watch this material after the exercise, they may be played simultaneously or within seconds on a large LCD screens in the walls. None of these would replace the training feedback systems already developed (both internal and external) --- merely augment them. The reason you will have access to technologies such as this is that the scientific-medical community became convinced in the early part of the 21st century that the sophistication of dance movement forms was a much more valuable field to develop their technological research in than sports. What we can't predict is the sorts of dances we will begin to see as choreographic inspiration begins to overlap with these augmented movement training practices. ************************************** Best, Scott ---------------------------------------------------==| ---------------------------------------------------==| Scott deLahunta -> Dartington College of Arts [13/09/99 - 12/09/00] e: sdela@ahk.nl m: +44 (0)797 741 2060 w: http://huizen.dds.nl/~sdela/wra Dartington College of Arts Totnes, Devon, TQ9 6EJ, UK tel: +44 (0)1803 862224 fax: +44 (0)1803 863569 http://www.dartington.ac.uk/ ---------------------------------------------------==| Dance and Technology Zone http://www.art.net/~dtz ---------------------------------------------------==|
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