Doug's latest comments address a much wider cultural and political arena
in
which, as Scott suggested, we could honestly examine our artistic
practices
"to interrogate the assumptions derived from existing institutionalized
tele-communications?"
Referring to the Democratic Convention, Doug wrote
> We in the US witness these media spectacles regularly in both sports
and
> politics. They are performances in every sense of the word, telematic,
live
> and mediated. Yet while Scott makes the point that in the early days of
the
> telephone, there was bewilderment, etc, no such confusion or
disorientation
> exists in today's media shows.
> I find that much of contemporary dance tech performance work suffers
from
> the same thing that contact improv suffered from (and still does). Namely
> that it generally feels better to do it than to watch it, especially if
the
> improv is faltering or the partners are not well matched, etc.
I'm glad you picked up on the issue of contact improvisation, I think
it's
very useful to look at it as a form or practice (not a training or
technique
per se) that is very releavnt to contemporary "contact improvisations"
with
sensors, wired motion capturing, interactive and nervous systems,
telematic
scenarios and telecommunications generally, except of course that the
one-to-one physical interaction has changed or been displaced onto the
one-to-camera/sensor or one-to-computer interface interaction, and I am
not
sure whether we have yet seen a concise new training vocabulary or
technique
(as in, say, Forsythe's 'Improvisation Technologies' which clearly
involve a
kind of post-Laban system of formal architectural and spatial concepts,
harmonies, and disharmonies). The question of where the audience is and
what
they do, I think, is critical in light of the political/global context,
partners not well matched. Strangely, the Chameleons 3 netcast was just
announced, and we learn that
>... the audience is 'absent'. Watching via computer, and able to converse
and interact with the live performers via their keyboards, the audience
become involved as part of the action, or watch as silent observers.>>>
aha. I want to shift attention, for a moment, from the Democratic
Convention to the disastrous fatal accident of the Russian nuclear
submarine
Kursk. In a way, Doug, we cannot but call the mediatisation of the
accident
(not instant, but with brief delay, and then further complications in
the
transnational cross links) a political media spectacle, but one that
disproves the assumption that >>no such confusion or disorientation
exists in today's media shows.>>
On the contrary, German public television, with all its live satellite
links
and experts in various studios in various locations (Hamburg, London,
Glasgow, Oslo, Murmansk, Moscow, Jalta, Washington, etc) and ships,
tried to
get closer (no "real time" images until yesterday, when the Norwegian
divers
took their digital cameras down) to the truth of the accident, or the
possibility of survivors, while getting hopelessly entangled in a
bizarre
mesh of rumors, anticipations, deductions, speculations, ideological
assumptions, arrogant interpretations and various other postcold-war
antimonies
that exploited the fact that, on the other side, the Russian populace
was
grossly misinformed or misled, and that the Russian media had to deal
with
the tactical disinformation strategies of the military command who was
clearly also improvising, and making lots of mistakes along the way.
What
should not get lost in an analysis of the political use of telematics is
the
fact that the Russian sailors were considered expendable, and that their
relatives and families were treated with utter disrespect and
callousness.
This net congestion was full of obscenities, and i am not sure, now,
what it
means if a group announces a telematic interactive performance and
invites
audiences to be silent observers.
I think we may be well served if we were willing to discuss the extent
to
which current commercial telecommunications (Big Brother, etc) reinvent
a
brutal and cynical "arena mediology" (Peter Sloterdijk), reinventing
Roman
gladiator mass spectacles in the colosseum by launching and marketing
"scandals" as a kind of contact sport, rituals of blood letting and
daemonization, snuff movies.
The globally linked mass entertainment/information industries are hooked
together, with their corporations, parliaments, and news agencies (so
are
universities and applied sciencies and the knowledge-based economies,
and,
let's say, their current business interests in biotechnologies and
genetics), the consumers buy product as silent, disaffected or no less
cynical consumers, and the whole "inter-active" dimensions, I think,
need to
be subjected to a much harsher analysis than media and
discourse/communications theories care to produce. Liebe deinen
Nächsten,
nein danke! (Slavoy Zizek).
Or at least, it would be necessary to ask, for example, whether new
technology-oriented arts programs in universities, or digital art shows
in
the galleries or at SIGGRAPH, are subject to pressures that we see in
liberal arts and science parks that are no longer interested in the
humanities or critical theory but invested in research and development
(applied science), in efficient, profitable applications of new
knowledge
("technology transfer").
A tiny example from the local level: While working at Hellerau, I found
out
that the city of Dresden is cutting (the budget for culture, the arts,
youth
culture and sports) and shifting its funding to the economic and
infrastructural development of the new "Biopolis" in Dresden (the
construction of a major biotechnology science park, with the relocation
of
the Max-Planck Institute to the area, where the life sciences will
cohabit
with the already booming information and electronics industries in the
city).
It would interest me to know, who amongst us, is invited to be a
consultant
for interactive media/communications, for movement therapy technologies
in
the medical sector; who has considered to become a start-up company in
biofeedback engineering/robotics, with application programs for
athletes,
adventure tourists or entertainers, or stress management, etc?
Secondly, I would encourage members of our group to address the question
of
the future role of dance&technology in relation to cuts in arts and
humanities funding, and to university investments in distance learning
or in
concentrating technology-development for the hard sciences. It would
interest me a lot to learn how you, if you have been invited to develop
software or work with motion capture or telematic technologies, devise
artistic, practical research in dance technologies, in the context of
technology transfers to the life sciences as indicated above (cf.
Innovation
Works, Inc., in Pittsburgh, or BioSTAR at Univ. of California). How do
private industry interests connect to public art? How "efficient" are
interactive experiments we have to offer?
One may assume that universities or foundations who support
communications
technology may not be interested in artistic process? How do independent
artists produce knowledge and resist institutionalized
tele-communications
or the demands of "globalization" understood as corporate take-overs and
alignments of "artistic freedom of research"?
Johannes Birringer
AlienNation Co.
http://www.aliennationcompany.com
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