Greetings,
Two of my palindrome colleagues and myself were at the ICMC in berlin.
http://icmc2000.org
ICMC must surely be the musicians' equivalent of IDAT. It is however, as
you might expect somewhat larger. It seems also, I must say, more
self-confident. At IDAT99 there were many who were curious about dance and
technology. Some were experimenters of course. At ICMC most of the
participants, it seemed, have been doing it for YEARS, and with CONVICTION.
They were not only on the whole much more technically savvy, but they were
also more engaged and had clearer vision of why where and how they were
headed.
It was really quite inspiring (we'd planned to stay 2 days, but ended up
staying 4). As with the dance-tech world, "interactive" artists and
methods represented only a minority of those involved, but there were, as i
said, still many more of them, and the works they made, as well as the
research and development issues they were discussing and presenting papers
on were more sophisticated.
Clear, musicians are not smarter than dancers -- i mean there is a whole
row reasons for this discrepancy. I'd like to talk though about other things.
For example, the fascinating overlaps of our interests. For example, "the
human body interface", which includes such things as interface sensor and
software development. There is a considerable body of published work, for
example, dealing with analysis of what music scientists call "gesture" (in
relation to music creation). Basically this means how do move your body
and its parts to generate artistic expression (in their case, of course,
mediated by sound-producing devices). Check their proceedings, or ask me
for details.
Two effective and refined video-based sensor systems were presented (one
developed by Antonio Camurri, et al, at University of Genova; and, ahem,
our own, EyeCon), as well as papers on a number of hand-manipulated devices
(including some with forced feedback). There were some studies on the
accuracy of control for given musical tasks. Fascinating.
There is a newly-formed icma (computer music association) work group
concerned with interfaces, interactive performance forms and so on. I am
offering my participation. I have some ideas for better
cross-fertilization (see below).
Somewhat disappointing, and frankly curious to me was the fact that i
seemed to be the only dancer there. (There _were_ those there I had met at
IDAT, a musician and installation artist, just no dancers/choreographers!)
I just I mean YOU GUYS MISSED SOMETHING!
We have so much to learn from our fellow computer-using artists. Dance, as
we all know (well, as some of you might agree) is not exactly the most
"advanced" of art forms.
so here's my idea:
Since only a fraction of the submissions here address interactive media
issues of interdisciplinary collaboration, etc., and the same is true for
the corresponding musicians and technology group,
it occurred to me, one might set up an anthology internet-based discussion
group. It would simply re-print the submissions to both groups pertinent
to interactivity and the human movement interface. get it? it would
itself accept no postings (only subscriptions) and thus would offer no
competition to either group. It would be a resource to those overwhelmed
by, what to them is irrelevant mail, AND it provides the first central
meeting point between our two camps.
What do you think? Have I overlooked something? Are there technical,
efficacy or ethics issues involved? Is there someone out there with the
resources (i suppose a server) and time to do the submission filtering?
With friendly regards,
Robert Wechsler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Robert Wechsler
Artistic Director
PALINDROME Inter-media Performance Group
Johannisstr. 42
90419 Nürnberg
fon: 49 911 39 74 72
fax: 49 911 377 8311
mobile: 49 179 511 0400
complete information, including scheduled touring, photographs, and so on
can be found under: http://www.palindrome.de
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