Dawn recently joined the summer debate that had evolved, and she comments: >Artist's & Technologists... I am fatigued from defending my interest > in using interactive sensing systems in my work. Why are we all so > concerned about whether it's ok for us to use new media devices in our > works, even if we don't know why we are using them. >It is ok. We each have > our reasons don't we? Are we that insecure? Just make a definition for > yourself and go. The hype won't last forever and actually maybe we can help > by not hyping our own work I am not sure how Dawn read the discussions we actually had, there was little said about hype etc, and a lot about content and ideas and processes that drive new work and that drive workshops in which artists come together to experiment. I think we also were quite concerned precisely about whether we know why we are using interactive technologies, I think it would make sense, for the content and the ideas in a work, to know why you use media and how you use them to enhance the meaning of a work and how it communicates with our audiences. (as to the latter, I can see the point you are making today regarding "Interface") More specifically, I found your remarks about audience interest as well as about your own Live-I workshop intriguing: you say: > However, we too had a dance space and hardly got up from > behind our computers to use it. I felt that the learning curve on the side > of the software was so giant that we could barely get to the theory's and > idea's behind using those softwares. ........ > Getting these workshops to really be about dancing/performance/composition > is a tough issue because you can't teach the tools AND the composition for > the tools in a week. I think I know what you mean, but you are resigned to what was my critique all summer long, namely that dance technology workshops often tend to get focused on the software, on wiring and engineering challenges, or on testing how the interactive system might work. Musically speaking, you can create sound from working with your computer or your synthesizer or sampler, but you can"t create a choreography that way. You also addressed Tomie/Curtis's new piece, which is described as using > a new wireless interactive dance system >by Bahn where gestural information from Tomie Hahn's performance is sent >by radio to an interactive computer music system, sounds from the computer >are then radio-ed back to small speakers mounted on Hahn's body while she >dances. I think the challenge for the studio, here, lies in working with dancers/musicians and a mutual understanding of MIDI and the movement's active compositional role in creating spatial effects, gestures, tempi and rhythms on the one hand, which can be linked interactively to the computer (and feedback loops). And on the other hand, the challenge lies in imagining what one wants to express or compose with the gestures, how to rehearse with Midi, and additionally, with and after captured video images of the gestures, etc. If the performance is visually driven (use of dance and video projections) and has a discernible visual language, the rehearsal is not just with software or feedback, but with a (pure) movement choreography or with a script or storyboard. The latter, narrative dance-theatre, involving music and film, approximates opera and its challenges for design and scenography, and we could point out that we are now talking (on this complex level) about composite compositional techniques. Even if we work as collaborative teams, I think the notion of the "studio" (dance studio, usually empty) needs to change, since we cannot confuse the computer screen with an opera studio. If that is so, one-week workshops are indeed an impossible challenge. Iris Tenge suggested that "old categories no longer fit an interdisciplinary reality" - quite so. I do think, however, that new techniques for the mixology are emerging. Scott deLahunta suggested to me that we create a workshop series on "softwares for dancers," and I would respond by suggesting we also need "new choreographies for softwares", or without softwares. I currently favor an approach where interactive media are only used intermittently, sparingly, within a larger work that has its own integrity-- i.e. I don't want to build a work around a software system, but perhaps use a specific medium or intermedia when the story and dramaturgy of the work require it, or a feedback that the dancer can't do with his own body or voice alone. Johannes Birringer AlienNation Co. http://www.aliennationcompany.com OSU_Dance http://www.wexarts.org/thefold/
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