I really want to take the time to reply but I am swamped with grant
deadlines and I am leaving to California to perform this weekend. Give me a
week to really read what's been said and get a response together. Didn't
want you all to think that I was uninterested!
Ack.
Dawn
>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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Dawn Stoppiello / Artistic Co-Director / Troika Ranch / troika@artswire.org
http://www.troikaranch.org
321 Graham Avenue #4R Brooklyn, NY 11211 +1.718.218.6775
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