<x-flowed>Johannes,
It seems this passage you note below has stimulated some interest from
CORD....who have contacted me BC (and now I suspect yourself too) about
enlarging upon the question.
>>>The points you brought to the roundtable on “Technology in Choreography
and Performance,” in the “Environments” workshop you taught....
ie. (1) through (5) balance very nicely around the last word appearing
in point (3)....
That would be the word "hierarchical"
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and I find most of what you've reported about here to be just that.
Also be aware that media technologies are inherently hierarchical, and
for as much as our idealism would have it otherwise, UTTERLY UNBALANCED!>>>
Divizio continues:
SO, I will abbreviate my response to this OSU discussion format, to the end
that we may possibly elaborate it further in CORD's format.
Johannes:
I'm not sure I understand you completely (are you refering to the
content of the whole report?)
Divizio:
Not explicitly so, but rather, yes...meaning no personal challenge...
I am thinking of the larger context of HOW we work with technology towards
communicating "THE" message.
Johannes:
but you imply/refer the second
2) a complete restructuring of the existing model of dominant
ballet/modern education, opening out to dance fusions and new
techniques/new processes that are team based and no longer hierarchical
Divizio:
"Team based", does not remove the responsibility or obligation of
"hierarchy". Though yes, perhaps there is some small opening here in what I
think we all agree is the other direction.
Johannes:
With that I was refering (in my short recapturing of several
propositions, which were not meant to be hierarchically ordered, but
just spoken sequentially) to a sense I have, and a practice I practice, that
it might just be possible to explore new dance and new techniques that are
based on shared processes of
discovery/training/experimentation with
choreography/writing/design/sound and image making/ - and that are
highly sensitive to the space in which we work and the sites of
dance/media we construct together.
Divizio:
OK. Nothing wrong here....but it's deeper than that.
Johannes:
I tend to think that we discover the imbalance as we work together. If a
technique is not taught from the top down (or handed down as a
tradition or a technical vocabulary or a software or, say, a way of
moving based on counting and combinations), if the performers are not
repeating a precise formula but discovering movement with media and in
nervous systems for themselves, without counting, I don't see why
technologies we use as instruments or as part of a design need to
function hierarchically.
Divizio:
Ah, but we ARE functioning in Top-Down systems....by default! There is very
little else! Perhaps in some cultures....? but definitely others than any
in the FIRST, or even Second world cultures....Third even (just because it
has a number!)?
Yes I can partly agree with you from the notion of "noble intent".....BUT,
do you have any suggestions about HOW to design WITH technology (in the
dance interface) that do not or are NOT catering to the hierarchy?
Johannes:
What hierarchy and whose hierarchy?
Divizio:
Good question!...one I intend to explore in more depth in CORD's format.
Johannes:
Well, surely sound or projected video images might 'dominate" a
choreography or a spatial shape, or there might be an imbalance in your
interactive design, but then again, the interactivity produces imbalance -
especially as far as control/outcome/affect is concerned, and perhaps we are
now speaking of different or other imbalances, depending on how you
configure the choreography or the processing or the creation of the
composite scenes in a performance or installation. I don't much worry about
what you call "inherent," because for me that is not quite the case.
Divizio:
Hmmmm...but this IS the root right here, friend.
Johannes:
What might be inherent in a computer-based design gets to float
quite a bit once the performance ensemble gets to work in the space and
transforms it. I mean the space in which we create something that is
meaningful and communicates to our audience. We tend to think of it as live
mix.
Divizio:
"quite a bit" of floating, doesn't remove the work from the Top-Down
structure AT ALL! You see "they" (as in "the technologies") are the TOP's
tool. Not mine!
Johannes:
The audience is still watching/listening, not participating/affecting us as
we might like, but we are working on that one too.
Divizio (with a softening):
Well, I suggest what you suggest is already pretty much covered in the
European performance arena...and i would tend, with some reservation, to
include the Japanese contemporary performance arena....where the
"responsibility" for the message rests largely with the Audience
vis a vis the North American performance arena whose Audiences foist the
responsibility for the delivery of "the message", onto the performer or even
the performance itself! :)
Johannes:
There was a small/interesting article on interactivity/dance (involving the
audience) in the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Did anyone read it?
Divizio:
No but I'd like to...can you post or FWD it somehow?
0!Z!^!P Z P!^VP
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