Thank you Johannes -- My responses to your specific questions are below (generally these questions are addressed in more detail in the report (http://huizen.dds.nl/~sdela/transdance/report; but I have extracted the relevant bits): At 04:23 25/11/01 -0500, you wrote: >1. how many people participated in the Transdance research lab during >the 10 days? Lab participation included the nine artists (listed in the report) with the support of two motion capture software/ hardware specialists from Vicon and one or two folks associated with the AMY digital video company were always around. >2. was there not also a "conference" at the end of May that presented >public lectures and discussions, and how were those lectures related >to/connected to the research processes you describe? No -- there were one or two press conferences because the lab was happening in the context of the larger public festival. There was an evening lecture/ demonstration by Orlan for example that was not directly linked to our lab, but there were obvious resonances. Amongst ourselves (the lab members) we each took some time (30 to 45 min each) to give a short talk to our peers about our current art/ research work. These presentations were spread over three days and provided moments each day for group discussions/ reflections. There were also technical demonstrations... for the lab members. >3. Were the performances or research demos open to the public, and how >was the audience attendance, or was there discussion about a potentially >much wider online audience? Were attempts made to link up e-phos with >other places? We had what we referred to as "open house" most evenings -- when a public could come and look at what we were doing and ask questions. There was a lot of interest in the motion capture technology. Sometimes this would be commercial animators (and on one day there was a conference organised for the digital graphics/ animation industry in Greece), another evening a group of contact improvisers from Athens spent an evening in the capture gear themselves. This "open house" system seemed to work well, but we were not overwhelmed with visitors -- a few each evening. If there had been greater numbers it might have been more difficult. We did give a final public demonstration which was augmented by the short documentary videotape made by Alexandros Psychoulis. I gave a short talk contextualising things a bit further, then people were free to wander the space which was set up installation-like -- and ask the artists what they had been working on etc. Yes, there was a discussion about streaming, making some sort of on line connection -- it proved too demanding to organise in that context with the resources (human, technical, etc.) available to us. There are details about this in the report. >and do you see it as a feasible possibility to hold such research labs >in teleconference with more than one site? It would have to firmly serve the research agenda in my opinion -- as I try to point out in the report, we discussed a range of things, but narrowed it down rather quickly.to a pragmatic and task oriented agenda. In order to do so it is essential that the group agree on the terms of reference (as determined by the particular context). At the risk of appearing overly simplistic, for example -- if one accepts a three part definition for example of teleconferencing as: 1) involving two or more separate physical locations 2) connected via a network in real time 3) sending and receiving video, audio, data, etc. Within this definition we were only missing the first part and for the purposes of setting up the conditions within which we could experiment -- the first part could be simulated... >4. Was the event publicized within the International Festival of Film >and New Media, or separately, and why was the title "Transdance" chosen? >For example, Marcel.li Antunez Roca's APHASIA - would you call it a "new >media performance piece? or is the creation of work with "wearable >computer" a system- category that would be typical of the emergent >phenomena you describe? These would mostly be questions for Yiannis who came up with the title and was the organiser of the festival, etc. These performances, Marcel.li and Isabelle Choiniere, were programmed in parallel to the laboratory but without explicit connections... they both visited the lab and we went to see their shows. Regarding the consideration of something like 'wearable computing' in relationship to 'new media' performance work -- the concept of wearable computing is quite wide but could be quite specific within certain frameworks. In my opinion, other than in a few circumstances, i.e. Yacov's wearable, there has not been much investigation of how 'wearable computing' might overlap with this area of experimentation we refer to as *dance and technology*. I have appended a couple of paragraphs which were written as part of an email dialogue as a contribution to Le numéro 2 INTER_FACES (DU CORPS A L'AVATAR 2.0) which is due to be published by ANOMOS (http://www.anomos.org) soon. >(more about this in separate mail). I'll draft answers to your other mail later. best Scott ************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************* Q: What would you say are the new trends in body/machine interface design? A: We have to say that the trends are moving clearly in the direction of smaller computers/ mobile, wireless, wearables and non screen interfaces. This is something everyone is concerned with, computing science and engineering, digital media artists, cognitive and behavioral science, voice recognition and haptics research and all sorts of visual recognition systems for reading gestures, eye movements, etc. I am far from an expert in this area, but it appears that some of this research can be lumped under the work being done on Human Computer Interface (HC) design. There is a lot of information on-line of course and quite an extraordinary report published in 1997 in the United States titled "More than screen deep : toward every-citizen interfaces to the nation's information infrastructure" that gives you an understanding of and a feeling for the potential scale of current and future developments (http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/screen/). However, in this report there is not much mention of the impact of wireless and wearables, perhaps because the wireless mobile networks were less developed at that time. Europe is further ahead in this regard anyway with better integrated networks and a higher percentage of take up of mobile telephones within the populations. Mobile and wireless technologies make it possible to consider ways in which body/ machine interface design perhaps happens as a consequence of social deployment, rather than some sort of heavy duty highly funded R&D efforts. The massive usage of text messaging (SMS) for example has been a big surprise for everyone and has generated a range of interesting arts projects exploring the emergence of new social behavior surrounding the use of this technology. I have been particularly impressed by the work of Matt Locke based at The Media Centre in Huddersfield, UK who has been involved in the initiation and support of several projects developing SMS projects for mobiles (http://www.the-media-centre.co.uk/). Again, one of the exciting things about experiments with wireless and mobile technologies is that we are talking about something almost everyone is carrying around with them these days, in Europe anyway. But if one were to shift back to looking at high end HCI research, it occurs to me that there are some exciting developments happening in the field of disabilities research where you find such concepts as "sensory substitution" and "perceptual alternatives". A good information site is http://www.abilityhub.com/. Now I haven't even made a mention of MIT Media Lab's work with wearables, but I actually think that Philips Electronics (http://www.philips.com/) which apparently has research labs in six countries is doing more interesting work because they are explicitly linking the world of fashion (clothing and accessories) and wearable developments. Maybe some would object to the obvious orientation towards the consumer, but that doesn't bother me. So, anyway, these are just some of the things that come to mind when you ask me about 'new trends' in body/ machine interface. What this has to offer the performance maker or choreographer of today and in the future is really up to the artists to get involved and either take advantage of stuff that is becoming increasingly available and/ or to introduce themselves to those who are developing these technologies and propose ways to collaborate. ********************************************************************************* [[[ to read the rest of the dialogue look for the publication by anomos ]]] *********************************************************************************
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