Dawn,
"Rambling" or not (I think "not"), I enjoyed reading your questions.
Without having had time to really engage with them, I did have a couple of
thoughts. One is that until one IS the institution, one's work will be compared
(most often unfavorably) to the institution. In this case, dance and technology
intermedia work will be judged by concert dance standards. I am not sure it
shouldn't be, at least to some degree (say, quality of moving, professional
production, etc.). But it should also be evaluated based on the premises of the
work (one would not evaluate Petipa and Rainer in quite the same way, so why
judge tech and non tech work by the same criteria?).
But I also fear (based on my own experiences and echoing Doug
Rosenberg's great rant at IDAT in Tempe) that we as a field, as a movement, as a
whatever, keep getting stuck at the stage of experimenting with the technology
instead of honing the images into art. Part of that is inherent in the aesthetic
of technology (a driving aesthetic of our culture these days) which is highly
linear/developmental (meaning that we drop the old as soon as the
latest/greatest is issued). Much of the work I have seen in dance and intermedia
(with the exception of some very fine single-media flim/video work involving
images of dancing humans) seems be continually in a Beta release artistically.
Part of that stems from our marginality and lack of access to the tools and
funds it takes to make higher level work (the development funds to create the
score, the dancing, the costumes and lighting, and the projections for Biped
would fund new projects for fifty of us at our present budgetary level). At the
same time, I know that I would like to see dance and intermedia artists forego
new tools sometimes until they have really honed the last ones. That is why
comparisons to non-tech dances leave us wanting to some degree. We humans have
been living our bodies for millenia, but manipulating digital images or sound
for only years. We all strive to find ways to move past the technical and on to
expression and a deeper level of "experience design" (I like that, Jeff). But
until we do so more consistently, we will be featured as human interest stories
in the back pages of the technology section, instead of the front pages of the
arts section, as written by people who are actually familiar with our work. End
of rant. Kent
Dawn Stoppiello wrote:
> Well, Johannes and others, I have been thinking about this topic for
> several days now. And wouldn't it be amazing of the dance reveiwers
> made a point of going out to see all the work they could in the
> "technology" genre so they could be better informed. Whoa. So, the
> NYT article made me think that I had read that article before. There
> seems to be one like that, featuring one of us from this list, every
> year or so in some paper or magazine or another. They always seem to
> ask about the commercial or popular applications of the tools and are
> usually focusing on the research aspect. I am thinking that most of
> the information being passed around about the actual art making and
> the processes of the artists working with new tools/instruments/gear
> are in PhD thesis papers and so are in university journals and not
> getting out to the other more main stream arts publications...maybe?
> I know that all the folks in the article are making work and I wished
> that their had been more inquiry into the actual work. Too bad they
> (and us all) couldn't get a giant color photo and a front page story
> on the front of the arts section. But, I guess we take what we can
> get. Also, Troika Ranch got a scathing review in the December Dance
> Magazine. (Please all of you run out and get it, I'm not afraid) I'm
> not worried that the DM reviewer didn't like the work - in any one
> career one couldn't expect to please everyone. What I am worried
> about is the way he couched his reason's for not liking it.
> Apparently we didn't live up.
>
> His opening paragraph reads like this:
> Back in the late 1980's, many dancers regarded technology less as a
> way to sell books and pet food than as a herald of a revolutionary
> form of theater, one informed by postmodern reconsiderations of
> perception, reality and interactivity. Unfortunately, that marriage
> of art and technology never took off and spawned no dance, save a few
> minor trinkets like Merce Cunningham's Biped. Technology's real
> success was probably in enabling small companies to print their own
> flyers, publicize Web sites, create their own music, and shoot their
> own videos.
>
> Ok, obviously this guy is short sighted and ignorant but it still
> made me think. I wonder how many dance works that use new
> tools/instruments/gear or even video this writer has seen. Has he
> really had an in depth look at the work over the past decade to say
> with confidence that the marriage of art and technology never took
> off? On the other side of that coin I ask - did it take off? Where
> did it take off. I still feel like an outsider since Mark and I do
> not have a research team and lab at a university to support us. We
> are trying to blend in with your average dance company. But we're
> really not that. But What are we? And then I ask with all seriousness
> - where are the major works of dance that use Xtechnolgy that have
> been taken seriously by the art critics/writers besides BIPED? Maybe
> in Europe but I am asking about the US? Is it because we that are
> making these works aren't "famous" enough to draw the attention? Is
> is because the works aren't "good" enough? Are they being judged by
> standards of dance without Xtechnology - meaning do people know how
> to experience these works - as one of our dancers writes "to only see
> the piece as a piece in older modes of thought, however beautiful,
> instead of trying to think through the challenges and opportunities
> that these new technologies bring? They may not be new in terms of
> the last 30 years, but they certainly are in terms of thought and
> dance history. And finally -are we a movement?? Ok, I don't want to
> ramble as I have done a lot of that recently. I don't have answers.
> Only questions. Any dialog is welcome.
>
> Hugs,
> Dawn
> --
> ***************************
> Dawn Stoppiello
> Artistic Co-Director
> Troika Ranch
> dawn@troikaranch.org
> http://www.troikaranch.org
> ***************************
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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