Re: 'Choreograph'

From: Johannes Birringer (birringer.1@osu.edu)
Date: 05/25/02


hello all:


many thanks to Scott deLahunta and Barriedale Operahouse for the recent
report and elaboration on the work the group is doing with the
"Choreograph" software. 

I found it fascinating how the group's work on the relationship between
the computer software and choreographic structure was discussed,
especially the reference to "the history of research into regulatory
systems" and how it affected your understanding of the Barriedale "work"
as both a rehearsed and an open structure or system that consists of
variable modules which can be shifted in a non-linear "manifestation" of
the 'work" that does not exist as a fixed object but as a continuous
potential for manifestations (how different are they from each other,
over time?).  

In regard to "Cellfish" you speak of an "adaptive structure that will 
develop and 'learn' through the experience it gathers during its 
'lifetime'  --  this I find a remarkable model for the development of
such interactive performance systems. 

One question I had :  to what extent is the older relationship between
choreographer/choreography and performer-dancer in the interface also
changing? If the dancer is co-authoring the manifestation of the live
performance with the software system  (the role of Volkmar's music was
not clear to me, is is processed in real-time with Max/Msp and thus also
always potentially changing or changeable?), then it seems the concept
of a "generalised genotype of a dance" (i.e. choreography as a
determined set of learnt/rehearsed movement or vocabulary) , with
"performances being its generalized phenotype" may undergo redefinition,
no?  I mean, is the older notion of this choreography as genotype not
being replaced by the dancer's open improvisation/transformation of
material, and is the "material" as processual movement not something
different from the older Western notion of choreography?  all the while
I am assuming that the dance modules are not created (in a fixed manner)
to the music, but could exist with different musical manifestations in
the real-time synthesis, and thus the older connection
choreography-music is also broken, no?  I suppose my question aims at a
better understanding of the value we give improvisation (and what kind
of improvisation is it?) in the contemporary dance field. 

with regards

Johannes Birringer
OSU_dance & technology
http://dance.ohio-state.edu/Dance_and_Technology/



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