hello all:
thanks for the recent responses in our discussion about "Choreograph"
and "Duplex"........ I was especially grateful that Nick and Michael
found time to respond to my more specific questions about the structure
of the interplay between "system" (Choerograph) and performers, and
about their understanding of nonlinear choreography. Georg's
scepticism raised some other issues (about visibility of the
computers/controllers etc, or , hmmm, about the necessity for the
computer software? or the computer as a distraction?).
Well. I've come to think that the computers in our process are hardly a
distraction, and if they were, we wouldn't have this list.
But currently I've also come to think of our most recent
installation-performance, "VSS.01", which was presented to an audience
in our dance lab-studio on Wednesday night, as a "performance system,"
and I'm quite happy to pursue the discursive end of this distinction as
well.
"VSS.o1" is an environment, not a dance performance. Insofar as we
announced (and thus defined) the opening as an exhibition of a real-time
performance system, we also tried to be straightforward with our
audience. The older connection between choreography and dancer, or the
staging of a rehearsed choreography, is here certainly abandoned. The
exhibition is not an improvisation either. The character of a programmed
system-to-be-performed is a different one, and more precisely of course
I should say that we (the human agents) perform with and inside the
system, we adapt to it and adapt it, and the system performs with us.
What interests our team at the moment is the development of a
performative language of expression (with some intentional directions of
the metaphoric content of our creative material) that we can enact in
the real-time interface -- the interlinked, cellular patches we created
(with Max/Msp/Jit, Isadora, and Keystroke) becoming, together with the
live performers, a small organizational, emerging network.
More could be said, I'll stop here, adding that I was reading Steven
Johnson's book on "Emergence" when I received the Keystroke software.
KS defines itself as "a multi-user cross media synthesizer - a
distributed application that allows multiple players to generate,
synthesize and process images,
sounds, graphics, text, within a shared realtime environment... as an
instrument, it allows communities of players to dynamically control and
modify all aspects of digitized media in a collaborative environment."
In an environment of performers (on either end, at the laptops and in
the space) and audiences, the notion of Johnson's "self-regulating
system" gains an even more complex meaning, I think, since issues of
control, intelligence, enactment and synaesthesia are more complex,
since a total organizing principle is not available in real-time. There
are local rules; they move towards a collective intelligence.
This is similar to our experiments with telepresnce. Once you work in a
modular or cellular way or with a recombinant mindset, the notion
of distribution becomes easier to grasp - what's distributed in
telepresence are not dancing bodies or choreography or dancers in
different locations but "media objects" or subjects, if you will
(images, sounds, graphics, manipulable data, midi data).
I'd be interested in your responses.
The opening of "VSS.o1" has been modestly documented on our lab
wsebsite:
http://www.dance.ohio-state.edu/Dance_and_Technology/en9d.htm
If you want to look briefly at the 4 pages of the lab cycle of
Environments IX, please start with
http://www.dance.ohio-state.edu/Dance_and_Technology/en9.html
(PS. We would like to acknowledge here and thank the software program
developers for their kind permission and support to let us use some of
their creative software in beta testing versions. Special thanks to Mark
Coniglio (Isadora), Sher Doruff & Eric Redlinger (WAAG, Keystroke), and
the folks at Cycling 74.)
greetings
Johannes Birringer
osu_dance&technology
____________________
AliennNation Co.
http://www.aliennationcompany.com
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