The following message was posted to: dance-tech
dear all
thanks for a very valuable report, and critical discussion of the issues
that came up at "Virtual Incarnations 2002", Isabel. Your in-depth
description of the positions that were taken at the Live Chat/Symposium
is much appreciated, and it could incite a forum debate amongst us in
the dance/technology maillist community.
As you gave us a lot to read, I propose to pull out a few issues that
might be taken up and scrutinized further.
[The event, if you want to take a look at FuturePhysical's website, is
listed at: http://www.futurephysical.org/pages/programme/vi_2002.html
]
(1) Access / Network exchange
>From your introduction, it was not clear to me whether the Live Chat
Room, as part of "Virtual Incarnations - Explorations into the
(r)evolutions of dance and digital technologies" was focused on
"collaborative / interauthorship processes evolving from choreographers
making dance performance alongside digital artists" primarily, or
whether Ghislaine Boddington wanted to emphasize the need to "continue
to explore the essential political importance of local and distant
connectivity through video conferencing/internet communication." These
are related objectives perhaps, yet you criticize both the relative
absence of the local digital dance community and the lack of openness to
online audience interaction.
Perhaps we also need to be aware of this event's place within the
larger, and very ambitious Future Physical project scope, namely the
"Network Exchanges" which were announced as <opportunities for artists,
scientists, industry and business, academics and the public to share,
exchange and network>......[<<Participate in debates, view specially
commissioned works from local and international experts as well as
performances, exhibitions and demos. ...Each Network Exchange event is
focussed on one of the four content areas of Future Physical: Wearable
Computing and Smart Textiles, Bio-Technology, Eco-Technology, Responsive
Environments>>]
This is a highly ambitious and provocative project with multiple
platforms, and it ought to give us food for thought, not least in
relationship to the critique you just made, Isabel, which is directed at
dance technologists/choreographers/digital artists and their apparent
discomfort with addressing "buzzed content words like
collaborative/interauthorship processes without getting into the depth
it
required."
The additional critique you make relates to the very notion of
networking-as-collaboration, specifically in regard to access to needed
technology. You mention something very important, namely that what
remained outside of the western viewpoints (excepting Shobana
Jeyasingh) "was the 'labor' implicit in the intercultural potential of
tech and its application and impact from other cultures' positioning on
this matter."
This is a topic that deserves further debate, and, incidentally, it was
also on the agenda ("Unplugged") of this year's ars electronica, having
remained equally to the side of the festival's customary western focus.
(2) collaborative/interauthorship processes?
You argue that the panelists (excepting Kondition Pluriel and their
attention to "balance media and movement choreography using technology"
and to explore "micro/felt movement of the inner body and its macro
outer expression into
space projections") often seem to pursue separate (solitary?) work
processes, and that:
>their interest is to detach the movement from the physical body into
>the virtual domain, via its abstraction and visual aesthetics;
>refusal of interactivity without knowledge (?) or interest in more
>fruitful possibilities other than one-to-one (user-computer)
>responsiveness. Instead, the emphasis is going towards
algorithmic research to create a more autonomous (AI) pieces of visual
media work which includes the improvisation of the machine in assembling
and combining the given data. Rather than hybridizing the arts the aim
is on keeping their distinct development. Specialization?>>.
This critique of specializiation (contrary to the myth of collaboration)
is a serious one, and deserves discussion.
(3) Performances vs. installations
It seems to me that the notion of co-authorship (if we are thinking of a
paradign shift) does not merely apply to collaborative
production/programming, but perhaps needs to be framed differently, and
theorized differently in regard to interactive, realtime installations
which imply or need an audience interactor to "complete" or actuate it,
so to speak.
We had endless discussions on the audience as co-author last summer at
the "Realtime/Presence-Virtual Environments" workshop-exhibition in
Dresden (http://www.t-m-a.de), and felt similar impasses when it came to
defining the precise "role" in which we want to cast our audience when
we ask them to "play" with our interactive scenarios. However, it was
clear that such interactive work (for the user) is designed for audience
participation, otherwise it wouldn't make sense from the conceptual
approach to "responsive environments."
I also know that "interactive performances" and interactive
installations" (and VR environments) are hybrid systems, and very often
I notice that interactive environments (designed for audience play) are
"initiated" by a virtuoso dancer or "player" who acts, so to speak, as a
Vorspieler (a fore-player) letting the audience observe what could be
played and/or experienced in the interface.
Perhaps Yacov Sharir and many others could comment on this (Yacov just
did the fore-play in his installation of "Dancing with the Virtual
Dervish" in Athens, if I read the announcement of his performance
correctly).
Not having seen Kondition Pluriel's "Schème II," I couldn't tell
whether the interface is designed for the trained performer (Marie
Claude Poulin) or for general audience exploration. How would your
analysis work for an untrained audience participant, Isabel?
(4) Interactivity
It's peculiarly interesting to me that Paul Kaiser, as you mention,
"provocatively questioned the possibility of non-linear narrative,
interactivity and what not (the whole paradigm shift)."
What is the provocation here, and why is interactivity, amongst many of
us perhaps, still a conceptual or aesthetic or pragmatic-artistic
problem, and how so?
I am aware that some sophisticated theory in Europe has begun to debunk
"interactivity" as a myth; on the other hand, many musicians,
performers, and programmers have been working consistently with the form
and content of interactive real-time systems, not the least also in
online projects (telepresence).
At the same time, after having talked to Ricardo Dominguez (Critical Art
Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance Theatre) recently, I do agree that
dance and digital art in North America lacks the kind of political
theory or consciousness required for political-media practice and a new
critical theory that engages with the digital aesthetic within
commodified culture and the larger context of information and
biotechnologies. Perhaps we ought to talk less, sometimes, about
"interfaces" and "sensors" and "algorithms" (or "aesthetically pleasing
pieces of artwork keeping the geniality of the artist intact"), and more
about tactical media and radical intercultural exchanges, in the way
they are theorized by Geert Lovink in "Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical
Internet Culture" (MIT Press,Cambridge Mass, 2002).
(5) New Vocabulary / New Theory
well, we've just come to it, and I repeat Isabel's call here:
>>Thus, it showed how complex the art and digital technologies realm
>>is becoming, begging for more critical theoretical analysis and
>>questioning that help compare and relate the different developments
>>and their implications to the continuous
changes of this hybrid field.>>
yes.
_________
PS
I was a bit amazed when after my recent post about "3d Music" there was
zero response to the content and cultural implications of the work or
the contexts I suggested. The only reactions we got were of a purely
technical nature. How come?
with regards
Johannes Birringer
osu_dance & technology
http://www.dance.ohio-state.edu/Dance_and_Technology/enX.html
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