January 31, 2010 at 4:09 pm · Filed under Theory, Thoughts
I have been reading Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy for the first time. No, I can not believe that this is the first time I have read Descartes directly. I have spoken and read about a potential mind/body split via dance scholars and other philosophers since the beginning of my training in dance. Of course, dance studies has regarded such a split as contentious since its beginnings and the concept has long since been discredited.
Working on dance and technology I have come up against the critique that technology gets away from the corporeal focus of dance. I often find myself questioning the importance of the body and corporeality altogether, rather than trying to defend my work with the digital by anthropomorphizing digital media, or by defining the digital in terms of and as corporeal qualities.
Recently, it seems that several scholars are articulating the central importance of the body to dance studies. In the summer 2009 issue of Dance Research Journal, for example, Gay Morris presented the historical trajectory of interdisciplinarity in dance in relation to the interdisciplinary basis of cultural studies. Coming to the conclusion that dance scholars can ground themselves in a focus on the body, Morris suggests that dance scholars can use the common ground of the body to stabilize the field while diversifying its implications. Where does this take us when we think about movement in the digital realm? Must we only work on movement as digitally fragmented space-time when it exists in terms of the body? And, must this body exhibit corporeal qualities? If I work on the movement of digital communication networks as dance practice must I define my experiment in terms of the bodies that are connected via digital communication systems? I ask myself, is dance really always defined by the body? And, although this has historically been a seemingly common ground in dance studies, can the body continue to be that grounding stable entity?
Answers to these questions become increasingly clear as I read Descartes’ thoughts on the mind/body relationship. Although he presents a split, his argument performs relationships in the mind/body entity, or between mind and body as more complicated than the simplicity to which the “mind/body split” is so often referred. In fact, Descartes argument performs the very movement, fragmentation and multiplicity that digital networks and systems so aptly exhibit. Thinking the mind and the body in various temporal and durational situations, Descartes works through the complications that might perform the fact that there is no split between the mind and the body. In the case of Descartes’ meditations, it seems impossible that a whole field define and ground itself on the “body,” since this subject/object is such an unstable entity.
December 8, 2009 at 3:05 pm · Filed under Artworks, Events
Dear friends,
This Friday, December 11 at 6pm PST I will premiere my latest dance-tech piece, “Fragment 3.” I am writing to invite you all to participate in my performance by uploading material of your own to CiTu’s “The Art Collider (TAC),” which is an interactive networking system that I will use throughout my performance.
Please find instructions for easy ways to connect via Connect and Participate site. I would recommend “Live Camera” if you want to input live video, or “Flowmixer” to input prerecorded and/or mixed material. Then, you can simultaneously connect to other footage from the system by opening up links from other live projects. TAC is a fairly new project that is still in the final development stages, but the system seems to be working quite well. I will project a sampling of any material in the network throughout my performance.
Please find a description of my project below and I look forward to seeing you on the network!
“Fragment 3″ is the third fragment in a process-based series that choreographer Ashley Ferro-Murray has been working on since Fall 2008.
Exploring the space between digital spectrality and digital saturation, this piece moves through various networks as it leads an audience through various iterations of digital choreographies. Wireless accelerometers used throughout the choreographic process inspire the conceptual context of this piece. These sensors are deleted are not worn in performance to explore the body in movement as it exhibits a digital tone in the absence of digital technology. In contrast to the spectral presence of the sensors, the performance space itself is saturated with digital interface. A live video feed of the real-time performance will be input into French digital installation artist Maurice Benayoun’s online network for artistic collaboration, The Art Collider (TAC). Simultaneously, Ferro-Murray projects real-time images from other artists using TAC.
In association with BCNM (Berkeley Center for New Media).
All the best,
Ashley
December 5, 2009 at 8:09 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Ken Goldberg is now wrapping up before we go and eat!
Great day of musings, theories, studies, ideas for the future, reports on designs etc. etc. etc.
TONIGHT: 7:30-9:00 pm: UC Regents’ Lecture by Jimmy Wales (in 105 Stanley)
December 5, 2009 at 7:38 pm · Filed under Events, Theory
Jane McGonigal provides an amazing and seemingly unintentional response to Hubert Dreyfus’ earlier remarks.
McGonigal explains how the average young person who is a gamer will spend 10,000 playing games by the time they reach the age of 21. This is also the same amount of hours that they will spend in secondary school. Incidentally, in Outliers Gladwell argues that 10,000 hours is the amount of time to spend on something in order to get mastery.
So, McGonigal asks, rather than working on fictional problems on games, what if we could harness the collective 3 billion hours spent gaming a week on real-world problems. Jamais Cascio with Institute for the Future has a phrase: Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals. With Cascio, McGonigal works at the Institute for the Future to build games that deal with real world problems such as the world without oil.
For Jane’s slides visit: slides@avantgame.com
December 5, 2009 at 7:23 pm · Filed under Events
Jane McGonigal, Director of Game Research & Development at Institute for the Future and graduate of my program is about to speak at the Future of the Forum!
December 5, 2009 at 7:21 pm · Filed under Artworks, Events, Thoughts
Marc Davis, Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of Invention Arts looks at how digital networks make the invisible visible and the impermanent permanent as we know when peoples whereabouts overlap with devices like an iPhone, for example.
How does this relate to artists such as William Kentridge who look to make the invisible visible in art projects such as Parcours D’atelier: Artist in the Studio? Kentridge uses art products to make the invisible visible. How, then, does his product relate to those social networking processes that we’ve been exploring all day?
Also, as Davis uses game theory to understand the scale of social interaction with his projects that work with geo-tagged photographs etc, I wonder how we can use performance theory as it relates to game theory to understand connections between social media and art pieces that engage similar concepts.
December 5, 2009 at 7:08 pm · Filed under Events
Lars Rasmussen, co-developer of Google Wave explains the program as he skypes in from Australia. They have constructed the protocol as an open protocol so that using wave doesn’t mean that you’re committed to Google data centers. I think the open-source nature of this technology is telling and important. This is one thing that we haven’t talked about too much today, but that seems incredibly important in the larger discussion about the future of the forum.
Oops! We lost him on skype…
December 5, 2009 at 6:38 pm · Filed under Events
…from the current panel.
- Anonymity might not be possible on the Internet, while we still need to manage how we craft our profiles and present them online. In relation to this morning’s discussion on identity, Wales said “anonymity is not a threat to Wikipedia.” How would these panelists respond to this topic?Dick Costolo predicts less anonymity in future forums, which he explains can be a good thing because it requires more responsibility. However, he acknowledges that in the situation of an authoritarian government it becomes easier to identify who said what.
- Advertising needs to be re-thought, or even re-invented. Laura Sydell references ethical issues regarding the Internet and advertising.
- Social meeting as working from the bottom up. Seth Goldstein argues that you have control of your action, but you don’t have control of the information your actions produce. So maybe there wont be a bottom up revolution.
- Conversation about professional artists in relation to online activity. Does art have to be online??? Or at least connected to online sources?
- How can the panelists give back to those who do not have access to the technologies that they develop? Or work with?
- What has social media done during the recession? The correlation seems fairly unclear.
- Question from the audience: “How is video going to rock this world?” It could insure the open furtur of media as it is a way to fact check and to present various positions looking at the same thing. This could relate to Ieva Jusionyte’s point earlier. In this thread, Sydell argues that if a news organization is going to survive it will actually need to rely increasingly on credibility.
December 5, 2009 at 5:53 pm · Filed under Events
Thinking about aesthetic models, Greg Nieymeyer is playing google jockey for the current panel.
3:00-4:30 pm: ROUNDTABLE: The Future of the Forum
Moderator: Professor Shannon Jackson, TDPS, UC Berkeley
Dick Costolo, COO, Twitter
Seth Goldstein, Co-Founder and CEO, SocialMedia
Reid Hoffman, Founder, LinkedIn
Laura Sydell, Journalist, National Public radio
Check it out live: http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/fotf/live.html
Next entries »
