August 10, 2009 at 4:31 pm · Filed under Artworks, Theory, Thoughts
I’ve been incredibly strict with myself over the past three months about not getting too tech heavy for the piece that I’m working on. Last fall when I was spending all of my time calibrating sensors and insuring that my bluetooth range was strong enough I ended up feeling as though my choreography was suffering. I’m interested in the balance between tech and choreography. On the one hand I suppose my tech is a part of the set. Sometimes I think I should get a designer just like choreographers often work with set designers, lighting designers and sound designers. Why is it that I feel the necessity to produce everything for myself…that I feel as though my creative process would suffer if I were to shift my artistic product by relying on others to program for me? And, again this brings me to how integral process is to my product. My product is process. Somehow nearing the end of the choreographic process and the date of my performance I am once again finding myself diving head first into programming sound interactions. I am pleased with the fact that I have waited…despite the reality that the sound may fall short of what it could have been. The interactions will be fairly simplistic and sound output not as layered and nuanced as I would otherwise like. I was able to focus much more on developing the choreography in its own right thanks to my persistence that I wait until the end of the process to really plow forward with tech. I simply prioritized my choreography. This leads me to question the role that tech has in my choreography though. Do I really need it there on stage? My movements and choreography is implicitly affected by previous experiences that I’ve had working with technology, why is it necessary for my audience to experience a live interaction? I’m still working with a proscenium arena, so the technology is not in this case helping to complicate performance power structures or other binaries. Still, it seems that there is aesthetic quality that comes with using technology and real time interactions that is productive for me. I’m not sure at this point how it is pushing the movement and choreography, although I know that it is. The sound pushes me to perform differently and draws me into the space and time of my performance. I am curious to theorize these thoughts and experiences that I’m having while deep in my creative process. How do my last minute creative decisions based on technology affect my theoretical inquiry? And, am I really staying true to my theoretical interest and opinion throughout my creative process, or do I step away from this perspective in order to all more movement and flexibility in my process?
August 9, 2009 at 8:09 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
So much to consider right now. I’ve been rehearsing and programming like crazy as I prepare for my show at the milkbar THIS Friday August 14. I’ve been spending the last several weeks dancing with Nina Haft at Shawl Anderson Dance Center, beginning a Feldenkrais workshop with Mary Armentrout at Shawl and entering a fieldwork with several other bay area artists. As I condition myself I’ve been gearing up to condition my own thoughts and thinking on dance within the academy and my choreographic practice. I had a lovely conversation with Petra Kuppers about her forthcoming manuscript last week. While writing rhizomatically on process, movement, poetry, documentation, practice, theory, experience, embodied memory and more through history, theory, practice, experience, theorizing history, historicizing practice, questioning history and the archive and more… Petra has created a manuscript of folds. As Tim Murray’s new book, The Digital Baroque looks toward the Deleuzian fold and Petra’s book seems to move toward exemplifying it I wonder how my practice, theory and experience are folds in themselves as they fold together. The Feldenkrais and work with Nina have pushed me to realize that within my own process I experience each installation of my work through micro-movements and attentions.
This is how I’ve been approaching my choreography and how I’ve been literally folding my tech into my practice. My movements are inspired directly from experiences dancing with sensors. I wear sensors on my wrists. What happens when I move? The three axis accelerometers that I’m working with respond with sound output…sound interactions that I have programmed. This time programming is my immobile creative process. Sitting at a computer much like I’m doing now I connect object to object with things called “patchcords” in Max. I make things talk and I map virtual movement through a program of physical movement and sound. Different sounds and interactions push my momentum in different directions. Programming I feel sometimes like I’m connecting random points to other random points…on the contrary, these points are not random, but represent specific functions that when connected correctly in the appropriate map produce a specific product. This map makes something happen. Perhaps this process pushes me to choreograph in a similar way as I experience the programmed product through my own movement. Lately I’ve been feeling like my movement process produces a boring product. What does it mean? Is there an overarching theme? How are my dancers relating to each other? How am I relating to my dancers? My movement is random. My movement is spastic or frantic. What I am trying to convey through this display of somatic intention? As I move myself it feels as though I represent a technical process…a technical process grounded in a theoretical exploration that is inspired by artists including Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty and most lately Anthea Kraut and Petra’s work. Also, as I read of Erin Manning’s philosophical explorations through technology and movement I implicitly move and respond to her ideas. My movements, therefor are not random. They are not spastic or frantic. Rather, each movement serves a particular function. This function when connected appropriately in the choreographic map produces a product based on my technical and theoretical process. My product is process and represents or repeats process.
Recently I received some feedback. My intention in my look may not be clear. How am I as the performer relating to the movements? It looks as though my body is moving me while myself is waiting to see what my body does next. Often this is my relationship to technology and to theory. I am programming and learning to program. I am reading and theorizing the theory that I read and I am writing my own theory. As I do both of these things I am often swimming in the darkness waiting for my next inspiration to pop. This is a guided swimming. My objects are pushing my swim in a very particular direction with a specific function. I am trusting them and experiencing them until I am inspired by my experience and produce the next step, which will also undoubtedly serve a very specific function. My artistic process too is representative of this experience as it performs the very process.
Perhaps my movement is boring. Is it artistically “responcible” to make my audience watch my process? Why is this interesting? Where is the humor? Where is the entertainment? Is there humor or entertainment in my own map of folds over folds in folds and as folds?
