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.
May 25, 2009 at 2:33 pm · Filed under Artworks
In this short clip I perform a movement study with four accelerometers. With more movement in my body you will notice more movement in the video projection and sound output. I will continue exploring interactions with sensors as I develop them alongside my choreography without sensor technologies. All of these choreographic explorations will be developed over the next year as I work toward my next evening length performance.
Click to watch clip!
May 14, 2009 at 5:07 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Today, Stelarc posted some comments to the -empyre- list that speak directly to what I’m currently thinking about. I would like to repost them here. For an archive of the conversation to which Stelarc is responding, visit subtle.net/empyre.
Hi Norah (Stomatia, Ashley, Christina, Alan, Sally Jane, Erin,
Johannes, Tim and Renato)-
Just to say that this posting will not be in sync with the most recent
exchanges. I am staying in a hotel with very expensive internet access
which I can’t afford. And during the day I’m busy programming. Anyway,
this was done last night and being sent morning, Sydney time!
I’m delighted to read the articulate and astute observations made by
all of the participants about critical motion practice which have
accumulated but remained unanswered in my In-box.
As a counterpoint to the ideas that have unfolded in these exchanges,
perhaps the most appropriate contribution I can make is to suggest
something other- the experience of the body as inadequate,
involuntary and augmented. A body immersed in uncertainty, anxiety and
ambivalence. A body that is absent from itself, empty in itself and
exhausted by itself. This has generated ambivalence, uncertainty and
anxiety. The body might be enabled and accelerated, but this only
exposes and amplifies its obsolescence.
In an age of excess, the body needs to cope with mixed realities,
telematic embrace and its chimeric other. It is an age of circulating
flesh, fractal flesh and phantom flesh. It is also a time of
multiplying and outmoded metaphysical assumptions still affirming the
biological status-quo of the body or perpetuating disconcerting
desires of out-of-body experiences. We still speak as if these bodies
possess inner selves. As if speech is an outering from something inner.
Performances such as Fractal Flesh and Ping Body explored remote
actuation of the body wired to a computer sequenced muscle stimulation
system. In Fractal Flesh people in other places prompt the body to
move. In Ping Body mapping the reverberating ping signal, measured in
milliseconds is mapped to the body’s musculature. The body moves as a
crude barometer of internet activity. The body is seen as a split
body. Voltage-in, to jerk the left arm and leg up and down and voltage-
out, to actuate a mechanical third hand. The body moves, but not
through space. Its task envelope is defined by its limb motion but the
internet constructs it as an alternate and extended operational system.
Movatar was an inverse motion-capture system where an avatar, imbued
with genetic algorithms, whose behavior varies during the performance,
actuated the two arms using a pneumatically powered upper body
exoskeleton. The body becomes a prosthesis enabling the motion of an
avatar in the real world. The body becomes both a possessed and
performing body, simultaneously actuated and improvising. The body not
as a single agency, but also a host for an artificial entity.
The performances were done in a posture of indifference. Indifference
as opposed to expectation. Actions without anticipation. Moments
without memory. Indifference to allow an unfolding of the performance
in its own time, with its own rhythm. Ashley’s space for the in-
between not only connects but opens up. It’s also a pause that allows
for reflexion, infection and interpretation. Perhaps this is a fatal
moment and a moment of collapse. Its what happens when there is a
slippage between the intention and the action. A singularity in
programming a robot occurs at a moment when, because of multiple
possibilities, the robot can’t choose which one to execute. What
happens when a dancer stops but then can’t start?
Best wishes-
Stelarc
