April 26, 2010 at 10:41 am · Filed under Events, Theory, Thoughts
Here is a letter from Avi Santo, coordinating editor of In Media Res. Check out the dance and technology theme week that I will be participating in as a curator this week.
Hi all,
Welcome to a special theme week devoted to Dance and Technology.
Please feel free to respond to the contributors’ comments.
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr
This week’s In Media Res line-up:
Monday, April 26, 2010 – Stamatia Portanova (Birkbeck University of London) presents: “Movement-Objects”
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 – Ashley Ferro-Murray (University of California, Berkeley) presents: “Moving Digitally: between sensors and tone”
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 – Erin Manning (Concordia University) presents: “When Tables Dance: Technicity in Motion”
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 – Nora Zuniga Shaw (Ohio State University) presents: “What else, besides the body, might physical thinking look like?”
Thursday, April 29, 2010 – Alanna Thain (McGill University) presents: “All the Single Babies: Adorable/ Automaton?”
Friday, April 30, 2010 – Antonin de Bemels (Independent Artist) presents: “Scrub solo 3: soliloquy”
Please check out these wonderful contributions and offer your thoughts via a comment.
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr
ABOUT IN MEDIA RES
In Media Res is dedicated to experimenting with collaborative, multi-modal forms of online scholarship.
Each day, a different scholar will curate a 30-second to 3-minute videoclip/visual image slideshow accompanied by a 300-350-word impressionistic response.
We use the title “curator” because, like a curator in a museum, you are repurposing a media object that already exists and providing context through your commentary, which frames the object in a particular way.
The clip/comment combination are intended to both introduce the curator’s work to the larger community of scholars (as well as non-academics who frequent the site) and, hopefully, encourage feedback/discussion from that community.
Theme weeks are designed to generate a networked conversation between curators. All the posts for that week will thematically overlap and the participating curators each agree to comment on one another’s work.
Our goal is to promote an online dialogue amongst scholars and the public about contemporary approaches to studying media.
In Media Res provides a forum for more immediate critical engagement with media at a pace closer to how we typically experience media.
In Media Res is a publication of MediaCommons. MediaCommons is a strong advocate for the right of media scholars to quote from the materials they analyze, as protected by the principle of “fair use.” If such quotation is necessary to a scholar’s argument, if the quotation serves to support a scholar’s original analysis or pedagogical purpose, and if the quotation does not harm the market value of the original text — but rather, and on the contrary, enhances it — we must defend the scholar’s right to quote from the media texts under study.
For more information, please contact In Media Res’ coordinating editor, Avi Santo at asanto@odu.edu
Best,
Avi Santo
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
November 17, 2009 at 3:23 am · Filed under Artworks, Link
Maurice Benayoun has been in residence at the San Francisco Art Institute for the kick-off of his new project, The Art Collider (TAC). After attending the final workshop this evening and learning a bit more about this new digital art collaborative network I have decided to enter the viral network of art creation with my next project. I am composing a third fragment (the first being my labrun performance at UC Berkeley in Fall 2008 and the second being my performance at the Milk Bar this past August 2009) that will be performed this December 11, 2009 representing the Berkeley Center for New Media at the CITRIS Gala at UC Berkeley.
Keep an eye on my project wiki for information! In short, here’s a brief and rough description of the project…
The conceptual context of this piece is based on accelerometer sensors. I have used wireless accelerometers in rehearsals to inspire and create the choreography. These sensors will not be worn in performance in hopes of demonstrating a spectral digital presence. I am working lately to explore the possibility for a digital tone without digital technology, so hope to explore this concept more by presenting this choreographic material.
Using a live camera feed I will input real-time performance information into The Art Collider (TAC). I will simultaneously take visual images from the collider that will be projected in the performance space. The dancers will respond to these images live. A second projection will display the visual representation, or “monitor,” of the interaction within the larger networked TAC.
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?
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 21, 2009 at 11:55 am · Filed under Artworks, Theory, Thoughts
I recently read Patricia Zimmerman and Dale Hudson’s “Cinephilia, Technopilia and Collaborative Remix Zones” published in the latest issue of Screen. Zimmerman and Hudson perform what they call a “radical historiography” to indulge “interventionist pleasures.” This methodology has me thinking about remixing history in dance and what this is.
If I were chose a movement to return to it would be Judson. How can we reengage avant-garde activism in today’s digital culture? Trajal Harrell seems to do just this drawing not only on Judson, but also on voguing and European tanztheater. In his most recent “Quartet for the End of Time.” He takes what has happened and pushes it forward, remixing and opening potentiality in critical movement practice.
This remixing is not a repetition, and appropriately so. Can movement be repeated? No. When I wave my hand in the air I perform the same choreographed action (a wave of the hand) multiple times, the movement that I perform morphs with time based on variables such as body fatigue or rhythm. Rather than perform an exact repetition of my movement, I loop the choreography. When I loop choreographed movement it is not repeated, but layered. The movement is the same, but calling my movement a loop as opposed to a repetition shifts a perception that enables progression within and beyond repetition. It seems that the historiographic remix enables movement loops.
April 19, 2009 at 9:32 am · Filed under Artworks
I post photographs and videos of my work to my dance-tech.net site. As school winds down and summer begins I will be working much more on my own work. Watch the blog for updates on artistic progress and my dance-tech site for detailed accounts of my technological explorations and discoveries. I am currently refining the sensor technologies that I configured for my piece and am developing the choreography for my next show, which will be in Oakland, CA this August. Watch a video clip of my November 2008 performance at dance-tech!
April 10, 2009 at 1:28 pm · Filed under Link, Theory, Thoughts
I have been thinking a lot lately about archiving digital artwork and why we could have an interest in obsolescence, failure and frustration. Also, how do we differentiate between what is new and trendy and what is valuable theoretical example.
A conversation with an architect friend of mine drew me to question dance notation in a very practical way. As she designs a performance space (a hypothetical performance space), she wonders how dancers write their work. Or, do they? She shares her architectural diagrams with me and we think about how she documents architectural movements in space. Can she animate her structure? Or, is it a static picture of potential movement.
With this in mind, I come to consider Brian Massumi’s Parables for the Virtual. He talks about movement, virtuality and affect in space and time. He draws upon Spinoza, Deleuze and Bergson. Massumi introduces his book by talking about thinking the body and understanding how this thoughts interacts with his ideas about movement and culture. Is movement possible? Or, is movement, rather, an in-between space. Our movements are mapped by static positions that we only move between. From a dance perspective, I would clearly disagree. We aren’t only moving between static places. We are moving spaces. Of course Massumi’s argument is more complicated than this and in a way can not even be summarized or quoted. Massumi says himself that his text is comprised of many terms that come in and out to work with and challenge each other. The argument itself is a choreography and the circularity makes it resistant to summation or quotation without decontextualization. Massumi doesn’t move from one static point to another in his text. Rather, he embodies what moving spaces as opposed to moving between places would be.
This makes me question any time of static dance notation or mapping. I recognize that scholars have questioned this very notion of notation for decades, but I think we are in a new age where the questions reemerge with contemporary examples…just like Massumi uses pre articulated theories and explains through his book how new media examples further enlighten pre articulated theories. The recent launch of Synchronous Objects is a great place to question new media examples of dance notation. The Synchronous Objects team doesn’t claim that their project notates every aspect of a dance. They also recognize how this is one way to explore a dance experience. Revealing how different camera angles along uncover different interpretations of what a live dance experience was, the project accounts for several modes and forms of documentation in a digital age. I must admit that I was initially incredibly resistant to this project. I had several questions about what the site could actually give a viewer and how the site ignored a lot of different qualities that a dance could potentially exhibit.
These questions, I realized, were hypocritical. Just like I think that exploring digital virtuality is just one way that we can experience and explore the body in contemporary space and time, this project attempts to do similar things. I would call Synchronous Objects a choreographic project in its own right as opposed to a notation project. Each time I experience One Flat Thing Revisited with a different feature of the Synchronous Objects site the project becomes something new. One thing that I am particularly interested in, for example, are the different digital visualizers.
I was recently asked how working with live interactive performance technologies was aesthetically interesting. This question was followed with an inquiry about what we actually get from the visualizations that come from the interaction. Can we really see what the dance is from the visualization? This, though, isn’t the point. The point for me has to do with what we can’t see from this visualization. How does it not work? Dance is ephemeral. This we know. Digital technologies, too, are quite ephemeral. Digital visualizations of dance are merely new ways to explore and inspire spatio-temporal exercises.
Once I approached Synchronous Objects from this standpoint the project came alive for me. What I find interesting about Massumi’s project is that he takes spatio-temporal exercises from a time before the developed digital virtualities that we have today and engages them with new media examples. We can use projects like Massumi’s to begin to realize how physical and digital virtualities can exist together and enable each other. They aren’t necessarily dichotomous and they aren’t necessarily complimentary. Rather, they are two qualities that exist in our contemporary reality. As artists, we explore these situations.
April 10, 2009 at 1:01 pm · Filed under Link, Theory, Thoughts
Well, there is a lot going through my mind lately. As finals are approaching I am considering potential paper topics and allowing for all of the musings that I have had over the past several months come flooding back into my thought process. I am currently working on my paper for the Dance Under Construction conference at UCLA, which will be on micro-movements associated with iPhone and how Apple markets a certain kind of choreography with their patented device. The one US iPhone patent uses language like “embodied,” “gesture” and “performance” to describe how their multi-touch user interface is a unique way through which a user can interact with the world around her with “just the touch of a finger.” How is this digital (anatomically digital) choreography changing our associations with transcribing the space that we live in? Perhaps, though, these technologies are no different than using a computer and a mouse when it comes to transcribing Internet spaces as opposed to real spaces. Are the iPhone and other similar digital devices furthering our Internet experiences even more because of the portability? How often do we see someone navigating themselves through a city not by looking at street signs and the sights around them, but by looking at the GPS bubble on their iPhone? What might deCerteau have to say about this?
Well, since I am having so many thoughts about many different things, perhaps I should add them all in different posts. Yes, more to come on my musings after this post….
March 15, 2009 at 2:59 pm · Filed under Events
I’ve been looking at William Kentridge’s work a lot lately and had the opportunity to see an exhibit of his work at SFMoma yesterday. I was blown away by how intricately he treads the line between over stimulation and a delicate and subtle emotionality. His multi-media oeuvre also tends to include a great deal of choreography. Although the exhibition blurb coined Kentridge as someone who looks at painting, drawing, film etc, they didn’t notice the implicit gesture toward choreography that accompanies his work. I found both historical reference and robotic work. This is aside from the plethora of projections that are necessary to convey Kentridge’s message about South African politics and more.
Hopefully more on this to come as I will see him speak this afternoon and tomorrow!
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