what is/could be 'misperformance' within the field of dance and digital technologies?

[Zeynep Gunduz]

Hello.

The coming PSI conference, Misperformance: misfiring, misfitting, misreading aims to examine “a broad spectrum of cultural, organizational, technological and political performances by focusing on the causes and the problems of performance mistakes, misreadings, „(in)felicities“, misunderstandings and misfittings – i. e., those outcomes of performance that are susceptible to provoking disturbances – even deep alterations – within diverse spheres of life: from the private to the social and political, ranging from slips of tongue, via artistic avant-garde and aborted revolutions, to environmental disasters; from ideological distortions and abuses of power to new perspectives and resistance to authorities of any kind”. (http://www.psi15.com/)


In this respect, I was wondering in what ways could the concept of misperformance as described in the above paragraph (or in any other way) be ‘actualized’ with digital technologies.

I am particularly interested in the notion of ‘misperformance’ in interactive and immersive environments used in a choreographic context. However, ideas, articles, books and (historical or current) artistic works that could illustrate this concept in the current field of ‘digital performance’ are very welcome.

Thanks!

[Constance Cooke]

There is a transformation of dancing bodies into characters with histories and affiliations that are part of the video/film viewing culture that contribute to the reading of the image.

film creates an intimate space that is more susceptible to interpertations that might be sexulally exploitive / racist. In video/film there are existing conventions with the camera angle, lens, shot distance or size. There is already a language or conventions associated these.
...just some starting thoughts

[Zeynep Gunduz]

thank you!

[Jessica Rajko]

I just apprenticed a class on motion capture/analysis at Arizona State University in which we talked quite a bit about the misrepresentation and disconnect between the body and body analysis (primarily with motion capture). We looked at visual representations of the body by the motion capture system and how these may create a disconnect or feeling of misrepresentation of what the body is actually doing. Several students created project around this idea. Our main reading for the class was The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience”, Francisco Varela, E. Thompson, E. Rosch. It's a really good theoretical book that might be nice to add to your list. You might also want to look into some of Susan Kozel's writing. If you want more info on the specifics of what we discussed in the class, the current projects occurring at ASU, etc. don't hesitate to contact me :)

[Zeynep Gunduz]

Hey Jessica,

Sorry for late reply...Yes, i would be interested to hear more on the discussions in class...great!

[Johannes Birringer]

Well, your question is interesting. The Psi theme i had not known about, didn't follow their plans for this year's conference, and the "theme" is broad enough and intricately academic (in terms of its play with word/concepts) perhaps pretending to be politically ambitious, as in the past.
A missed performance is probably one that went wrong for various reasons, and sometimes, naturally, misperformances are excuses. The mis is most likely the system failure we all know about, when the interface designs don't act the way they are supposed to, when "control" is not in control or when human performance intelligence (giving the limits ordained by parameterization and constallation of cameras and sensor etc) exceeds the machining architecture or runs into algorithms that are expected to or turn out to be yield less desirable or unpredictable outcomes/outputs.

regards
Johannes