Activity 3: Choreographic Objects

[Rachel Boggia]

Image from Land Project from Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro; collaboration  initiated  in meta-academy@BATES 2013

Activity 3: Collaborative Choreographic Objects

Introduction to the activity

In  past activities, we have been focused on articulating the choreographic affordances of digitally networked environments. While we explore choreographic these affordances of networked spaces we may find our selves  entangled with concepts and processes such as presence, space, contact, object, materiality, patterns, input/output, improvisation, expression, and memory. All of these are defined relationally. 

 William Forsythe's conception of a choreographic object  might be of use in exploring the affordances of the networked space.  In the essay below, he queries "But is it possible for choreography to generate autonomous expressions of its principles, a choreographic object, without the body?" Decoupling choreographic thinking from the dancing body may help us to think about how to enact choreographic thinking in the networked space--not that our engagement with networked spaces are disembodied, but that we can enact choreographic thinking without the states, actions, and relationships we might expect in the dance studio. Forsythe goes on to say, "A choreographic object is not a substitute for the body, but rather an alternative site for the understanding of potential instigation and organization of action to reside. Ideally, choreographic ideas in this form would draw an attentive, diverse readership that would eventually understand and, hopefully, champion the innumerable manifestations, old and new, of choreographic thinking."

We would like to invite you to collaboratively create a choreographic object that takes advantage of the networked space to explore your research interests  and practice with another meta-academy participant. 

This will require that you locate possible collaborators, initiate dialogue and coordinate the actions.

You will post in the comments of this discussion the traces of your process and also the object in it self.

What if?

The Choreographer Deborah Hay uses  the questions strategy What If...? within her "Performance as Practice approach.  The goal of  this question is "for the dancer not to arrive at an answer" but rather to notice the possibilities and potential for movement outside of one’s habitual movement comfort zone. 

We suggest that you approach this exercise with a sense of "What if".

Here are some "What if"s we thought of.  Think of your own

What if the meta-academy activities are a choreographic object? 

What if  we are creating a “score” for a movements of thoughts and ideas?

What if  we are being choreographed by the affordances of this website?

What if  improvising the cognitive spaces that we are creating together?

What if we think of networked environments as affordances of TIME rather than SPACE?

What if documentation or trace is practice in itself?

What if we contact intimacy and remoteness as the primary driver of our actions?

Part 1: Do this by Sunday September 13! Remote partners in contact

We think it will be helpful to try this simple score remotely before designing your own choreographic object.  This will require that you find a partner from the meta-academy group.  You will need a webcam and headphones and the fastest internet you can find for this activity. This activity will take about 2 hours.

1. Find a partner from Meta-academy, you can make contact with them, replying to one of their comments or posts. You may also reply to this discussion and post the day and time you are available to chat for 15 - 30 minutes with someone online through the dance-tech.net chat, or reply to anyone who has posted a time that you are available for.  BE SURE TO POST YOUR TIME ZONE. Here is a useful tool to calculate a good meeting time across time zones.  Since most of you are in Central Europe or the Eastern USA, the best times would be between 8 am and 2 pm in the Eastern USA, which is 14h-20h in Germany.

2. Meet on line and either try the score together or discuss another time that you will do the score.  Be sure to document your score through screenshots, writing, video or any other measure.

3. Post your documentation and reflections as a reply to this post by Sunday September 13.

Here is the score:

REMOTE PARTNERS IN CONTACT

Meg Stuart

Hug Your partner for an extended period of time. Imagine you are saying goodbye to each other.

Don't speak. Begin to explore proximity to each other.  Allow distance between you, then come close to each other but don't touch . As you stand very close to each other, imagine that you are very far apart. Stand in opposite sides of the room. Try going behind objects so you can see each other. Move around the space not looking at each other. One person stays in the studio while the other goes into the dressing room or outside. All the while both stick to the agreement that you are in a duet. Spend a long time away from each other in separate parts of the city, town or place you are in. You can go and have a coffee or run an errand but the experience is completely informed by your partner who is not there. Remain in metaphysical contact  even as the physical distance  between you growth.  Write down you experience  and share it with your partner  when you meet again. Are We Here Yet? Damaged GoodsPage 164. 

Part 2: Do This by Friday September 18! Create your own Choreographic Object

For this activity you will need a partner from Meta-academy and any digital technology you decide to use.  
This may take up to 4 hours total.  

After trying the Meg Stuart Score (above), work with your partner to create a choreographic object of your own.  How can you take something from your own practice and translate it to an activity for networked space, or, how can you create an experience designed for networked space? Below, we have suggested a number of existing choreographic objects that we think might be good starting practices.  Try them with your partner, or make your own.   

 Please post your documentation and comments in the discussion board by Sunday September 18.  

 

 To create this choreographic object, you may use any digital communicational tool available that allow synchronous and a synchronous communication such as:

• all social networking capacities of this social network or others such as Facebook.

• Any kind of mobile app for media creation, drawing and sharing.

• For video encounters, Skype, google hangouts, google hangout on air webrtc or other.

• Hackpads, pirate pads and google docs.

• Youtube, youtube captures with webcam, you tube editor

• VINE

• Gif maker tools
• Screenshots

 

Image from Synchronous Objects Project

What is choreographic object?

(excerpts from William Forsythe)

http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/media/inside.php?p=essay

Choreography is a curious and deceptive term. The word itself, like the processes it describes, is elusive, agile, and maddeningly unmanageable. To reduce choreography to a single definition is not to understand the most crucial of its mechanisms: to resist and reform previous conceptions of its definition.

Choreography elicits action upon action: an environment of grammatical rule governed by exception, the contradiction of absolute proof visibly in agreement with the demonstration of its own failure. Choreography's manifold incarnations are a perfect ecology of idea-logics; they do not insist on a single path to form-of-thought and persist in the hope of being without enduring.

Choreography and dancing are two distinct and very different practices.

In the case that choreography and dance coincide, choreography often serves as a channel for the desire to dance. One could easily assume that the substance of choreographic thought resided exclusively in the body. But is it possible for choreography to generate autonomous expressions of its principles, a choreographic object, without the body?

The force of this question arises from the real experience of the position of physical practices, specifically dance, in western culture. Denigrated by centuries of ideological assault, the body in motion, the obvious miracle of existence, is still subtly relegated to the domain of raw sense: precognitive, illiterate. Fortunately, choreographic thinking being what it is, proves useful in mobilizing language to dismantle the constraints of this degraded station by imagining other physical models of thought that circumvent this misconception. What else, besides the body, could physical thinking look like?

When the blind mathematician Bernard Morin was asked where the imaging of the process of everting a sphere existed in his imagination, he famously replied: "Nowhere and everywhere at the same time." And so it is with the choreographic object: it is a model of potential transition from one state to another in any space imaginable. An example of a similar transition already exists in another time based art practice: the musical score. A score represents the potential of perceptual phenomena to instigate action, the result of which can be perceived by a sense of a different order: a transition via the body from the visual to the aural. A choreographic object, or score, is by nature open to a full palette of phenomenological instigations because it acknowledges the body as wholly designed to persistently read every signal from its environment.

Are we perhaps at the point in the evolution of choreography where a distinction between the establishment of its ideas and its traditional forms of enactment must be made? Not out of any dissatisfaction with the tradition, but rather in an effort to alter the temporal condition of the ideas incumbent in the acts, to make the organizing principles visibly persist. Could it be conceivable that the ideas now seen as bound to a sentient expression are indeed able to exist in another durable, intelligible state?

A choreographic object is not a substitute for the body, but rather an alternative site for the understanding of potential instigation and organization of action to reside. Ideally, choreographic ideas in this form would draw an attentive, diverse readership that would eventually understand and, hopefully, champion the innumerable manifestations, old and new, of choreographic thinking.

http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/media/inside.php?p=essay

Examples of choreographic objects/networked collaborations...networked practice...

Use them as food for thought, to extract their "score", reenact  them  networked environments?

How would they look in the networked format?

every bodys performance score

lhttps://www.scribd.com/doc/69370464/Everybody-s-Performance-Scores

NancyStark Smith- Duet Mini Underscore

http://www.dance-tech.net/group/meta-academy-bates-2013/forum/topic...

Interview your Muse

http://furtherfield.org/features/interviews/choose-your-muse-interv...

Re-rosas

http://www.rosasdanstrosas.be/en-home/

walk + talk

documents

http://oralsite.be/pages/Walk_Talk_Documents

Deborah hay

http://scores.motionbank.org/dh/#set/introduction-to-concepts

Thinking body

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=43&v=if2RSLyDhuw

http://trishabrown.brynmawr.edu/2015/08/21/dancing-mind/

Artist in Conversation

http://bombmagazine.org/article/1000085/igor-stromajer-and-annie-ab...

Land Project from Daniel Pinheiro and Lisa Parra

http://daniel-pinheiro.tumblr.com/LAND

Forced entertainment:

Quizoola! is an extraordinary improvised performance in which the performers continually ask and answer questions. Whether philosophical, trivial or deeply personal, the performers’ answers must be invented on the spot, and the atmosphere moves from intimate chat to pub quiz to absurd interrogation.

Part game and part improvisation, you can expect an atmosphere charged with live energy as this dark and hilarious Forced Entertainment classic unfolds.

As with all our durational work the audience for the 6 hour or 24 hour version of Quizoola! are free to come and go at any point – staying in their seats for the long haul or popping in and out for a while at different times to see what’s going on. The performers invent answers that are sometimes true, sometimes long, sometimes made-up, sometimes serious, sometimes short. And sometimes comical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGOr-DrXieU

Tomorrow's Parties:

Tomorrow’s Parties is a playful, poignant and at times delirious look forwards to futures both possible and impossible. On a stage framed by coloured fairground lights, this seemingly minimal performance soon reveals itself as a low-fi theatrical explosion. Two performers enjoy the pleasure of invention as their suppositions take them in different directions. From utopian and dystopian visions, science fiction scenarios, political nightmares and absurd fantasies, Forced Entertainment deliver a thought-provoking survey of hopes and fears as they speculate about what the future might bring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5veUHWSJ74

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fig0PWCwSpM

[Rachel Boggia]

If you have any question about this assignment, please reply to this thread

[Amber Ortega]

Hello.  This is all completely new to me and getting my head around these processes....I'm intrigued but also have levels of confusion.

I am in South Texas, CST.  If anyone is still looking for a collaborator in this assignment 3?  I am only available after 10pm CST so maybe that is good for some of you who are in euro time zones?

[Florence Freitag]

I am still looking for one. So 10 pm for you is 14pm for me. Are you free tomorrow, wednesday?

[Amber Ortega]

Yes, tomorrow or Wednesday work well for me.  Anytime after 10pm.

How shall we connect?

[Florence Freitag]

We could try a google hangout. I can write you as soon I am online, if you are anyway.

[Amber Ortega]

Ok.  ive never used google hangout, but it should be simple enough.

[Florence Freitag]

Yes, I tried it first time last week and it works, you just need to ensure that you use video, otherwise it did not work for me. see you tomorrow!

[Florence Freitag]

Hi Amber! Did you get my message today? Another proposition would be Saturday at 14 European Time, 10, for your, there I'm free a long time also afterwards!

[Rachel Boggia]

Hi everyone!  Please let me reiterate that you may use any technology that is familiar to you.  If you are more comfortable with Skype rather than google hangout, use Skype.  

Basically the difference is that skype seems able to group video call with up to 7 people and google hangout can video call with 10 people (probably not relevant to this assignment).  For past meta-academy hangouts we have used google hangouts and either taken screen shots for documentation or taken notes.  

Google+ hangouts on air (a video call that streams and captures directly to youtube) creates it's own document, since it creates a youtube video of your entire hangout.   So if that is of interest to you, here are some starter directions. https://support.google.com/plus/answer/2553119?hl=en

The point here is to use technology that will not create a lot of work for you.

[Cristine Sonia Baraga]

hi to everybody, i'm sorry for the delay but i've some trouble with the internet connection,particulary with wi-fi. Hoping to overcome this technical problem.

Anyway i fell like Amber Ortega Perez.... i think this is a huge and complex task, hoping to get everything that is needed in the right way.

 I 'm in Italy, Europe,i'm available on skype, facebook, google various apps,etc...but...i'm logged in with different e-mail address than here,but i read all the incoming mails.

So i still do not have find any partner here,so i'm available.....I could be online also tomorrow morning from  around 11.00( a.m) till  16.00 (4.00 p.m) Italy time zone.

On facebook look for Cristine Sonia Baraga (send me a message,that i know you are from dance-tech activities), for google apps(hangout,) look for [e-mail], skype cristine.sonia.baraga, youtube csbaraga channel, on vimeo, instagram, i use the facebook profile.

Thank all of you in advance

Cristine

[Florence Freitag]

So here is what Amber and I experienced. For how we worked on the score: we met on Skype yesterday at 10/5), decided to do the first part of the exercise and then decided to meet again messaging today on Facebook same time to give feedback (this wasn't decided but it came just instantly as the most easiest way). Here is a copy/paste from our conversation:

• Amber Ortega-Perez

  So the exercise was difficult for me. I felt Las the day went on that to you became farther away and eventually disappeared.
• 

  17:33

  Amber Ortega-Perez
• 

  17:34

  Florence Freitag

  Hi Amber,

  I just came back from workand just see your message (Ill get back on it, but here is first of all what I thought).

  It was not easy for me, too, especially as I thought that I did it wrong. I could also have elft my skype open when you left the room, so to do the beginning of the score, but I trier it over the day anyway.

  At the beginning, when you quit the chair and I shut down skype, I found it very strange and a quiet vulnerable place to share, as the proximity is tangible in a way through the screen, but we you don't see the person anymore on the other side, you feel left alone and you want to know to what kind of space the other person went, without being able to follow.

  I think at the beginning after the skype you left the imaginary space more quickly and actually throughout my evening came back suddenly, as I took the idea of it with me to cinema, when I saw a documetnary on Sidi Larby Charkoui. He said something about us feeling always manipulated in the world, but what we should try to feel more was the connection between us, so in this moment, although not even being at home I felt connected, because of this exercise I was thinking if.

  But in general, I felt the "being far away", although being virtually close in the beginning. It's strange to know that people see your room and you see theirs, their space, without you in it (when you leave the screen but leave skype on). It is like surveillance in a way. I think it is at first sight more easy to feel the distance between two virtual presences, but then if you take it like an exercise into your real space, you can find memories or hinds that link you to the other person and her space, eventually.

  Well, anyway, a difficult score.
• 

  17:35

  Florence Freitag

  The gif is great, that's exactly what it felt like, being there and not
• 

  17:38

  Florence Freitag

  for me this was the last image i took with me for the day
• 

  20.09.2015 17:39

  Amber Ortega-Perez

  Yes, I was not expecting you to turn off the skype right away and I heard the skype hang up sound and I was surprised but I tried to stay in that sensing of presence state. I also too felt that sudden feeling of being alone. It must be because of the instance disappearance of someone, you can't watch them walk away or hear their car drive away, its instantaneous. I think the instantaneous aloneness heightens the feeling.
• 

  17:40

  Amber Ortega-Perez

  I love that image...I am embedded in cyberspace in your mind „smile“-Emoticon
• 

  17:41

  Florence Freitag

  Yes, the instant disappearing is most strange, that's a good description of it! I always feel this when I skype with somebody, especially as I am not so used to it, it is almost more hearing then leaving a person in real space.

  and yes, embedded on my real/virtual desktop actually.
• 

  17:41

  Florence Freitag

  „smile“-Emoticon

  shall we put the images in the group discussion?
• 

  20.09.2015 17:46

  Amber Ortega-Perez

  I feel it too, especially when skyping my sister who I do not get to see in the flesh very often. there is real sense of that and I really dislike it but it is now the world's growing culture of communication. yes, lets share these words/descriptions and images on the dance-tech board.
• 

  17:48

  Florence Freitag

  But can we say that through virtual distance you get to feel or enhance perhaps even more the connection? On the other side, through the day you also said the image disappeared, but that's like with every encounter with somebody else in a way.

  Ok, let's do that. We can also just type in this conversation, I mean copy/paste it, no?
• 

  20.09.2015 17:49

  Amber Ortega-Perez

  Sure, copy/paste „smile“-Emoticon
• 

  17:50

  Florence Freitag

  „wink“-Emoticon

  I'm just filling it in...
• 

  20.09.2015 17:52

  Amber Ortega-Perez

  I think there were factors that made you disappear, one was it was my first time meeting you and it was virtually. Then I am aware of your physical distance from me and in that knowing there is a sense that I don't have a mental grasp on your location. when I say goodbye to a local friend on the phone, I dont have the sudden sense of alone or disappearance because maybe I know the physical location of them? I am familiar with them physically and locationally? It was difficult for me because of the distance between us to begin with. This is just a hypothesizing „smile“-Emoticon
• 

  17:54

  Florence Freitag

  Yes, absolutely, this goes with it, I think so, too. Actually the more you know personally from a person, the more you can image where and what he or she is doing through out the day. You have good imaginativ food for your thoughts.
• 

  20.09.2015 17:54

  Amber Ortega-Perez

  Will you post for both of us or should we both post?
• 

  17:54

  Florence Freitag

  I will post everything from here through copying.
• 

  17:58

  Florence Freitag

  The only thing yesterday when I really felt strongly connected, and this goes back to what you just said, was the moment of the documentary, when I thought touching a subject that we have just talked about before, about feeling connected, altough virtually and not in real time. This was going me a clear image of us two talking about it, whereever this would be and also a thematic connection. Sidi Larbi was pointing connection in the contrast to manipulation between people and interactions, but in a way, here we have both, because we are being choreographed (or manipulated) through virtual communication, through the codes and interfaces that we use, too.
• 

  20.09.2015 18:01

  Amber Ortega-Perez

  what documentary was that I would love to see it too.
• 

  18:03

  Florence Freitag

  It was The Need to Dance, I saw it on a documentary festival. It could have been going a bit deeper in some subjects, but it was nice to see anyway.

  Ok, I copy till here now „wink“-Emoticon

Gesehen: 18:03

the following images are from the beginning of the conversation. a gif from amber at 17:33 and the screenshot from me at 17:38