"dance and tech" is a field of theft and non-authentic invention

[Julie N. Cruse]

On the "genre" of dance and technology, a comment was made that the people who use the tools in dance and tech are just feeding off of the creativity of the person who invented the tool.

Comments?

[Georg Hobmeier]

@tony: i actually never felt my bones as ellipsoids, i just felt them. i think proprioception allows you to "just feel" it, everything else is a projection of the mind into the sensation, but not the sensation itself.oh, i think i'm stepping on dangerous ground here... i hope someone can lecture my on the latest research in cognitive science....
of course the body contains mathematical principles, and some of them, can include ideas of the body and so can philosophy. one might just think of the zeno's story about the turtle and achilles. but then a story or a thought about a body, is not a body.

[Julie N. Cruse]

Hilton you are brilliant!

[Julie N. Cruse]

Admittedly I have been debating it within myself for a while, and when I heard this comment, I realized that finding a standpoint would best be accomplished through discussion - getting perspectives from other practitioners. It is a valid issue to take up, if not in defense of our work, then for the sake of clarifying possible arguments for ourselves, and for each other.
This statement is placing value on invention... not creativity, or technique. Necessity is the mother of invention - therefor the inventiveness of the inventor himself can always be questioned on those grounds (depending on how invention is defined). If invention is defined as some brand new idea unprecedented by others, then no one is really inventive (can't think of a one - even nature isn't that inventive). If invention is defined as being the first to create something, we have a lot of those, but that also relates more to timing than pure inventiveness. Most often the thing will eventually be created by someone, just out of need.
Techniques that are "invented" in arts using "tools" that were recently "invented", are also inventive - despite the fact that they could not exist without the creation of the said "tool" (which could also not exist without the whole social evolution which necessitated the creation of it). The creators of Electricity, Geers, Wheels, Switches, Engines, Isadora, Maya, Max/MSP/Jitter, LIVE, Digital Performer, etcetera have totally redefined the possibilities in the arts, but not without first being precedented by similar ideas - fire, stars, catapults, trebuches, moog synthesizers, first giant computers, etcetera. They were the next step in an ancient dialog as human-kind strives to communicate and exist.
Another question that can be derived from the first in order to answer the first was eloquently raised by Tony Schultz: what distinguishes a tool from art?
The makers of tools - or media used to create art - and art share some creative, problem solving characteristics. New techniques derived from new tools are often referred to as "isms" of some kind that seem to embrace a new philosophy or a ground-breaking approach to making art. So, a philosophy can be defined as an abstract tool then... as others can use this philosophy, or "ism" or "tool" to create something else that is new.
Invention is a quality that is evident in more than just a patented product, and even patented products were influenced from somewhere. I also think that this person had not considered that her own work - which is pure choreography, no multimedia - by her own argument would also be defined as non-authentic theft since the medium itself was born centuries before her.

[G Hilton]

Arthur - the smarter particpants were the previous posters, yourself of course, included :-)

I had a whole long reply typed here but then i realised i was falling into the same old trap of having 'content', (which I'm trying to unlearn, i promise) so instead I'll just mention that i'm posting this with Safari Version 3.0.4 (523.12), because surely that's all that really matters! :-)

[Arthur Elsenaar]

@ G Hilton, can you then provide the original poster with references to what these 'smarter people' said, so she can learn? Which presumably was her intension?
@ Julie, satisfied with the discussion so far?

[G Hilton]

Waitwaitwait. Hang on a while I create my own cleanroom reimplementation of tcp/ip in order to reply with sufficient integrity. Everything I was planning to say - the 'content' if you like - has already been said by better, smarter people, but if I had my own special new way of *publishing* it, I just know everybody would be interested...

[Georg Hobmeier]

I strongly object to the last comment. (for the discussion's sake)
First of all, I don't think the mathematics can be understood kinesthetically. Of course, if we look at artists such as Xavier LeRoy, then we know, that they can be represented by a moving body.
Secondly: of course technology shapes the work, but it is not the work. It seems now more of an ontological debate. We can understand certain aspects of an artform, by knowing certain aspects of the tools used within this discipline, but to me it seems, that the degree is different (to an extreme degree) in every art form. The statement that the tool making makes one understand the art making is therefore (for me) a generalization. I can learn how to make a brush, but that doesn't mean, that I can be a painter then. Or to be more focused on our field: I can learn how to write code for a programm, such as Supercollider, but it will not make me a musician or composer. It might lead to some understanding of how the programm that "makes the art" works, but that doesn't necessarily lead towards an understanding of the artform itself.

[Arthur Elsenaar]

To see technology just as a tool is the problem in these type of discussions. The characteristics of a particular technology shapes the outcome. Simple question, how would contemporary imagery look like without the work of the brothers Knoll? Who is responsible for the outcome of a piece of graphic work, you as a Photoshop user or those that made the technology that shaped your ideas? Photoshop can be seen as the real artwork here and its users operators like musicians playing a score. (flame bate warning)

[Marlon Barrios Solano]

I agree with Andy and Georg.
An important aspect to consider is in how tools (or dance) are used including an axis on innovation. Hoy do you use a code, a programming environment, an interface, a body, in innovative ways?
A dance training and choreographic method, can be as stiffening as a cinematopgraphic language,...
The other thing is that we teng to privilege this or that for many culturally constructed reasons...so the other thing to consider is: what is creativity...?
Something that I adminre about programmers is their capacity to "hack". To fing solutions.
Are there dance hackers?
I

[Georg Hobmeier]

I think that raises a question about the toolmakers creativity. Someone who makes a good brush is not per se a good painter. The tool is part of the creation of a form of art, yet might be seen as an art itself. Software can be made in a skillful way, but if it is used in another context then writing software, such as dance, the creativity of the programmer is facilitating something, that the programmer would never been able to create.
An interesting question could be as well: What is a tool?