“Capturing Affect with a Handful of Techne” Jeannette Ginslov Artist in Residence @ MEDEA Spring 2012

[Jeannette Ginslov]

 Jeannette Ginslov – Artist in Residence at Medea Spring 2012

As artist in residence at Medea this Spring, Jeannette Ginslov will be researching and developing her ideas on “capturing affect with a handful of techne” within the framework of the AffeXity project. See the AffeXity blog for regular updates: affexity.org

Together with a team of researchers and students, Ginslov will be exploring and striving for a number things:

developing the technical requirements and skills for capturing affective choreographies embedded in cityscapes, using video, the web browser Argon and mobile networked hand held devices.

amplifying and exploring affect through dance embedded within city locations, examining “patterns of relations between people, technologies, and architectures…ebbs and flows of affect…created and sensed by bodies in motion” (Susan Kozel).

exploring a phenomenological and collaborative approach to the choreography, the capture and reception of this interdisciplinary art form.

researching altermodernism, “the internet of things” and what art critic Nicolas Bourriaud’s calls a “relational aesthetics” or intersubjective encounters, where spectators are invited, even challenged to engage with a “participatory art work in which meaning is elaborated collectively rather than in the privatized space of individual consumption.” (Claire Bishop: Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, 2004).

subverting the commercial use of augmented reality usually associated with QR codes and downloads, by focusing on the notion of affect and dance embedded in cityscapes: a more artistic endeavor.

democratizing the use of, networking and sharing the research and technology with other screendance practitioners or interdisciplinary artists at conferences and seminars.

Partnering with Georgia Tech, BTH and masters students
This will be phase two of the collaborative project AffeXity, with Susan Kozel (Medea), Jay Bolter (Professor of Media and Technology, Mixed Environments Lab at Georgia Tech, US), Maria Engberg (Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, and Georgia Tech, US), Timo Engelhardt (Masters student Malmö University Computer Science Department: Media Software Design), Nachiketas Ramanujam and Sanika Mokashi (Students at Georgia Tech USA), Wubkje Kuindersma and Niya Lulcheva (Dance artists, DK).

Phase two of the AffeXity project
AffeXity is a two year long research project. The first phase of research was conducted during my residency at the Laboratorium, Dansehallerne Copenhagen in November 2011. As yet we have no idea how many phases there will be. However in its final phase we wish to see the project becoming a “social choreography”. Anyone will be invited to shoot and upload short screendance videos, using their “body in city” as a location of affect, archive their material onto a social media dance and technology platform and finally use Argon to facilitate a “performance” in their own city. These should reflect our premier of AffeXity in Malmö, November 2012.

Research making use of many technologies and devices
My focus of research for this residency, funded by the Danish Arts Council, is to explore the dialectical relationships between technologies, human and non-human or affect and techne. The project and research makes extensive use of many technologies, technological terms and devices. It involves screendance, HD video cameras (HandyCams, Go Pro, Panoramas), green-screen shoots, QR codes, iPads, iPhones, the web browsers Argon, chroma keying, GPS, KML, HTML, Java Scripting, FCP… plus a whole team of researchers and developers with the aim of capturing and amplifying the notion of affect within a city location.

The process however starts with a performative action, a dancer, exploring a visceral negotiation or affordance within a city location, the dancer teasing out through movement, the presence of affect: a liminality, an emotion, a kinesthetics, a shimmer, the carnal, the sensorial, the visceral or subtle subjective memory, presence or vibration of a location.

How do you hold a handful of techne?
My questions and research lie in the translation of this onto the timeline and mobile devices and finally into the moment of reception by the spectator. My questions will be: Is there a gap between the affect and the techne? How does one negotiate that space? What is that space between the body and the techne? Is there one? How does one hold a handful of techne (the actual plastic, glass, metal, object as well as all the technical know-how behind these technologies and coding) and then capture affect? How does one elicit affect from the dancer relating to the location, or the viewer participating in the event? What happens between the lenses, the lens of the camera and the lens of the viewer? Since I regard the camera lens as an extension of my eye and my movement centre, am I able to connect to my visceral technology with that of the dancer’s and the camera and finally into the viewer? How do I know when it is “there”? Is there a sense of intersubjectivity, during the capture of affect and then later during the performance of AffeXity? Is this carried through by an awareness of form and content, affect and techne working “hand in hand”?

Read more about Jeannette Ginslov’s previous work here.

Presently she works here:

My online work as co-ordinator in Dansehallerne Copenhagen can be seen here: 60secondsdance.dk, ScreenMoves

Online Video documentary maker for Danse Konsulenten & Dansens Hus and Independent Choroeographers

Online curating and producing for www.dance-tech.net, MoveStream and MoveStream Facilitations

Screendance works and previous stage works may also be seen on my You Tube Channel: Walking Gusto Productions and personal website http://jeannetteginslov.com

In the flesh, I teach Screendance (choreography, directing, camera and editing) at Skolen for Moderne Dans in Copenhagen and have taught internationally in South Africa, USA and Scotland. 

Image: Affect Brainstorm by Susan Kozel and Jeannette Ginslov 19.02.2012. Photo & Fx by Jeannette Ginslov

Related articles:
- Mobile social choreographies: Choreographic insight as a basis for ... – article published in Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media
- Medea’s residency program
- The AffeXity project