Dance and networking

[Vanessa Michielon]

Hi,

I'm Vanessa, a PhD student from Italy researching in the field of dance and new media, particularly interested in the social dimension of dance in the information age.

Here are some topics I would like to discuss with you..

 

Soundcloud for music, YouTube for video, wordpress, wikipedia for writing..  online collaborative creative projects in film (http://aswarmofangels.com/), music, literature are well known.. but what about dance?

do you think video platforms are good enough or do we have to invent new digital objects that incorporate choreography in a standardized form to allow people to collaboratively devise, remix, modify, share, compare pieces of dance?(may be using gestural interfaces such as Kinect, http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/02/just-dance-sales/, and visualization techniques such as those developed within Motion bank's project...)

 

but first, will this just end by involving pro-ams and social media users who create dance for fun or experience the Web as a virtual dance hall or showcase or will groups of professionals devise choreographies remotely and show their works to connected audiences?

 

I'm interested in understanding if telepresence, physical web interfaces, videoconferencing for synchronous communication or other mediated dance forms (video, text, visualization, notation) can be valuable tools for creating choreographies, also exploiting distributed, collective bodily knowledge of non-artists around the world (see crowdsourcing choreography by Harmony Bench).

 

Remote collaborative projects such as Moveoutloud (http://www.moveoutloud.net/) or Dance Me (http://www.danceme.org/homepage.php) or Sita Popat's interactive dances (http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a725290411~...), distributed choreography experiments will remain in the narrow research field or become established practices involving new ways of bringing actors and audiences together? 

 

Please let me know your opinion about these topics (any references to other current projects are welcome!) and also tell me what you think the main role of the Internet will be in dance's world in the next years and how networks are going to affect the way we create and socially experience dance.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you all,

 thank you,

Vanessa

 

[simon emöke]

Dear Vanessa,

 

Thank you for sharing these interesting web sites. I believe it's rather encouraging that projects of this kind exist, but as you are suggesting, they may remain on the peripherical, at least for the moment. Nevertheless, since virtuality is more and more absorbing us, dance may become an art form that one is bound to discover on the web. It is already the case today, at least as far as I'm concerned; I'm also dealing with modern and contemporary dance for my Phd and my main access to dance archives is on youtube and dancetech. And to contradict myself once again, I believe, however, that dance is certainly the most suitable art form to resist virtuality and to maintain us in the immediate materiality of the experience of life...

 

All best,

Emöke

[suzon fuks]

am creating a new online venue for performance where you have access to a palette of tools - all in one webpage - allowing to play in real time with:

• 6 webcams (their windows can be moved, resized, rotated, flipped horizontally & vertically)
• media (visuals, sound, text & spreadsheet) mixing
• drawing tools
• public text chat with audience
• internal text chat with your crew members

you are invite to take part - wherever you are - in the open lab on the TAP 4-15 July http://ning.it/lGzqsd

the TAP is part of a whole project called WATERWHEEL revolving about water as a topic and metaphor.

[Pentacle's Movement Media]

I am very interested in how Kinect is being used by artists and dancers to create work. I feel like this inexpensive hardware and technology really opens the playing field to new innovation in our field. So far I see lots of development by DJ's and musicians using these tools but not a lot of choreographers and dancers. I would love to know about who is working with Kinect in the dance field. I found this blog that has a lot of current information on the rapid developments with Kinect: http://kinecthacks.net.

 

-Anna Brady Nuse

 

[Lynette Harris]

The internet and related technology has done wonders to stimulate the social and economic aspects of our very passionate group of bellydancers at Gildedserpent.com. Gilded Serpent is an internet only publication that serves a special nitch of the dance community- Middle Eastern Dance including Bellydance. I would be very interested in comparing different aspects to the more general dance community. I hope to learn much more from all of you and will commit to being here to see what develops at least for this month. Though Bellydance may be seen as more pedestrian, it does have a charismatic appeal to all ages of the general population. Hobbyist dancers are also often fascinated with technology. I am personally also very interested in the connection. Let's talk!

Though a bit dated, here is an example of a dancer and PhD student's article "Digital Dancer" on the site.

http://www.gildedserpent.com/cms/2010/02/16/caitlin2ndlife/#axzz1jD...