Internet. Market. Choice. Dance. Industry. Sell. Buy. Process.

[Julie N. Cruse]

How has the internet changed dance? For example, music, being primarily affected as the internet marked the exhange of power from the music industry to the common man.

Dance has seen a decrease in audiences. They're all at home watching satellite television, surfing the net, or playing Wii. We are witnessing perhaps the biggest change of all times.

How are we trying to survive?

Are we living in a world where we all have to scream louder to get attention? Or one where we need nearly speak at all - just a quite whisper, and those who want to hear and take part in the discussion naturally fall into contact.

It appears that the evolution of dance is no longer linear.

[Johannes Birringer]

hello all:

i just realized i had not seen georg's post. he says the discssions may be an "american" discussion.
then he mentions Chunky Move. (from Australia),. a company that I saw not too long ago (in Dresden) performing their piece "glow" (created with Frieder Weiss).

"glow" is not using screens but is using floor (down) projections in interactive dance - the dancer is moving the fields of graphic responses underneath her. there are many beautiful moments of interaction, and of differences in figure-ground relation and of congruence between movement, gesture and attitude and then what you look at (what am i looking at?) -- moving abstract digial graphics .........so much work of this kind is about comprehending/perceiving the simultaneity of the physical body movement affecting/generating the visual landscape or the visual projection. i don't think, however, that "glow" is a strong work that wil survive.... it has been shown a lot, but i am not sure whether one wil remember it. it has no core that grips the imagination, it has no real purpose.

I think Julie addresses this in her post, and Robert argues it's time to stop using screens. basically, those last posts speak to the use of digital projection, while other issues addressed concern the making of dance at this moment in history, world wide, not just in europe or the us, or australia. ...what do audiences want (that, i think, is a rather different question, and if one were to include current debates in the visual art world, one would run against economics again.. I mentioned the NYT article on dance and the web, and someone already commented on this today, It might be siginificant to have a discussion here on what the web, the so-called social networking, the YouTube world, has yielded so for to us. i am new to this webforum, i have not been able to participate much, and i don;t watch YouTube, nor have time to see those many videos or follow those many many blogs, entries, postings....... the world of dance, i would think, does not change necessarily if there is an increased potentiality of a new medium (mobile phones, ipods, blackberries, Myspaces and youtubes, millions of blogs.....), nor would the audience expectations of dance change......

have they changed?

have theatre goers changed their xspectations? I don't think so.
have theatre makers made significart changes in production?
in a very limkited manner, yes,

In the same week as the New York Times reported on dance and the web, the paper also reviewed and discussed an independent theatre group, the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. did anyone read this? I thought it was very interesting that the review spoke about the form, and the kind of content that the group develops in their work, performed live with actors, an experimemtal company that does not seem to rely much on the digital, on screens, on interactivity.......

Dance and interactivity seemed to to be the catch all in the late years (the beginning of the 21st century), and now I am not sure where it has gotten us. May i venture to say, no-where?

In a private email, a former mentor of mine recently asked me, and "so what has happened to dance and technology at OSU?" the university that was among the first in the world to instigate work with digital media and interactuons. the implied answer was, not much, moden dance concerts of the producing artists still takes place on the same theatre stage {sullivant hall) where all dances are shown,......the computer center ACCAD may support research (as other centers in other universities do)., but we have not heard much interesting news about siginificant work coming from either context or venue , have we?

fresh tracks in NY just got a bad review,
and yet good performances take place everywhere, and mostly they take place in theatres and in performance venues.

It's interesting to me that no one seems to address the spaces where we perform...... we often may try to produce digital work or interactive theatre and dance in spaces that are 19th century spaces, never built or conceived to house the kind of work we make. other venues? ars electronica, warehouses, galleries? the web? how have these different spaces enhanced new work or made new work actually perceivable? so, re: Robert's plan to not use "screens" -- what does it matter? and why does it matter to have screens or to project, under, above, behind? the form of making dance in a very specific space matters, and audiences will receive work that fascinates them or intrigues them, naturally.

economically, dance is not in a position to compete with an auction of the Francis Bacon triptych that may sell this week for 60 mlllion dollars. but dance is co-evolvinig with these more powerful media (such as painting), what does this tell us? there are numerous dance makers i know who have used triptychs in their work. William Forsythe's "Atmospheric Studies" is a triptych, and is as powerful as the Bacon "Triptych 1974-77" - and vastly more powerful than any Youtube clip i have seen in the last 3 years.

Dance, on the contemporary stage, is much closer to opera and the musical than to anything on the web, or on video, and economically it should be a force. rather than worry about a limited academic context, one might open a discussion on the "critical moves"or the politically critical potential that movement has (as Randy Martin has suggested). movement (involving projection) is also a cinematic art form, and thus needs to be discussed in relation to film (cinema).

I am not sure what i am trying to say, so i apologize. I am unfamiliar with the forum/multiple fora on this website, and whom I am talking to. I am not sure i understand the directedness of such postings here, and what they effect.

regards
JB

[mpgough]

hello johannes,

dance-tech has got 'nowhere' because is has resisted consolidation. the constant discarding and reinvention for the sake of 'newness' has resulted in a loss of knowledge.

i constantly see new projects unknowingly making the same mistake of projects that came before. how can we hope to progress when we know so little about the context, theory, history and required skills of what we do. even the fact that we are still asking 'what (do) we do' is indicative of our crisis.

perhaps you might read a single post rather than a whole blog? : http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/23555760

the nyt article is a poorly researched and superficial replication of dance blog posts that appeared in nov/dec 2007. there are existing discussions about web2.0, social networking, dance on youtube and other video sharing sites.

there is a value in showing dance (as art) on youtube (etc) but we are still searching to find what it is. also few dance practitioners have put as much time and effort into exploring online video as they might traditional forms. to make 'seminal' works requires skills and expertise, dance still struggles with 'technology'.

online media has a growing audience. and audience that is growing faster than live arts/media events. more so, whilst dance audiences are (slightly) increasing, the audience share for 'dance-art' is not.

the lack of a general audience (most dance-art events are only attended by dance-art fans and artists) is the reason why dance-art is economically weak. if dance-art had more financial weight, we might see custom built (21st century) performance venues.

what do the spaces matter? for an audience they give context. and for dance, they allow the development and consolidation of a form. for all the 'choreography as architecture' and 'interactive architecture' no one has come up with a new concept or built example of a (physical) performance space for 'mediated' arts.

warehouses/galleries/conventions are know, and explored performance contexts. there is little space for innovation within them, to perceive the 'new' or seminal requires a working critical framework. dance-tech has tended to shun the establishment of such a framework, and instead looked back towards 'histories'.

with reagrds to whom you are talking to on this site, it is your peers. peers in many different contexts, and at time those with more/less expertise. this is the nature of the web. it is similar to standing on a corner in a busy city center and speaking aloud to anyone whom might listen. this is your audience.

the manner of writing, or directness is the result of a desire to change the way in which we write about dance-tech. it can be muddy at times, but i think there is a general attempt to clarify and share terms. sometimes we point to clearly in the wrong direction, but we learn as we go.

you have addressed many interesting and key points in your post, and i apologize it has taken me this long to reply here.

i agree that 'screens' (or not) are a side issue (also, projecting onto any surface makes it a 'screen'). dance-tech get caught up in the frame of technologies, rather than the performance content. we need to 'utilize' rather than 'use' (in many cases).

osu has been disappointing in recent years, but it is not the only example of a 'fall from the cutting edge'.

you said

"have theatre goers changed their expectations? I don't think so."

no, they have not, because for the most part they are the same theatre goers from prior generations. they will not be attending the theatre sometime in the future. will be abandon the theaters or try and develop new audiences?

this is why we ask 'what do audiences want?'. we do not ask it with the promise of giving, but to try and understand with they 'think' they would not be interested.

dance seems to be revolving rather than co-evolving. it has been loosing its way for some time, significant change is yet to come

[Julie N. Cruse]

I am currently a grad student in dance-tech at osu, hoping to learn about the history and trajectory of dance-tech. I am not in a position to say how it differs from earlier years, nor am I really able to asses the program in its entirety as its only my second quarter here. In recent months I have seen Shawn Hove's work with David Morneau and Brent in live motion capture , dance, and music interaction piece, Bebe Miller's Landing Place with Vita Berezine-Blackburn, Annie Besera's 3d space with video of site specific dance and live dance, an upcoming performance in 3d virtools, animation, and max/msp/jitter in drums downtown, William Forsythe's collaboration with ACCAD and dance in One Flat Thing Revisited, Matt Bain's collaboration with Ming Lung-Yang in animation and dance, Norah Zuniga-Shaw and Marc Ainger's collabrative dance and sound interactive piece.

Also, on the topic of performance space at osu, Urban Arts is a new space opening in February. I've heard that it is a very unique space with new possibilities, and that is exciting. There is a 5 floor gallery called the Sky Lab that I am connected to, and planning performances for.

I've thought a lot of building my own space for a performance, but golly, that would require so much more money and time than I have. That's probably what deters anyone from doing that. If I weren't a GA and a grad student, and working independently to perform at and attend conferences to inform my work in academia, and managing my life, I would take up that big proposal to make the space for the work. also, dance-tech is an expensive field to produce in, so a lot of us are students, teachers, or artists in residence, which means that a great deal of time is spent in work obligations first... unless you're one of the few top names who make a good living at the work and can invest all your time in your art.

But I recently met and discussed collaboration with an artist in new york who is drafting a proposal to work with 3d projections in a spherical space. an enormous endeavor.

Matt and I have recently had some very engaging conversations, and so I respect his ability to pull up very specific issues and examine them at close angles. I looked at the post you linked above, and find that your representation of what happens is not descriptive of what i experienced. So I'm curious to know what programs, or regions you are referencing. I'll post my CV in the next couple of days which lists all of my course work in undergrad, and as a recent graduate, it may be interesting. Also at osu, I have taken maya 8.5, some video editing, photoshop, and now am taking courses in music technology, micro-controllers and robotics. I'll also post some videos of works i've done if that may help. I'll volunteer myself to be a sample in this inquiry, if it may benefit the seeking and advancing of knowledge that we all have in common.

Till then, I would like to share that what I have learned of dance-tech has been through guest artists, conferences, internet surfing, and videos of performances that were before my involvement in dance (not serious until 2003, and not serious in dance tech until 2005). I am attending grad school in hopes of catching up and developing skills to participate in the field of research and work. I am active on this network for the same reason. I would love to hear your suggestions of places to look for writings, videos, etc. of the history in this field that I or others lack. Matt has been instrumental in analyzing and contextualizing my project VICKI, which is my source of research for the next few years. Quodlibet has been a great resource for me as I scavenge to find who and what came before the time when I began, and also in navigating what else is happening. Same goes for dance-tech (as far as what is currently happening) Matt - have you considered publishing on dance-tech history? theory? I would invest.

I am puzzled by how to manage conversations as well - as the sub-topics have to be explored to answer the question initially posed.

Also, in relating the issue of what state dance-tech is in, as described above in academe, practice, and critical theory, I wonder if this is related to the innovations in recent years that have made it possible to do more work than ever... much more than 10 years ago. So maybe more of us are online or on our cell phones, in order to meet the requirements of the day job and making that one piece happen per year or quarter, or semester, and then we don't have the time to check in on the work we are all doing all over. So more work, less observation maybe? I try to keep it balanced, and I think we all do... but I just wonder if perhaps it may be the new lifestyle technology brings and less about competence.

[Johannes Birringer]

Hi:
thanks for very good response, Matt, and for sharing the link to "Qodlibet"[http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/23555760] ...... (the particular post of January 11)......

i tried to read more and went to http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/, which seems to be a blog addressing multiple topics. Each one seemed interesting, and one would want to go on pursuing them. This is the maze-like structure of the web that I worry about since it would take all night now, to think about many ideas you raise, and also i really would like to respond to Julie's subsequent posting, which i found wonderful and helpful (as she writes from the current place/generation of graduate students in "dance-tech" at OSU. You also have started a new program or moved to a new place, Matt? Northampton? well, all my best wishes.

Brief reflections on your post above (slowly. i think answers will take time).

- you address the " context, theory, history and required skills" necessary for a progression in the artform/practice, arguing that dance -tech as a field has not consolidated (grounded itself, recognized itself and conveyed its artform to audiences and critical reception at large).

I am not sure whether it's completely correct to argue this, as there have been numerous groups who have developed work and the techniques - over time - to produce new work (including also new software, new ways of utilizing, adapting, extending and applying multimedia/interactive/real-time, etc dramaturgies.

I say groups because often it is not individuals who have shaped the course of progression in the field (internationally -- and here we could carefully look at local differences in regions, ranging from Japan to Brasil to India to the UK and the US and continental Europe, and many places that often are not mentioned here but which also have generated new media/performance models of working) but groups who interface with other groups, individuals and students (in workshops, in particular). The workshop network we have is immense, and collaborative ethics have ruled this whole development, even if I probably agree that such widely distributed lab./workshop modes sometimes fail to accumulate stable and sustainable frameworks.

it is very helpful to address "frameworks" (and i think you don;t just mean art schools).

I quote Matt:

>>the problem with the creative artist(s) model is that students spend too much time looking at themselves. learning history, accumulated practical/theoretical knowledge, techniques and virtuosity has been abandoned.

from such an isolated position it is (almost) impossible to make significant works. students have no idea how much they are re-iventing the wheel, nor how inappropriate their tools/skills may be. dance-tech graduates enter a level (professional) playing field in which there are few star players. when it is easy to reach the level of those you admire, the drive to develop dies.

student need .. the tools to make works, rather than endless experience of making works. a thorough grounding in the principles of specific dance practices, and specific technologies is required. less play, more perspiration. it is not enough to know how to use a technology, you must be able to utilize, adapt, extend, apply and contextualise a technology.>>>


I think, here, Julie's response post is truly illuiminating, and i encourage others who might be in an interactive arts, performance, or dance (tech) program, or in an independent organization, to respond as well or share their experiences. It appears Julie has been seeing a good amount of interesting-sounding work. Presumably, the producers of these works, and the researchers attached to some of the works (Norah Zuniga-Shaw working on the Forythe OFTR,, and of course many researchers, such as Scott deLahunta ,whom you mention, working in distributed contexts on various parallel research developments [e.g. "Software for Dancers," "Choreography and Cognition," "Absent Interfaces," the new "ENTITY project, "CHOREOGRAPHIC COMPUTATIONS," "Digital Cultures," "Te-Dance". "Emergent Objects," and, and and...]) indeed h a v e created frameworks for development of:

---techniques
---software applications and artistic implementations
-- new virtuosities and interface performance techniques
---ideas, observations, rehearsal and composition methods, reflections, and writings
-- a sense of historical continuities

I don't buy it that there is not a considerable growth of knowledge and information,. I think it is available, and it could be taught or shared for each new "class" of students or new generation of young artists.

Matt's critique of university or art school education is still quite valid, and the issue of performance and lab spaces (also addressed by Julie) is indeed vital. I found this a vital concern in 1999, when i went to OSU to create the MFA in dance technology, and i am sure it is vital in 2005 or 2006 when Juli started up there and the curriculum probably has changed, as other curricula have been designed or launched (such as the one i am helping to direct now in London at Brunel Univetsity -- where it's called "Digital Performance,' and where the "house" is a School of Arts, not a dance academy). There are now many new courses. Jaychandran Palahzy just designed one for his Attakkalari Movement Arts Center in Bangalore.

- each school sets different priorities, and if/when there are excellent spaces, such as at SARC (Belfast), that space and the program in which the gradutes work, may have a diffferent focus. At SARC it is music (technology). EMPAC is a new venue, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute may encourage and teach students "to be able to utilize, adapt, extend, apply and contextualise a technology." Other schools surely do the same or ought to do it. A continuous rehearsal infrastructure for working with networked media technologies, software and hardware, and flexible "architectures" in composition (from beginning to end of such a process) would be an essential requirement, the teaching of building microcircuitry or intelligent/responsive environments would be as basic/essential as software labs in Max/MSP. Isadora, and Fina Cut Pro (or equivalent / other kinds of algorithmic processes and computational principles).

-- contextualization, I suppose, involves a great deal of knowledge and comparative analysis of forms and practices that have evolved, say, since the 1960s (f not the 1860s and the beginning of photography/film parallel to modern art/modernism), and here "history" of experimentation would surely be a necessary subject of inquiry. Young artists would want to know about "9 Evenings of Theatre & Engineering" (the "lab" festival Rauschenberg and Klüver created in 1966), and the many collaborative works that were created since then and that were modelled on particular practices of production or "naturally" squared with new dance-theatre forms, postmodern dance (Trisha Brown's "equiopment pieces"), . Cunningham's large body of work is a particularly good model, but butoh and contemporary forms of improvisation and hip hop may be equally fruitful, as is performance art/live art and video art (I have learnt more from video artists/filmmakers and visual artists than from choreographers).

-- audiences have of course grown more knowledgeable as well, and maybe i was wrong in thinking that theatre audiences anticipate a certain kind of theatrical entertainment.....(Why should they not, like art audiences, continuously modify their expectations, to the extent that that video and cinematic forms in performance are now, in the meantime, mostly conventional, and audiences can distinguish between different uses of (real time) image and sound production in a play, a dance, a music theatre piece, an installation.

-- installation has become an established genre, and screen based media have diversified, as Julie also implies when she suggests that our life styles have changed, and wearable/mobile media are gradually more commonplace, so that a "wearable" performance aesthetic (a particular use, adaptation and modification of wearable computing in a dance or in a performance or an audience-interactive installation can be critically received and evaluated.

i completely agree, Matt, that "cutting edges" are a promotional issue; not worth dwelling on too much; unless you feel that emerging artists place too much (false) faith in the "new" they think they have just invented. While the issue of framework (critical understanding, and relating to precursors and traditions of performance tech) and framing (in a particular space/architecture in which digital performance can be made to work and be experienced in its medium-specificity and interspecificity) is very important, the slow recognition of the development of particular techniques and tool applications is equally important, as you have suggested, Matt.

-- in infrastructural terms (involving the economic side) - performance technologies need not be expensive or unaffordable. here it may help if Julie & cohorts had access to the reports/documentations/archives of the workshops, labs, and courses that have taken place, say, over the last 15 years. many of them were bottom up.

digital archives are being created more and more. websites and libraries hold much of this information, but the schools or the arts centers themselves need to do more. especially since practitioners (on the staff) tend to move a lot, shift locations, change their places of work/residency.

Many here, in this community, i am sure you agree ,are leaving trails..... i hope they are accessible, since some trails (such as information on course content, production methods, installation techniques, the craft and dramaturgies of making and re-peating the making) ought not to slip away, once could wonderfully trace the development of fields such as dance tech, interactive art, art & technology, robotics, music technology, intelligent garment design/wearable design, digital or cybertheatre, installation art, etc, if one looked at the curricula and the programming of art schools, dance schools, music schools and the contemportary art centers and museums which supported the growth of the digital arts over the last 20 years..... there i s a history. (museums tend to be helpful: they publish catalogs).

I stop here, will come back at a later point. But for accessing such digital/web archives, some people here have already done much by creating extensive links on the websites (as on Marlon's http://www.unstablelandscape.net/, or Quodlibet, or Tony Schultz's http://dancemachines.blogspot.com/ or Doug Fox's http://greatdance.com. There is so much information available,
and we have also had a steady history of festivals and platforms (all of which, i think, ought to be "collected" perhaps and indexed and brought into some form of critical topography).

I add a few trails, some are submerged, others clearly accessible. I tried to make the lab websites (which sustain a program over years) systematic; I also used to include links in my lab websites, but those are not always stable of course, and change. But if many here listed their own archives or if all members on the dance tech ning site are in fact contributors to the archival spectrum, then students who pursue the field can perhaps more easily compare the trajectories of compositional issues and artistic positions of remediation (the 'choreographic' use of remediation, and real-time/interactive or intermedia architectures). The dance works "themselves" may not be viewable (on video online), and that is a problem anyway, since i already noted that YouTube has really very little to do with anything i said here.

http://art.net/~dtz/

http://www.dance.ohio-state.edu/~jbirringer/Dance_and_Technology/
(Environments lab 1999-2003)

http://www.digitalcultures.org
(Digital Cultures lab, 2005-)

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap
(DAP-Lab, 2005- )

http://interaktionslabor.de
(interaction lab, 2003- )

http://www.sdela.dds.nl/wra/projects.htm
(Writing Research Associates)

If we had archives and documentation of new "courses" or production architectures (how do collaborative project groups and arts/science research models grow, what are their infrastructures, the modes of dissemination, venues, platforms, etc). , in many different locations, especially those research centers and schools in Brasil, Argentina, Japan, Canada, US, Australia, India, the European regions, which have also nurtured festivals and exhibitions, then we wouldn't have too many excuses left ...

(surely videodance and video dance festivals have a record and thus a research base.... (example: in Houston we have had an independent organization called Aurora Picture Show, and their microcinema programs over the past 15 years have now all been collected, digitized, and are available in a new screening center/library: http://www.aurorapictureshow.org/)

regards
Johannes

[Marlon Barrios Solano]

Hello,
Thank you Johannes and Julie for very articulate and optimistic posts in this discussion. I agree with Johannes that as practitioners and researchers we must contribute to the development of the knowledge of the field making a methodological and systematic effort to leave "digital traces" of the many diverse processes that constitute the complex practices of this field (a filed that is actually also moving its boundaries).
We are using many on-line technologies to document and market our processes and products such as blogs, project websites, etc. This site is available as an important aggregation and SHARING.
In addition to this, I suggest that have to embrace a more "crowdsourcing" approach: take advantage of the internet to (with a bottom-up approach) progressively and collectively generate the critical knowledge. It won't feel linear or "book like" or traditional academic ways of centralizing knowledge. Most of the times will be hints, cues, new names, more and more images, videos and video games and less text because "literacy" is changing also. Innovation will come from the periphery, because there not a unique center...so is a different dance...more improvisational...
I added most of the Johannes links to a wikipedia page in dance technology. I suggest that page as an aggregator or a more linear information about dance technology that is totally open and easy to find by the searchbots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_technology
The only way of having a better picture of the elephant is to have access to the impressions of the many blind people touching different parts
So, it is a collective effort of adding and editing...we have the technology for it and it might demand a more optimistic and open attitude about our our projects and ideas.
Wiki technology and wikipedia in my opinion will help to generate and compile our digital traces.
what do you think?
A link in collaborative writing

[Johannes Birringer]

hallo Marlon and all

thanks for this reply and action taken. you raise a question that is is not easy to answer without, perhaps, discussing what we understand knowledge to mean, or learning (whether practice or theory), contextualization (the terrm for frameworking that Matt Gough used), and "crowdsourcing" -- i gather you are advocating the collaborative/community./bottom up mode of building a common encyclopedia on the internet (hypertexted), and you refer us to WIKPEDIA and the mode of "collaborative writing."

I would like to solicit responses on this......

"collective effort of adding and editing" -- yes, Wikipedia is a fascinating phenomenon, and yet it has its own drawbacks. Anyone can start an encyclopedic entry, whether on dance technology, ant lions, Malcolm X, or Scientology, and so others can edit/add/adopt/extend & utilize, in the manner in which Matt was addressing dance/technology training. We may not always know the bias or the ideological agenda that goes into such entries and crowdsourcing, and we may not be aware of the subjective lens and the errors that creep in and then get extended. perhaps there is also a mechanisms of correction/revision which is interesting if one had time to observe/follow the manner of such "revisions"/revisionary history.

But the idea of a collective and, hopefully, international/transcultural historical archiving process, including images, videos, scores, press reviews, interviews, documentations/archives and literatures on evolutions in computational/media performance - that is a great challenge and a daunting one, since I would still argue that the Web distributes and dissolves (it spreads to an extent that you can't gather; it surely decentralizes, and to the point of unrecovery....)

I need to think more about this issue of what you call un-centered knowledge (do you know the book by Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss on the "informe" [formless]?), new "literacies" (surely I agree, but i would not want to abolish older literacies, on the contrary) and how histories are written and then taught (where are they written/published?).

i think again there are quite a few different and parallel modernisms and postmodernisms in dance, and improvisation genres and highly coded dance forms and each of these forms adapts and extends the use of technologies and, primarily, comes also continuously into contact with parallel media/new media production forms and social framnworks of reception that change or are modified (The inital post here addresses the Internet -- and how the Internet has changed the sociality , the environmental psychology in and of dance).

The notion of an "aggregator" is very interesting, and perhaps, those who particpate in THIS network or forum, our the new website, or the older dance tech maillist ([e-mail]) and the new dances-screen media list ( [e-mail]), can all contribute to it.

I's suggest that you/we announce this as a plan in the forum and here (a new blow)

//
(about blowing, i note a new book came out that seems to have a critique at hand about the Web, e.g. insisting that most of those opportunities boil down to commercial matters, and that “the Internet’s vision of ‘consumers’ as ‘producers’ has turned inner life into an advanced type of commodity.” Siegel provides example after example of how surreptitiously this process of co-option works, and how YouTube for example deflects attention from the social experience of the artform, furthering what Canadian media philosopher F. Scott Taylor has called "social autism". See: Lee Siegel, AGAINST THE MACHINE Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob
(Spiegel & Grau, 2007).
//

In conjunction, if the dancetech -ning network [http://dancetech.ning.com] has a certain number of members, and the other maillists do (altogether, what would you reckon, 250 - 300 subscribers?), then we may wish to issue a call or a note to all those that can be reached, asking for input on the AGGREGATE. I think 250 to 300 subscribers scratches the surface, there must be a few thousands artists around the world who are doing what we are doing. I recommend that - now at the beginning of the new decade (2008- 2118) -- we publish a roll call to reach as many interested practitioners and researchers as possible, (this ought to be published, ideally, in a number of languages, and perhaps co-issued with partners in south / central america, east asia, europe, africa,, middle east, australia/nz and north america), informing them about this growing network, inviting them, i think it's possible to reach mailing lists from dance festivals and dance research organizations, and thus spread the word (another form of crowdsourcing).

The "AGGREGATOR" could also mean building a living archive that consolidates/collects and para-synthesizes (hmmm, who will do this on each location?...) knowledge drawn from recent laboratoriers and public exhibitions -----
so, let us say, the laboratories & festivals of the last half or so year, including :

-- Moves Screen Choreography Conference (Manchester)
-- London International Dancefilm Festival
-- CAPTURE commissions & projects
-- EMPAC commissions and projects
-- Reel Dance , Performance Space (Sydney)
-- ADF (American Dance Festiva)
-- transmediale festival Berlin [http://www.transmediale.de/site/]
-- Post Dance (http://postdance.wordpress.com/), Chile
-- Festival de Videodanza y Medios electrónicos. México
-- Danza em Foco festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
-- Muestra de Video-Danza de Barcelona, Spain
-- Te-Dance (Lisbon, Portugal)
-- Movi-Lab, a-m-b-e-b 07 (Istanbul)
-- Enaction Conference in Grenoble...
-- ENTITY (London)
-- Corpora in Si(gh)te, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (Japan)
-- CYNETart_07encounter
-- VideoDanzaBA Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires (Argentina)
-- various networked performance events (see http://transition.turbulence.org/blog/) such
as "Disparate Bodies: A three-way Network Performance" (SARC/Hamburg/Graz)
-- Opensource:{video-dance} 2007 (20-24 November), Scotland
-- EMMA Lab (Ohio, USA)
-- 4º Taller Internacional de las tecnologías des cuerpo:
Cuerpos Frontera esteticas y politicas en el postmodernmismo" (Madrid, Spain)
-- Emergent Objects (Leeds (17-19 dec)
-- LEMUR's ReSiDeNt (USA)
-- Video Dance Italy 2007 (Moving Virtual Bodies), 10-19 December 2007
-- X=20.3, x(y()), x.y — And Other Choreographic Moves (Glasgow, Scotland)
-- montage video dance & FNB Dance Umbrella 2008 ( Johannesburg, South Africa)
-- Impuls Tanz events (Vienna, Austria)
-- ZKM , Panorama Festival & events (Karlsruhe, Germany)
-- Centre des arts d'Enghien-les-Bains (France) [www.artishoc.com]
-- INTIMACY: Across Visceral and Digital Performance (London, UK)
-- CollectingLiveArt Symposium (London, UK)
--
--


(I apologize to all events and event organisers whose events i did not know about).

If we can gather an "AGGREGATE" and get an overview of recent developments, it might then also be possible to trace (we can contact the organisers and ask for information) the evolution of such organizations and their commitments to performance technology platforms, research, education and dissemination.

It is also worth thinking ahead to all of 2008/2009. As you know, Monaco Dance Forum (*and its digital platform*) has ended in 2006 and will not repeat, so the biannual rhythm of this major platform for dance technology will have to be re-placed, re-situated, perhaps, by a young start up event that can gather steam (a mid-December event in 2008 would be great, do you know of plans under way?) and bring practitioners from near and far together. (IDAT has a track history and its platforms were gathered and published).

I still think face to face encounters and workshops, in conjunction with exhibitions of works (old and new) is an ideal format.

Finally, the RE-creation of significant older dance works (using particular forms of performance computing and interface design) and installations could also be a task that digital curators in contemporary Art Centers might want to take on, as i believe such exhibitions - with a retrospective dimension -- could be very significant

(e.g. The MIT List Visual Arts Center offered its 2006 exhibition "9 evenings reconsidered: art, theatre, and engineering, 1966" as a critical homage to the original event, featuring the records of 1966 to focus on a ground breaking link in the history of performance, art, and technology)........

& thank you, Chris Ziegler, for the Xmas present:
(a dvd about 9EVENINGS:
http://www.microcinemadvd.com/product/DVD/596/
Open_Score_by_Robert_Rauschenberg.html

...

I also feel (not being much online but mostly in the studio and on stage), that research and experimentation will continue to need material data and artefacts to be utilized in training and learning, quite in tandem with in-body training and physically embodied technique learning. Physical embodiment is as crucial, naturallly, for post-choreography (sorry, I bring this up again, a nice term in started to use in 2006, i hope you like it still.....) as it is for engineering and designing of physical interfaces and wearable computers. When did you last see a collection of interface design artefacts? Thecla Schiphorst's/Susan Kozel's "whisper" garment designs, anyone? Pina Bausch's rhinozeros costume? or igloo's ghillied mocap dresses? Gretchen Schiller's moveable screens? Bob Rauschenberg's scenographic sculptures? kondition pluriel's storage bunker? Cena 11's robotic devices from their danceworks or Meg Stuart's environments (did she not do one with Ann Hamilton?) --- give us a museum and i bet you we could do a stunning dance tech installation..........

I wonder whether (new) venues such as ICA Boston or EMPAC, ZKM, Tate Modern, the Global Performing Arts Consortium [http://www.glopac.org/], Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau, Performance Space, Sydney, Critical Path Sydney [http://www.criticalpath.org.au/], Radialsystem Berlin [http://www.radialsystem.de/] , DTW New York, Kitchen, IRCAM, STEIM, de Waag, Franklin Furnace, Fondation Daniel Langlois in Montréal [http://www.fondation-langlois.org/], or others are also helping us to have more susbtantial access to good performance libraries and collections (there was no archive at MDF, nor at the past IDAT events).

I certainly plan to make available my personal library (books, magazines, journals, notes, video tapes, DVDs, audio cassettes, stage props, costumes, etc -- the printed materials are all on performance, dance, video art, media arts, technology, anthropology and cultural studies ) accumulated since 1980 as soon as i stop teaching in a university, and i could imagine such collections and similar ones to be helpful to others in the performance-tech educational sector.

regards

Johannes Birringer
c/o Houston, TX
www.aliennationcompany.com

[mpgough]

the bottom up approach assumes that the 'crowd' understands what they are participating in. that really isn't the case in dance-tech:

http://dancetech.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1462368%3ATopic%3A4601

more so, if there is no 'core' how can there be a 'periphery' or innovation. innovation would require moving on from something, and the 'collective' is not sure what the 'something' is.

i would also ask how you can see boundaries shifting if there is no core. at what point do we get beyond the vague 'complex practices' and start to articulate what they are. every improvisation has a structure and principles, however open they may be.

critical knowledge requires critique. critique is too often seen as a negative. empty congratulations and the absence of commentary will not lead to critical knowledge. the different perspectives of what is good/bad, novel, applicable (etc.) are the many 'impressions of parts' that you allude to. but the impressions have to have context, what if everyone says 'i am at the front of the elephant'?

the dance-tech page at wikipedia was started by myself. in 2004. it has changed very little since my early edits. the page was intended to be populated with info from this project:

http://www.dancetechnology.com/dancetechnology/archive/2003/0514.html

sadly that project never happened (i was not part of the initial writing but offered to format the articles for wikipedia). wikipedia is not the place for 'our digital traces' but for centralized knowledge about the field of dance-tech. i would point you to the following:

- Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source.

- Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources.

- Do not edit Wikipedia to promote your own interests, or those of other individuals, companies, or groups, unless you are certain that the interests of Wikipedia remain paramount.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest

this is partly the reason i stopped editing that page. also (back then) i didn't have the wider perspective on dance and performance technologies that i do now.

whilst johannes is active here (and on the list), there is a great wealth of dance-tech knowledge and history missing (e.g. scott de-lahunta). this is the lineage we need to record alongside current, and future work.

dance-tech.net and the dance-tech list are the place to share 'traces'. but we need more than video, images, audio ... we need the text too. if everyone makes up a new name for the same thing how do we 'innovate'. labels are not innovation, concept and principles are (the media and physical knowledge are the 'evidence').

the issue is not the 'centralizing' but finding a new 'scholarship' (academia) that is media, body, and theory rich. we share our work to find the richness and diversity. but at some point we have to think about properly articulating documenting the field of dance-tech. a trace only shows you one way, what we need is a map of the many different options.

we should be able to say ... dance-tech is [...] in a simple clear fashion. so that anyone can quickly learn about what we do, and explore the many diverse examples.

[Johannes Birringer]

hello;

this is a welcome critique of Wikipedia and internet information, and i tend to agree and had the same suspicions. i did not study the Wikipedia procedure as closely as you, Matt, and am suprised to see these strictures, since i doubt people really care precisely about them, do they? i am not sure whether you really think there is no original thought possible...... well. what puzzles me more is your implicit critique of all practitioners who may (or may not) relate to the movement or the 'community' of digital performanced art/dance.

you say:
innovation would require moving on from something, and the 'collective' is not sure what the 'something' is.

is this a response/critique you have about the blogs here? about members/subscribers asking what "dance technology" is? hmmm,.

i never had a problem making work and knowing what i thought of doing, and who/what informed my choices and where i came from, whether it fit any category or not. Once you have a work to show, you show it in a particulat context or platform, or you create it with a particular venue in mind, and then it will be dance, theatre, music, video, film or poetry or visual art, not sure how many more platforms there are, but those exist and are conventional. if you do site specific work, which is also conventional, you pick your staircase or elevator or tunnel. It seems relatively simple to me.

Artists working committedly with new media technologies, software design and application and computational configurations (interfaces, interaction, network distribution, sensors, real-time) in their peformance composition -- and i treat installation as performative, and many dance works with interactive design i also consider exhibitions/installations) --- i don't think ever had a problem knowing what they are doing, and the dance technology workshops, since 1994 (there were earlier ones, but i think they really got under way in the mid-90s) and labs also crystallized these practices of working in conjunctions with larger international platforms such as Digital Dancing and IDAT and MDF which brought people together.

This coming together to show work, see work, debate work, analyze work, have symposia, statements and presentations, workshops and tool shops (creation mode), was the first and second step to the formation of the thing referred to (by you and others) as an imaginary community.

I don't think we have a community, except such an imagined one.

Artists who attend festivals and show (their) work seldom stay to see other work, engage in much dialog & exchange, unless it is stipulated in their contracts, or they are committed to staying for a week, 2 weeks. Same with academics at conferences. yet there is this illusion that one has a community, with social bond. nonsense. Social networks online have no bonds. that;s the finest illusion. Over the years, we do tend to run into each other however, or like each other's work, or become friends or see the peer relations as important, and partnerships do evolve of course, based on passions, and on interest. and on distinction (see Pierre Bourdieu's research on the culture of distinction, his book "La distinction").

Thus, there is obviously a network, and a perception of a community of interest. And once the schools and academies alter their curricula and include new practices, teaching and formations happen at the schools, as they do in the more important schools of companies and ensembles (see my post on "repertory" on the dance-tech maillist).

Curiously, you called the dance tech maillist "putrefying" , back in November. [>>"... feeble bulletin boards and passive participation.
this list is not a 'persistent presence', but a putrefying presence.">>] -- which was quite a charming image of decomposition. But it now appears that you are equally critical of blogs and social networks, as they are partly sponosoring illusionary community life as well, if i understand you correctly. Wikipedia is centralizing? what could possibly be centralized on a distributive dissolutionary network such as the Web, with is putrefying disconnects and commodifying distracts?

Regarding the wealth of knowledge and history, my point was (in proposing to build on the existing traces and archives and extend the "AGGREGATE") precisely that there is much of it. there is.

Scott de Lahunta is much available, in print, in his reports, in his constant activities in research and in organizing research partnerships (I linked you to his website), and many of us are doing this, whether it's Ivani Santana in Brazil, Philippe Baudelot, Armando Menicacci and others in France, Jay Palahzy in India, Hellen Sky and others in Australia, Frieder Weiss, Emio Greco, Wayne McGregor, Gretchen Schiller, Susan Kozel, Thecla Schiphorst, Mark Coniglio; Marie-Claude Poulin & Henry Daniel & Isabelle Choinière in Canada, , Marlon, Jaime del Val, the SWAP group in Portugal, Georg Hobmeier, the Italian artists, Antonio Camurri, you, so many indeed, members on this blogmixsite, , so there is no dearth of knowledge and action, organization. Jaime's effort in Madrid, just as Ekmel Ertan and Ayse Orhon's efforts for the 2007 a_m_b_e_r festival in Turkey, was directed at producing more wide-spread practical and critical knowledge, involving local practitioners, and so labs are coordinated and held, buildings are found to house them, and equipments are brought together.

I do agree with your succinct statement:
>>
this is the lineage we need to record alongside current, and future work.
dance-tech.net and the dance-tech list are the place to share 'traces'. but we need more than video, images, audio ... we need the text too. if everyone makes up a new name for the same thing how do we 'innovate'. labels are not innovation, concept and principles are (the media and physical knowledge are the 'evidence').

the issue is not the 'centralizing' but finding a new 'scholarship' (academia) that is media, body, and theory rich. we share our work to find the richness and diversity.
>>

yes, and these books are coming as well, Scott is writing one, my new "Performance, Technology, Science" (New York: PAJ Books, 2008) is coming out in the spring, other books are appearing, and texts are generated for journals, did you see the two special "Choreography and Philosophy" issues of The Drama Review (edited by Andre Lepecki)? astounding, very good texts, some translated from different languages, and a new issue on choreography is in the making by the Routledge-published "Performance Research" journal; PADM also has included dance, Leonardo frequently looks at dance, and, last but not least, books are coming out from and about groups (a book on igloo, a book on Emio Greco, recently a scholarly study of Pina Bausch's work was published ["Bewegung in Übertragung: Methoden der Tanzforschung," ed. Gabriele Klein & Gabriele Brandstetter, Bielefeld: transcript, 2007], Woodhead Publishers are preparing a large new volume on "Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology," ed. Jane McCann and David Bryson, Cambridge, 2008, with a section on dance and performance; then there's the book we published in Dresden, "Die Welt als virtuelles Environment"/The World as Virtual Environment, ed. Johannes Birringer, Thomas Dumke, Klaus Nicolai, Dresden: TMA, 2007, there is a new book on Sascha Waltz, another book by Claid, Emilyn, "Yes? No! Maybe...Seductive Ambiguity in Dance" (London: Routledge, 2006), there is also: Causey, Matthew, "Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture," London: Routledge, 2006 (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies). Then there is McRobert, Laurie, "Char Davies’ Immersive Virtual Art and the Essence of Spatiality," Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. There is: Brownell, Blaine, "Transmaterial: A catalog of materials that redefine our physical environment,"New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. There is Gil, José, "Movimento Total: O Corpo e a Danca" (Lisboa: Relogio d’Agua, 2001). Medeiros, M.B. de, "Corpos Informáticos: arte, corpo, tecnologia" (Brasilia: FAC, 2006), and also her "Aisthesis: estética, educação e comunidades"(Chapecó: Argos, 2005). Santana, Ivani, "Corpo Aberto: Cunningham, dança e novas tecnologias" (São Paulo, Educ, 2002). ...Have you come across Felicia McCarren, "Dancing Machines: Choreographies of the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003 - a historical study which is quite wonderful and illuminating for our field. The philosopher Mark Hansen's work? Hansen, Mark B.N. "Embodiment: The Machinic and the Human,” in Joke Brouwer, Arjen Mulder, Anne Nigten, Laura Martz, eds., aRt&D: Artistic Research and Development, Rotterdam: V2_Publishing/NAi Publishers, 2005, pp. 151-65., and also his new "Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media," New York: Routledge, 2006. Furthernmore: Broadhurst, Sue, and Josephine Machon, eds., Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity, Houndsmill: Palgrave, 2006; Spuybroek, Lars, NOX: Machining Architecture, London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.

and so we could go on. I think there is quite a bit of material. I do agree with points you had made earlier, in 2006, during our discussion on post-choreography when you were posting under the anonymous "Curators" and suggested that we do need more writing about practice and more critical analyses of practice-based knowledge. compositional methods, algorithmic processes, coding for dancing, dancing in real time, filming for/with dancing, architectures of projection (a terribly underrepresented field of study, we do need much writing, for sure, on projective art and on scale, space, and dimensionalities of movement image emplacement and such material interface constallations with bodies in movement), and so on. Marc Downie's Phd thesis is wonderful: " Choreographing the Extended Agent," Doctoral Thesis, MIT Media Lab, 2005. His critique of mapping has provoked quite interesting discussions.

Yes, we need writing and debate on concepts and principles, especially if the discourses (or practices) borrow from the sciences, from biology, mathematics, computer science, etc. i quite agree.

here is a place, and then there are journals and other platforms (scholarly meetings, workshops, symposia, festivals and masterclasses connected to them, as it happens in Vienna and other places)....... none of these, i suspect are now centralizable, but some books may become more widely available and read/debated than others. Paolo Virno ("Jokes and Innovative Action: For a Logic of Change", trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito & Andrea Casson, New York: semiotext(e) 2008), i had not heard of this Italian writer, until Artforum introduced him in translation (in current January issue).

You suggest: >> we should be able to say ... dance-tech is [...] in a simple clear fashion. so that anyone can quickly learn about what we do.>>

I am not sure i would want to use the term dance tech anymore. it is clumsy, as many of us noted over the years.

I think the work we mean (and create) is produced under the common era now of digital cultures as they are understood in advanced industrial/postindustrial societies heavily dependent on computing and IT. As with all other art forms (since the invention of photography and film) the shifts in (re)production technologies have a clear impact.

One could therefore assume there is the formation of a digital aesthetics once works are produced digitally or with digital components.
Digital performance refers to (no longer medium-specific since multiple-media) performances that depend on the use of digital interfaces and computation. The aesthetic use of computing, software, and distributed networks in performance, needs to be looked at not from a generalized perspective of emerging media technologies (i.e. available tools) but through the performers’ and designers techniques of "controlling" media parameters in a shared, responsive environment. In such environments, interactivity and real-time media perform a crucial role, but interactional strategies can have many characteristics, and they can be performer-centered or audience-directed. And then on to hybrid intermedial works, and the mixing/citing of forms which is common today, and derived from pop culture and the logic of late capitalism.

That might be my framework, and one could quickly introduce some theoretical terms/texts now to address notions of the digital (and analog), the computational/algorithmic, the reproductive aspects and the real time dimensions. Interactivity can then be explored (after cybernetic principles) in its various contexts as well. Choreographic interactivity? ah.

with regards
Johannes

[mpgough]

hello Johannes

i should have been clearer in my post , and realised the limitations of conversation threading on the ning platform. my reply was mainly in response to marlons comments [ http://dancetech.ning.com/xn/detail/1462368:Comment:8545 ]

the 'something' was the notion of what 'dance-tech' is.

as you say yourself it is a clumsy label, yet it persists because nothing has replaced it yet. however, it does carry some historical and contextual validity.

i have tended to use the term 'dance and performance technologies'. what we do is a subset of the wider 'performance technologies' practice. 'digital' does not sit well with me as many projects use analogue and mechanical technologies.

by 'new scholarship' i did not mean 'recent publications', but a different approach to writing. most of the (published) texts you list are presented in an 'academic format' that is quickly becoming outdated.

i'm not rejecting books and journals, but think the way in which we write about what we do needs to be revised.

there was no intention to critique blogs and social networks. i was simply differentiating between the traces and maps.

" The map is open and connectable in all its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification [...] A map has multiple entryways, as opposed to the tracing, which always comes back to the same [ Deleuze and Guattari ] "

marlon was suggesting that blogs and the network (as an aggregator) would lead to 'critical theory' via the 'confluence' of traces. i disagree. we need centralized maps, offline books and journals ... online, wikipeda is most peoples reference point.

my description of the list as a 'putrefying presence' was in reference to how much i valued its active status; something good, gone bad.

re scott (and others) the (first) dance tech list brought together many minds and perspectives in an international discussion. i was pointing to the dearth of discussion, knowledge and expertise online.

the localized events and discussion are not enough. they simply become self-reinforcing. how many times have you asked for people to write up and post conferences etc on the list. how often has it happened.

even within this 'digital culture' we are seeing a resurgence of 'industrial forms' e.g. steampunk and analogue / polaroid photography. shifts back to old technologies are a part of current 'arts/crafts' cultures.

global critique and perspectives are required, even your quick sketch excluded the (purely) mechanical. for example the computational/algorithmic can be derived mechanically - e.g. charles babbage's analytical engine (arguably digital) or thomas fowlers calculating device (fully digital).

perhaps you meant 'electronic' (can be digital or analogue) rather than 'digital', in your 'digital performance' framework.

best - matt

- also, 'curators' was a group, not a person.

[Johannes Birringer]

hello Matt:

yes, i realized your response was to Marlon's post, but as he responded to my queries, i assumed you were also including me.

I realize i did not go into enough specific explanation of what i mean by digital culture (which i take to, naturally, incorporate all previous and parallel-existing industrial, mechanical and anlog forms since they are subsumed now under the mciroelectronic and nanotechnological and networked media/softwares/hardwares), not did i want to avoid addressing the question of what new 'scholarhsip" might mean (Liquid Reader type composite platforms/interactive DVDs?), new audiovisual writings - i think this is a great proposal, but i do think that texts still have validity in book form, and i tend to believe we continue to value and buy and collect books to read and re read. I seldom re-read files in store somewhere, and all my old text files from 1994, say, are lost (as they are on floppy disks and / or on zip disks, and i can't play them anymore), but i do have my books here from the 80s, and 90s. and i noted today, in Houston of all places, about 50 people at noon time in Second hand Book stop , browsing and buying books from shelves, books that are 10 or 20 years old.

>>the way in which we write about what we do needs to be revised>>

give us an idea what you suggest?

I am anxious to see mor experimental writing, drawing, making software and making electronic writings. writing on thinking dance and dancing and writing/composing. i think making a Youtube video is fine, but does not answer the question.

I realize the Curators were a collective, sorry. i just said you wrote "under" that collective umbrella, right?

Our colleague Doug Fox ciriticized me back in November for underestimating Troika Ranch's posting of their new video on YouTube,

>.- Why is it that Troika Ranch is one of the very few dance companies to
document their dance-tech work online and respond to feedback?
..

Mark and Dawn Stoppiello have used the included blogging functionality
of MySpace to describe their work under development and share their
thoughts and reactions. Plus, and what makes this initiative very
important, is that Mark and Dawn have been open to getting public
feedback about their work, both good and bad, and responding to these
comments and questions. I posted a number of questions in response to
one of Mark's posts that he was kind enough to respond to:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID...
4&blogID=297368481&Mytoken=D9C399CB-0A75-4E0D-B66048D7936209FC15350250

In addition, Troika Ranch has also posted five videos to their YouTube
channel. The posting of these videos along with the blog posts raises a
number of worthwhile questions and issues regarding how
choreographers/dancers can communicate with audiences in new ways
outside of the confines of the physical and time constraints of the
performance stage.
>>

I need to go back to those moments, on the net, and my notes, when i watched the video repeatedly, and then browsed the responses. I doi agree, it's great that Mark & Dawn invited response to a work (or work in progress), and fielded the work as a proposition, and answered to comments.

I don;t think this scheme was discussed, in any serious manner, by the "community," i don't think what my critique would have meant (to the makers of the work), and i generally was questioning in inane social network chat often goes on in blogs and "hi Jenny, wow, love your video" responses. I guess i'd ask whether Matt or Doug think that responses to a video clip on YouTube or a clip uploaded to the website constitite this new scholarship (analytical / critical exchange) , or part of such scholarship, that is being suggested.

I also now feel lost, i tried to double this discussion on the page here, and on the dance tec h mailllist, and Dawn and Nick responded quite wonderfully on the putrefied mail/discussion list, but i don;t have time to cross correspond now and double up,. i am, going back to the studio.

regards
JB

[Boris Willis]

Several things come to mind after rereading the responses to the questions that Julie asked. First, this discussion is a valuable resource but one that is very different from scholarly publications such as books and peer review journals.

Johannes says "I guess i'd ask whether Matt or Doug think that responses to a video clip on YouTube or a clip uploaded to the website constitite this new scholarship (analytical / critical exchange) , or part of such scholarship, that is being suggested."

Certainly I would not categorize the discussion or comments to a video or blog post as scholarship in and of itself but one can use them as a part of their scholarly research. However, for me what is important is what I get to see. I realize that there is suspicion about websites and web videos but there is now a forum that has never existed before. Bloggers on Youtube some of whom are high school students have hundreds of thousand of subscribers and all they are doing is making videos and talking about things that are important to them. They receive hundreds of comments on their video posts. Is this something that I would like to have as an artist, YES. The power of youtube is enormous for some and for me, it has a potential that is unlike and live concert that I give or any marketing or promotional materials that I may disseminate. Beyond that I have seen work that would have been previously unavailable to me. When Pina Baush comes to BAM, people from all over the country come to NYC to see her company perform. I would love to be in that number but I have not been afforded the opportunity. However, I can see Mats Ek video "Smoke" on Youtube and while is it not the same as a live performance,/////// but then again why do WE value live performance so much anyway. Is there a lesson in the fact that during a live performance with video that people will watch the video instead of the people.

I have felt for a long time that for all of the rebellion inherent in dance postmodernism, the embrace of the theater was most troublesome for me. Now, with broadband speeds, flash and mpeg conversion, and video sharing websites we have new ways to engage with audiences and by leaving comments, they can engage with us. The difference is that someone talking after a performance may ask questions or give comments but everyone is not participating and performers respond on the spot. How often do we say to someone after a performance let me think about that and I will call you in a few days. Websites allow for this kind of discussion. It is alway valuable, no. Are people mean and insensitive, yes. But there are times when real conversation happens.

One of my favorite movies is the Lord of the Rings trilogy because it has a great story. There is much technology but unlike Chunky Moves, "Glow" I am drawn to watch it over and over because there is more happening than "look at what we can do with technology" I look at kids and see amazing wearable technology, they have shoes that light up or roll them down the street. If we can do no more than that then why should someone come to see our work regardless of the cost to produce it or the scholarship that follows it.

It is easy to criticize wikipedia for being wrong but what about when it is right. I have an old collection of encyclopedias that say there are 9 planets in our solar system, but that is no longer true. My books unlike wikipedia have not been updated. The choice for me is to buy new books or take my chances that someone may post information that is incorrect or biased.

There is something new happening and we need to be cautious about letting go of what is familiar, and what has worked but change will happen in a generation whether we like it or not. Kids who grow up using cell phones will see them develop into something larger and more powerful than we can imagine just as our Atari video game consoles have developed into PS3, Xbox and Wii.

Because my work is on the internet people from around the world see it all of the time, google postmodern dance and my website is in the top 10. It remains to be seen how I survive or if any of this will be fruitful for me but I have a presence in the places where people look.

[mpgough]

hello boris, johannes & all

nice to have some additional perspectives boris. i think that writing on the web can be scholarly (there are examples) but, like you say, it is different to current book and journal approaches.

comments on videos, and uploading footage do not constitute new scholarship. they can be indicators of new approaches to analytical / critical exchange (as boris suggests), but that depends on what is written.

there was plenty of serious discussion about loop driver, perhaps more than mark & dawn wanted or could deal with. it was distributed, but active. i have linked to some of my posts and some from mark and dawn. this is a fraction of the analysis on «loop driver» at a time when the dance-tech list was near silent.

as mark and dawn used a myspace blog i have reformatted the (long) links


26 july
Beginning Loop Diver @ 3LD/NYC
http://tinyurl.com/3cnzk7

29 july
Abandoning Choreography in Search of the Killer Loop
http://tinyurl.com/36aur7

shenanigans
http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/7100523

08 aug
Loopy Clairifications...
http://tinyurl.com/3acyvq

09 aug
sighting
http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/8118365.html

feedback loop
http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/8168353

07 sept
feedback, the devil or the god
http://tinyurl.com/2yjyk8

10 sept
gnosis gulch
http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/11286064.html


Deborah Jowitt - review
http://tinyurl.com/yq8jhc

Martin Denton - review
http://tinyurl.com/2cyknp

troika at youtube
http://www.youtube.com/troikaranch


our use of the web for discourse/development is not perfect. in october (on quodlibet) i said:

"i have yet to see a truly effective online r&d [reserach and development] process for dance. and it is not always the audience that does not engage in feedback. the loop driver blog is a great example of a dance company requesting audience engagement .. but failing to engage with the audience themselves."

the development of dance blogging and new scholarship is incremental but perceivable. a daily audience is daily critique. we listen, collide, collaborate and move forward. at times an online presence is not just sharing but practice. if we make art to be seen, then we need to understand how people see it. blogs, videoblogs etc all facilitate this.

the 'new wave' of scholarship embrace clarity, theory/principles, openness, context(s) and depth in writing. there is also a move away from the endless, dense referencing and caveats so evident today. whilst the new scholars write with passion and knowledge, they do not slip into the mire of metaphorics and poetics. where appropriate and feasible the writing is media rich.

johannes said:

"I am anxious to see more experimental writing, drawing, making software and making electronic writings. writing on thinking dance and dancing and writing/composing"

read more blogs. yes you will need to filter, but the progression is happening online. you will also be pleased to note that increasing numbers of bloggers are also turning to self publishing. these new approaches to writing will take book form in the near future.