EMMA: New Ground

Dancers mix old, new for genre defying performance - Arts

Dancers mix old, new for genre defying performance - Arts

posted by Boris Willis @ 7:14 PM 2 comments links to this post

EMMA: New Ground

EMMA: New Ground

Here, at long last is the documentation of the Final
the link is
http://accad.osu.edu/~prichard/Sites

As far as the topic of innovation is concerned, I have nothing new to say, in an "Everything has been done", or "Everything old is new again" kind of logic. I also think that true innovation is more or less market-driven, and when a true need arises, someone will solve the problem. When it comes to self-expression, and the art of performance/dance/technology, the tools are constantly developing, but the ways to use them seem entrenched in the specific patterns of traditional theater, much like our final presentation. This is neither good nor bad, but an observation.

I also think that innovation can be a subjective, personal topic. I feel as if I found a new way of working within the piece we presented. For me, there was the seed of possible innovative ways of presenting ideas and feelings in a publc arena.

posted by Peter @ 12:07 AM 1 comments links to this post

Innovation and Technology in Dance

Innovation in dance can take so many different forms: a looking outward that helps to connect our field to a greater audience base, that makes our work more relevant, more invested in the world around us which in turn will inspire the world to take a greater interest in us; a looking inward through rigorous theoretical and practical research that investigates what we are doing in relation to what we have done before, revealing new information about the body as the source and site of our art-making.
Technology will absolutely play a part in both the outward and inward investigations. As our audience becomes increasingly “connected,” their expectations of art and entertainment change. I am not advocating that we begrudgingly morph our aesthetic to compete with the high production values and wow-quotient of Hollywood. I am interested in a different kind of art - one that challenges and provokes, one that nudges an audience out of passivity. But because this kind of art depends on a dialogue between artist and audience, I am advocating that artists like myself pay attention to the cultural literacy of their audience.
What are the audience’s reference points for performance? Performance is like… TV, movies, music, books, rock concerts, video games, animation, the internet. What is the culture within which our audience is viewing our art? A technological culture. While individual innovations in the tech industry wow us for a few moments, I would argue that technology, as a whole, is more familiar than awesome in contemporary U.S. culture.
The flashes of video and the electronic sound score included in a performance are not just “tricks,” they are grounding points that refer back to our audience member’s experience of everyday life, another vehicle for information, another tool which we can use to further our concept, to clarify our images, to move our audience. For me, the real promise of technology in performance lies in its transformative properties, its ability to make one point in time and space seem like another, its ability to draw an audience so deeply into the performance that they become the performance themselves.
While I have a romantic vision of what those transformations might mean for my own work, I am daunted by the practical steps towards implementing that vision… the information, the tools, the knowledge, the facility, the budget, and the time. I know and trust my body. I recognize its limitations, and I have enough physical resources to work around them. But I don’t have any of this when it comes to technology. I recognize that our work in the last two quarters has merely scratched the tip of the iceberg of potential for technology in performance. I now have my radar up for news of artists who are employing technology interestingly in their work, and I look forward to collaborations with artists and designers who can help me realize some of my own ideas for integrating technology into my future work.

posted by Annie @ 10:32 PM 0 comments links to this post

blog assignment

When I think about innovation, I think about both vision in work and the ability to create and investigate problems in a way that reframes previous conceptions of work. I think about artists who have reframed their view of the body and its movement aesthetic and who have used that knowledge or process to make work that captivates and challenges the viewer. Dance is continually reinventing itself and dance artists, who participate in such a limited slice of the history and breadth of the field, make personal innovations even when these shifts in thinking and making may not affect the course of the discipline.

Currently I see many of the technology tools that we have touched on in class as being important tools for us. Whether it's sensor technology, responsive environments, or projected imagery, these tools create "total theater" in the Nikolais tradition. I'm not sure that I see technology expanding or driving the field, but I do see it as moving our field closer to merging with other mediated art forms.

After these two quarters I don't know that I've really developed an understanding of the breadth of technological tools. I feel like I developed an understanding of systems thinking and the philosophies of interactive installation or performance work. I think this type of work has some interesting potential applications, but I find myself resistant to working in this way. Perhaps because I came back to school to develop my ability to articulate my aesthetic, which at this point is more about representation than interaction...

posted by Ashley @ 7:39 PM 0 comments links to this post

Autonomous Community into Performance

I, too, really appreciated the time that we spent on Tuesday talking about our aesthetics, working styles, and creative wishes for the culminating project of this class. My instinct (which relates to Peter's concerns about the amount of time needed to make a piece of work that he is satisfied with and the limitations of a 10-week class) is to concentrate on a very specific element of my larger body of work and explore the potential for the tools we have experimented with in class to expand and shape it. Hence, the presentation last Tuesday of the solo material as a starting point for my continued exploration of interactive performance.

I also want to reiterate my interest in the idea of autonomous community as a collaborative model. While Peter and I were sharing our preference for learning models that allow us to spend a lot of time delving deeply into one idea from multiple perspectives, I began to recognize that some of my frustrations with collaborations in the past resulted from a clash of learning/working styles. I take time... time to reflect, to act, to react, to edit, and then to reflect, act, react, and edit again. I need time to myself - even in a collaborative process. Most of the reflecting and a lot of the editing happen in my journal, in my head, in a space where I can talk to myself, try things out alone, experiment, throw away and try again. Very often as a result of limitations on the resources of time and space, collaborative models do not honor or allow for work done in isolation. Collaborative lab time is usually thought about in terms of togetherness, multi-tasking, group thinking.

Peter and I began discussing a creative process that would encourage artists to work independently together. Imagine a space where artists bring in their independently created work (an installation for Peter, a video for Ashley, choreography for me) and together engage in rigorous critical dialogue about the work and ways that each of the artists are experiencing it as audience members. This feedback provides lots of creative fodder and productive thinking points for the artist, who then goes away and works further on her/his project, bringing it back again and again for more critical responses from the group. Within the context of these communal critiques, the community of artists remain open to (but never force) potential connections between the independent works: What happens if Annie retrogrades her solo every time she hears one of Peter's doors slam? Could Peter's installation change location at the end of Ashley's video? How does the music from Peter's installation change the quality of Annie's movement? Does Ashley want to pull isolated words from the text that Annie is speaking into the video? I think, perhaps, the only difference that I am suggesting here from how we are working is that in the "autonomous" model the majority of the "substance" is being created independently outside of class. The weekly classroom meetings then become time for critical response and the identification of connections between the independent elements that inform the next round of independent creative work.

For practical purposes, this may allow for us to make the most of our creative time outside of class. I am anxious to put in the 15 hours/wk that this class needs/deserves in preparation for this final project, but I am very concerned about finding those common hours between the collaborators.

posted by Annie @ 12:53 PM 0 comments links to this post

reflection on the week

I've been looking at all the doors in my life this weekend, and in reflecting on the feedback from the class I'm also thinking about how the windows and frames in my video project can share some of the quality of doors opening or revealing. This week, in brainstorming our final projects, I think we came to an interesting place. I really appreciated the feedback on the video study and just found it particularly useful to hear what and how each of you saw. I think this idea of ways of looking at things is a particularly salient framework for me.

As we look towards this week, I hope to support each of annie and peter's projects and to see the addition of sensors to the mix. I've been trying to rework my footage and am trying to decide whether I ought to actually re-shoot...

On Tuesday I'll bring in some websites. I made one today that I like, but I could see why it wouldn't be right for this project... so I'll bring options.

ash

posted by Ashley @ 6:45 PM 0 comments links to this post

making things in collaboration

Gathering the necessary materials for my set construction, I am so completely aware of being out of my element, in new territory. I need the right tools, need a design that will work, along with the wood, doors, screws, hinges, glue, paint to bring it all together. I am also reminded of the hidden art/craft of even the most mundane of buildings. The ammount of expertise required to make sure the electricity, or plumbing works is awe inspiring to me. I know I'm going to have a real interesting time trying to hang the door. It seems as if it should be easy, but I know better.

This is a project I wouldn't have been able to actualize in New York City, within the circumstances of my life there, so I feel as if I'm making progress in this way. The searching for and compiling of materials has taken a great deal of time, of course. And I'll be able to finish a basic prototype later tonight. However, as I do have a sense of accomplishment, I have a sense of displaced priorities, on my part. I should be working on the jitter patches. That work doesn't come together as easily as wood and nails.

I also am reminded of how much time and effort and choice goes into making any work. An edited video, a succinct piece of choreography, a jitter patch, a good dinner - and how a 10 week time-based class in the university setting is somehow anathema to the completion of a collaborative work of art. However, in another situation, there would be the deadline of the opening night. The resource of space, even if the time element is necessarily conscripted, and the opportunity to explore different ways and means of doing things, in a, dare I use "safe" environment, makes the work worthwhile, in my estimation.

posted by Peter @ 4:51 PM 0 comments links to this post

Performance Zone

I came to OSU to look into the ways and reasons to include technology in performance. I know this is an ongoing process. Being involved in 2 similiar performance situations this past weekend, one at ACCAD, the other in a piece by Keren Ganin-Pinto at Haskitt Hall, brought to mind a whole set of observations and questions.

First, I want to acknowledge how much I like to perform - there is a physical, chemical connection to the activity of dancing while being onstage - the adreneline rush. When I'm working offstage, or backstage during a show, I am usually exhausted after the event. Not so when I'm performing. Also, the act of being on stage is a very specialized and hypersensitive state of awareness. Time seems very fluid and maliable. Some events might seem to be taking "forever", while others are over in an instant, all simply reliant on my subjective state of focus at the time. When the performance is over, the entire event being only a memory, there is a sense of disconnect, of unreality to the immediate past, that is palpable, yet indescribable at the same time. There is an awareness excercise that is used in the work of Gurdjieff. One is asked to recall each event during the course of the day, starting from the end to the beginning. It is an impossible task, which is the point, which has a definite resonance when attempting to recall and define the performances I was involved in this weekend.

Which brings me to the questions. Why is any of this important? Other than an increased ability of motor control and eye-hand coordination of the participants, what use is a dance? Most people would admit that performance is essential to the cultural life of a society, but is it really a necessary part of the functioning of the world? Does dance really need to be important or essential to society? Is it enough to entertain?

And why include technology in a performance? Is it simply to enhance the atmosphere? Are the concerns simply those of artistic aesthetics? Does content and context play an important role in the work we are exploring, or is it simply another layer? Is the focus of the novelty of using technology in performance reason enough to include it in a dance piece? Is the fact that we are priveledged to have access to such specialized tools a reason for celebration, or concern? And finally, how can we take this first step, the showing at ACCAD on Friday, and hone it into a piece of work that expresses our individual and disparate sensibilities?

I'll be looking into these texts this week:
Performing psychology : a postmodern culture of the mind / Lois Holzman, editor
Publish info New York : Routledge, 1999

The artist & the emotional world : creativity and personality / John E. Gedo
Publish info New York : Columbia University Press, c1996

posted by Peter @ 6:03 PM 0 comments links to this post

Emergent Thoughts

Thanks to Norah for sending the links on Emergent Structure. I think that it is very important that we recognize the radical shift that this way of structuring a class entails in the thinking/awareness/working habits of its participants. I sense that Norah and Matt did not expect the experimental structure to throw us for such a loop, but I believe that it has, in practice, become the most dominant force in the room. Perhaps if we talk more in depth about emergent structures and why Norah and Matt chose to experiment with them in the context of this class, we will be more forthcoming with our own ideas and directions.

I wonder if this class is not more of an experiment in Self-Organization than Emergence, at least as the two related ideas are outlined and distinguished by their respective Wikipedia articles. This quote in Wikipedia’s entry on Self-Organization helped me to discover what I believe to be the source of the discomfort that I expressed in Tuesday’s class:

“The ancient atomists (among others) believed that a designing intelligence was unnecessary, arguing that given enough time and space and matter, organization was ultimately inevitable, although there would be no preferred tendency for this to happen.” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization)

Following a perusal of the materials on Emergence and Self-Organization and our discussion on Tuesday, I now believe (and would love clarification, if I am wrong) that Norah and Matt were operating the class under the assumption that if they provided enough time (Tuesdays and Thursdays plus individual lab hours), space (Emma), and matter (readings from 1st quarter? interactive technology? the collaborators themselves?) that the class would organize itself. But I don’t feel that this expectation was ever clearly articulated until Tuesday.

At the end of last quarter, I was under the assumption that we would move forward with studies based on our proposals and eventually collaborate on a culminating interactive performance focusing on one or more of the projects that emerged from the proposals. As we began this quarter it was clear that we were not focusing on any one of the proposals – but creating something new that pulled on what seemed to be a somewhat shared interest in surveillance.

I think that this turn away from my original expectations that was the beginning of a kind of creative souring for me. What seemed to me to have been very strong, thoughtful, directed ideas proposed by each member of the class were watered down into a very open, flexible, and unfixed palate of ideas from which we were going to construct… something. What the “something” was none of us seemed to know – and in the midst of the larger context of our event-filled lives (birth, death, and Mark Morris), engaging in this undefined “something” became more and more difficult.

Returning to the quote, I feel that what we’ve been missing (or at least unclear about) is the “matter,” the “third great thing” as pedagogical scholar Parker Palmer describes it, the subject of our course, the content. Are we studying interactive performance? Are we studying emergent structures? Are we studying composition in the context of new media? Are we studying theories of the body? Is our focus process? Product? Content? Form?

In the first quarter we read about a huge array of topics – the body and technology, computer interface, improvisation, responsive environments, agents as performers in computer games, robotics, artificial intelligence….

I don’t believe that the class has to be about only one of these many great things (I’d like to think that I could handle a more complex, polycentric model of teaching/learning), but I do think we need more direction than we’ve had up to this point. I would love to know why Norah and Matt wanted to introduce this class. Maybe understanding your investment as teachers will give us a fresh perspective – will help us understand/formulate/derive our own “why” for this class.

I recognize and appreciate the openness with which we are able to discuss the structure of this class. We are looking a fascinating pedagogical and artistic dilemma square in the eye. What are the differences between a truly “emergent” structure and a classroom modeled on an emergent structure? What does self-organization mean within the context of the classroom? What can a class modeled on emergent structures offer that a more traditional collaborative, discussion based class cannot? As someone who is intimately invested in both collaborative art-making and experimental teaching methods, I am intrigued by the discoveries that our struggle to answer these questions will inspire. Looking forward to an hour-long performance on Friday for the Open House and a final culminating performance, I also feel like it’s important for us to come to some degree of comfort with the structure of the class relatively quickly in order to make productive work within it.

posted by Annie @ 6:51 PM 0 comments links to this post

work/thoughts

Trying to regain my footing and perspective. I now know for certain that time is relative, as life-changing events become capsulated into an indescribable, indeterminate space and moment.

It seems as if it has been years since I've been involved in this process of creative discovery.

I do also know that lives are expressed by the work created, although the trappings of that life are usually mundane things, like socks and ties with stains on them and an occassional important letter. Hopefully in this age of electronic correspondence the last item won't disappear as well.

I have several ideas for the maze area of the installation. I'm working on drawings to flesh out (what an interesting metaphor) these ideas. I'll post a link on the wiki later, and will try to develop something that could be accomplished this week.

I am glad I'm back working, and feel extremely fortunate to be in such a thoughtful and forward thinking group.

posted by Peter @ 4:26 PM 0 comments links to this post

either/or

I'm still working my way through the radio program, but have a few observations.

Firstly, I'm hesitant to rely on dichotomies. I don't think that a classroom is either hierarchical or emergent. The feminist pedagogy of democratic classrooms, or other models of teacher as facilitators, embrace a methodology that is process oriented, but with clear learning objectives. Additionally subject-centered teaching, where topics are foregrounded, is another example of a non-hierarchical pedagogy. I'm not necessarily arguing against a practice of emergence, I just want to be sure that we don’t develop a conceptualization of creative process or classroom pedagogy in binary terms.

Secondly, thinking about emergence and looking at these web references, I see the development of systems and note that the systems are often of multiple entities (i.e. 100 people can guess the precise weight of a cow, but one can’t) and I wonder if part of our challenge is, as Matthew references, being such a small class with such divergent artistic viewpoints.

posted by Ashley @ 4:16 PM 0 comments links to this post

May 7, 2006

Perhaps we are uncomfortable with emergent structures because so much of our work before this class (or even grad school in general) has been the more "traditional" set-up of a heirarchical form of directorship. Obviously, one can only speak for oneself, but this seems to somewhat be the case. I certainly find that while many ideas emerge that I am interested in and attracted to, each of our personal sets of aesthetic values are very different and this makes reaching a concensus difficult. Just an observation really.

I have a sound score which is eight minutes long, and easily can be expanded or altered as people see fit. Still wrapping my head around ideas for the "runway" portion of the set-up. No great conclusions yet. Congratulations to all the Dance Downtown folks. It was a great show.

posted by Matthew Rose @ 2:37 PM 0 comments links to this post