EMMA: New Ground

Dancers mix old, new for genre defying performance - Arts

2006-11-09T19:14:00.000-05:00

Dancers mix old, new for genre defying performance - Arts

EMMA: New Ground

2006-07-25T00:07:00.000-04:00

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.

Innovation and Technology in Dance

2006-05-29T22:32:00.000-04:00

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.

blog assignment

2006-05-22T19:39:00.000-04:00

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...

Autonomous Community into Performance

2006-05-22T12:53:00.000-04:00

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.

reflection on the week

2006-05-21T18:45:00.000-04:00

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

making things in collaboration

2006-05-21T16:51:00.000-04:00

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.

Performance Zone

2006-05-14T18:03:00.000-04:00

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

Emergent Thoughts

2006-05-07T18:51:00.000-04:00

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.

work/thoughts

2006-05-07T16:26:00.000-04:00

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.

either/or

2006-05-07T16:16:00.000-04:00

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.

May 7, 2006

2006-05-07T14:37:00.000-04:00

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.

Emergent Structure

2006-05-02T20:17:00.000-04:00

Following up on our conversation today discussing our process and some discomfort within this experiment with emergent structure (with most of us feeling more comfortable in the familiar modes of heirarchical structures and processes), I'd like to initiate this week's blog postings on the subject. After a very structured first quarter exploring systems of interaction we seek in this quarter to build a heterotopic space for making new work through a collaborative process that enables bottom-up emergence of new structures. Here are three links that make this subject very accessible. What do you think? -N

As always, wikipedia offers a great summary of the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

NPR's RadioLab did a fun program on emergence, you can listen at:

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/season1_2005.html

I like this discussion of the elements of emergence, nicely broken apart and applied to multiple contexts:
http://ceh.kitoba.com/mechanism/emergence.html

Sound Score

2006-05-01T09:01:00.000-04:00

Continuing to work on the sound score. It is reminiscent of a movie sound score ( I think ) and is a bit creepy and hollow sounding. Also, I will bring in a schematic of the floor plan which we spoke about on Tuesday so we have something to look at/change and scribble upon.

Content

2006-04-30T16:57:00.000-04:00

I'm acting as secretary and making a quick list of the content/thematic ideas on which it feels like we have been focusing our work. It feels like we are narrowing in on these from Norah's original list on the wiki after our brainstorming session in Week 3.

Big Idea: Watching and being watched
Small Ideas:
-Blurring the line between Private and Public Spaces
-Layers of Surveillance
-Acknowledging, Assuming, Subverting, Inverting the power of the gaze
-Disciplinary Power of the Gaze
-Space/architecture and surveillance being used together as mechanisms of organization and control of humans
-Body as object of the gaze, object of surveillance, object of power, object of control

These are HUGE topics, but if we're viewing this piece as a collage of associated content I think we're OK layering specific references/allusions to each of them one on top of the other. Specificity, as I'm finding more and more, is the key. It's not about "body as object" but about Ashley's body captured with ease by the grainy green gaze of the night shot camera when she stands in stillness and the great difficulty of framing her in the shot when she darts quickly from one point of the caged space to another. Letting content suggest, but not dictate, the form of our material feels to me a potentially powerful approach.

We're clearly interested in using the audience as unknowing members of the "performance" by virtue of their specific location in the performance space. The audience's becoming aware of their central role in the piece is the pivotal moment, the "aha," the climax. After this turning point, the audience becomes aware and views the space and the performance differently: Am I being watched? When am I being watched? Who is watching? Why? Do we want to do something with this awareness? Is there another level of engagement that the audience will enter into - is it here that they "man the cameras," taking a more active role in the manipulation of the gaze? I'm not sure exactly what that next step would be - but it sounds like this is what we're talking about occuring in the Runway Space. If the audience has just gone through their own "hall of mirrors" (oooo, I love that!) where they see themselves at various points throughout the performance - and if they have just "gotten" the mystery of the space and the piece - they should be presented with the opportunity to do something with this knowledge in the final moments of the performance experience.

Any thoughts?

Moving Forward

2006-04-24T08:03:00.000-04:00

In all honesty, I find myself running out of things to post about. Great information is being posted about useful things, but I feel that the focus on this project is continuing to expand outward, not move inward toward a final piece. Am I feeling alone in this? I am willing to continue to experiment and try things out, but it is not a comfortable mode of creating work for me; I am willing to go along however. I by no means want this posting to anger anyone, just want to express my point of view within this process.

The camera never blinks but it multiplies

2006-04-23T21:14:00.000-04:00

From 4/23/ NYTimes Week in Review section, about the surveillance cameras, and theire effectiveness, or lack of - perhaphs we could use this as content, with the proper context?
NYTimes

EMMA: New Ground

2006-04-23T21:13:00.000-04:00

EMMA: New Ground
This is an interesting article about the effectiveness of surveillance cameras. Perhaps this too could be content, in the proper context.

The Camera never blinks but it multiplies href=

video, mirror, window, 4-d

2006-04-23T14:49:00.000-04:00

This book looks really interesting, it's on reserve at the Arch. School, we should give it a look.

This article has some great ideas and frameworks for our project. I especially like the video as mirror and window idea. I think we can use that in the construction of the space and in creating a sense of where one is looking to, or from. If you don't have time to read the entire article here is an exerpt:

by Dan Graham
Video as Architectural Mirror and Window

Video in architecture functions semiotically as window and mirror simultaneously but subverts the effects and functions of both. Windows in architecture mediate separated spatial units and frame a conventional perspective of one unit’s relation to the other; mirrors in architecture define self-reflectively spatial enclosure and ego enclosure.

Play with Private/Public Space

2006-04-23T14:12:00.000-04:00

Interactive Restaurant Plays with Private/Public Space

This link takes you to a plan for a restaurant space built to blur the lines between private and public space. Particularly interesting to me - and useful to our project- is the "Acoustic Wall" idea of recording sound in one presumably private/intimate space and projecting it to a public space where it can be heard by all. We could use this same technique with visual images as well.

What if we construct an intimate/private "vanity" experience (perhaps this is in the peep show/gallery?), record the sound from that space, and mix it through a jitter patch with other sounds and images . The composite output is then projected into a more public space. The private/intimate sounds are made public but through their mixing become anonymous.

This builds on Ashley's questions about the private act of viewing art in a public space. Only the maker of the sounds will be able to isolate their "private" contributions in the midst of the jitter mix. The public viewing then is transformed through the knowledge that each viewer/listener identifies uniquely with the publicly displayed art piece through the recognition of their own voice.

People Who Watch People: Lost in an Online Hall of Mirrors

2006-04-17T21:32:00.000-04:00

By JOHN CARNEY
Published: April 16, 2006
Wausau, Wis., may seem out of the way, but for tens of thousands of Internet users, it has become the center of a very strange universe.

Up until now, most of the videos posted to the online clearinghouse YouTube have involved demonstrations of weird talents, like the young man doing back flips off of city buildings in "Urban Ninja"; private talents, like the many individuals who film themselves lip-synching in the bedroom; or other people's talents, like the clips from "Saturday Night Live" that the site quickly removes.

With the latest crop of videos, a new style has emerged, though, one that is at once absolutely mundane and completely postmodern: people posting videos of themselves watching YouTube videos. And that's just the start.

One of the most discussed YouTube clips lately features a young woman who calls herself pizzelle2 watching a video of another YouTube user, who is watching another YouTuber, and so on. The video's recursiveness goes several steps deeper, until it reaches the promised land: the Wausau home of a 24-year-old woman known as Nornna, top right.

Nornna's videos, which number in the hundreds, are hardly salacious. Usually she is doing something completely commonplace: making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, powdering her feet, missing her bus, watching television. Some videos of Nonna, shown above at top, have been viewed more than 50,000 times. As her videos gained an audience, her fans started posting videos of themselves watching Nornna, and the momentum was unstoppable.

The first Nornna-watching video was posted by James98105, a 26-year-old Seattle man. In his video, titled "Me eating and watching Nornna while she watches Chicken Litt," he eats crackers while watching Nornna watch the movie "Chicken Little." (See below left.) Her laughter can be heard just beneath his comments.

"The reason why I love Nornna's videos so much is because her day-to-day activities in Wisconsin make me envious because I wish my life were that simple!" he wrote in an e-mail message.

James spurred others to post videos of themselves watching others watch videos that, at some point, included a Nornna video. Of these, the most popular, and most discussed on YouTube's message boards, is pizzelle2's "I Win at Nornna." Like Nornna, pizzelle2 wouldn't consent to an interview, but in the video, she declares herself the winner because one video she watches includes Nornna watching pizzelle2 watch Nornna. It is Nornna-watching gone full circle.

There's no end to the possibilities. Why, someone might even post a video of himself reading a newspaper article about recursive videos.

private acts in public spaces

2006-04-16T17:11:00.000-04:00

I'm a little stuck on what to write about this week, but I did mean to mention this thought in Thursday's discussion.

Last quarter in my qual. research class we had to turn in project proposals. Projects wherein we would do a bit of practice fieldwork in a public space. I suggested doing mine in the gallery space at the wex. The professor turned that down by saying that what people do in an art gallery, though a public space, is a private activity. That the act of seeing or experiencing art is a private act. I was interested in that distinction. Seeing private acts in public spaces.

Scenography

2006-04-16T17:06:00.000-04:00

I am investigating the idea/practice of scenography as it relates to our creative process. A performance about public vs. private space/ observing and being observed offers a rich opportunity to address architecture/set/light/costume design elements as key components of the performance experience.

Some questions to get the discussion going (some of which were brought up in Thursday's class):

What kind of space do we want to create?
-Traditional Theatrical Space
-Gallery of multiple performance installations
- Modular/cellular performance space
- Space that transforms around the audience

What are our in-house design resources? What can we do with what we already have?
- Curtains, Lights, Architectural elements

How will the space facilitate/direct audience interaction?

Are we interested in incorporating virtual spaces within our performance space?
-interactive sites available via computer stations in the space
-projections (live camera feed, projections of other spaces)
------------------------------------------------------------

Below are some promising sites that I think can help get us moving in the right direction.

Constructivist Theatre

Virtual Theater (An Intersection of Performance and Internet)

Video Scenography

Books that look promising:
The Potentials of Spaces: International Scenography and Performance for the 21st Century
What is Scenography?

More Perfomance Space Proposals

2006-04-16T15:03:00.000-04:00

As we continue to explore the links between surveillance, scrutiny, space, and the architecture of power, I have three more proposals for possible set-ups in EMMA.

THE RUNWAY SET-UP

This could have the audience seated on either side of a central corridor which would serve as the perfomance area. I envision six cameras, three on each side of the runway. These live feeds would project onto the scrim behind each audience group. This set-up could be used for prehaps the idea of an auction (old slave auctions come to mind), some sort of contest or pageant, a race (Annie has already worked on a structure for that in class), an obstacle course, or a trial or tribunal situation where the prosecuted are paraded in front of the public.

THE PEEP-SHOW SET-UP

This has three different peep-show-like modules where audience members would have one on one viewings with the performers. A camera on the floor would project a rather lurid and disturbing shot of the performer on the rear scrim, the angle implying a larger-than-life quality to the object of scrutiny. This could go the way of a true striptease, or the performer could confront the particular viewer with criticism or pointed questions. We could also use this set-up but have the performers, rather than being erotic figures, be objects of disfigurement or some other type of manifestation of physical distress.

THE SURGICAL GALLERY SET-UP

In this set-up, the audience is watching a procedure, which is shot from over head and projected on to the rear scrim. We could even experiment with some simple special effects, and simulate implanting a device in some one, removing a device, tagging the person somehow, or simple the horror of an invasive procedure.

These are just three more possibilities to throw into the disscussion. Some practicle questions and concerns: I would suggest agreeing on a set design at least with three weeks or so to implement it. Also, is there any money available for this somewhere? A few hundred dollars or so? Or some theater things we might be able to borrow from somewhere? It would be great to know these things and greatly frees up the possibilites of the whole project.

I will also be ready to show these schematics for set-ups on Tuesday.

Cryptic Summary of week 3

2006-04-16T14:57:00.000-04:00

Summary blog 4/16/06

Organization, recall, and summary:

We have been strategizing on ways to create a group interactive performance piece. As a group we responded to Annie Bessera’s email about structured time and lists, and discussed the situation of multi-tasking when developing content as a group – the pros and cons. Agreed to include the entire group in all directed activity, whether movement/choreographic process based, or tech/computer based. Observing set-up activities was by consensus considered an important part of the process.

From the white board:

BRAINSTORM/tone/overarching ideas
Systems: Choreography/technology/interactivity
- Objects relate to Choreography, which relates to Images which changes the Choreography
- Parts of choreography “turned on” by intereactions; trigger/sensors, series of cause and effect – sensors embedded in objects?
- Installation vs. traditional theatrical presentation
- Multiplicity/fragments

Public/private space
What is Public, what is Private; different for each individual
Control/discipline: how do we show the beauty and negativity in space/architecture for audience
- Workshop: boundaries/hallways, cubicles, maze, partitions
- Use of projected images: texture/scenic, filtered images, others? Use of camera/image to create architectural space
- Scenario: Enter the space, video on audience/viewing the viewers, audience/performer relationship

Surveillance/gaze an important issue to address for group?
- Awareness of being viewed
- Change of awareness over time

Ideas to explore
- Puppetry
- Cellular space
- Peep show
- Fun house
- Carnival
-

Taking Orders

2006-04-11T10:17:00.000-04:00

The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order

"Ms. Vargas works not in a restaurant but in a busy call center in this town, 150 miles from Los Angeles. She and as many as 35 others take orders remotely from 40 McDonald's outlets around the country. The orders are then sent back to the restaurants by Internet, to be filled a few yards from where they were placed..."

"Ms. Vargas seems unfazed by her job, even though it involves being subjected to constant electronic scrutiny. Software tracks her productivity and speed, and every so often a red box pops up on her screen to test whether she is paying attention. She is expected to click on it within 1.75 seconds. In the break room, a computer screen lets employees know just how many minutes have elapsed since they left their workstations..."

"The operator of one of the McDonald's centers is developing a related system that would allow big stores like Home Depot to equip carts with speakers that customers could use to contact a call center wirelessly for shopping advice.... With a wireless system in a Home Depot, for example, a call-center operator might tell a customer, "You're at Aisle D6. Let me walk you over to where you can find the 16-penny nails"..."

"The call-center system allows employees to be monitored and tracked much more closely than would be possible if they were in restaurants. Mr. King's computer screen gives him constant updates as to which workers are not meeting standards. "You've got to measure everything," he said. "When fractions of seconds count, the environment needs to be controlled.""

My Docile Catholic Body

2006-04-09T16:59:00.001-04:00

I’m a cafeteria Catholic. While the rest of my family has left the Catholic Church, I’ve chosen to resist from within. I’m for gay marriage, women priests, living together, birth control, and a woman’s right to choose. I’m for embracing the counter-culture example of the historical Jesus – an illiterate craftsman who ignored class distinctions and rules for the sake of rules, a man who ate and drank with prostitutes and fisherman. I’m also for reading the Bible critically – a practice that, thanks to the academic mission and rigorous scholarship of the Paulists and Jesuits (c.f. the work of John Dominic Crossan), the Catholic Church both teaches and employs.

In this spirit, I found myself overwhelmed by the rhetoric of discipline that permeated today’s mass. Through the filter of Foucault, the repeated calls to obey, submit, and acquiesce within the language and ritual to which I am so deeply attached (the reason, in fact, that I stay and mount my struggle from within the Church) sounded alarmingly clear. One reading spoke of a sign to which we must all “bend one knee,” transforming our bodies from subjectively inspired idiosyncratic physical mechanisms to “ the body composed of solids and assigned movements… the body susceptible to specified operations, which have their order, their stages, their internal conditions, their constituent elements” (155).

During Palm Sunday Mass, we are initiated into Holy Week by the longest gospel of the ecumenical year. We stand, still and silent, for a symbolic week: Jesus enters Jerusalem to an ecstatic choir of Alleluias, shares the Passover meal, foretells his capture and death, prays in the garden, submits to capture (this language is important), submits to torture, and submits to a horrible death while everyone watches. We, the obedient and submissive disciples in the sanctuary, however, do not watch. At the moment of his death, we kneel to the ground and bow our heads at the symbolic feet of the cross – a moment of silence ordered by the ringing of a low bell. Foucault writes “From the master of discipline to him who is subjected to it the relation is one of signalization: it is a question not of understanding the injunction but of perceiving the signal and reacting to it immediately, according to a more or less artificial, prearranged code” (166). As I kneel to the sound of the bell, an action which repetition has so ingrained in me that it requires no conscious premeditation, I notice those around me who choose instead to sit in their chairs and the others who are looking around with keen awareness that they are supposed to be doing something but have no idea what that something is.

We are a large group. The priest cannot see us, not all of us. I sit at the very back of the very large sanctuary, more conference room than gothic cathedral. I take communion from a lay-woman who comes to the back of the church. Only one line orients traditionally towards the large crucifix hanging at the alter. I turn my back towards the woman who shares the communion bread with me in order to face the cross. I notice I am the only one I see putting my left hand over my heart as I bow my head to make the sign-of-the-cross with my right.

Citations from Foucault, Michel. " Docile Bodies." _Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison_. New York: Vintage, 1995. 135-69.

This week in review.

2006-04-09T16:59:00.000-04:00

(I'm not sure that this was exactly what Norah envisioned, but it was actually really helpful for me to reflect on the themes of the week. Note to all, I wasn't taking notes, so if you brought up something profound and I forgot to include it, by all means comment!)

Panopticon
The jumping off point for our project seems to be the structure and implications of Bentham’s Panopticon. As we began to consider the formulation of the panopticon and the themes of knowing and not knowing and, of course, surveillance, we each delved deeper into a facet of our emergent theme and began to progress towards independent consideration of elements of the project. Following are summaries of the directions of the class as well as my musings on potential for further inquiry.

Foucault
Reading and discussing Discipline and Punish (and preparing to discuss Docile Bodies) we looked towards Foucault’s analysis of the modern state and the sense of power that emanates from surveillance that is both global and individual—known in its existence and unknown at each moment. Our discussion of this reading was marked by the ties we made to contemporary life in the American state, with themes of torture, subversion of surveillance, and the development of online panopticons (for example in the online pornography subculture).

Surveillance
Considering surveillance broadly in modern society, we thought of the surveillance in ACCAD and our ability to acclimate to the presence of cameras as well as our discomfort when reminded of their presence. We touched on surveillance themes like public security cameras in small towns and behavioral conduct online/iming…We discussed Annie’s experience at the airport (see below) which led to a discussion of our emotional versus intellectual or political reactions to surveillance.

Power
The discussion of Annie’s particular experiences led to a consideration of the results of surveillance and the power dynamics therein. I brought up Annie’s power of privilege (both racial and educational) and Boris discussed the experience of, and his knowledge/expectation of being followed or actively surveilled in everyday experiences at stores.

As we shifted our focus towards the project, Matthew brought up an interest in working on a development or construction of the space. This led towards a discussion of the potential elements of the project and the division of initial areas of responsibility.

Structure Space
On Thursday Matthew presented a cohesive plan for the space and engaged in a dialogue with the class, continuing to brainstorm a space that is panoptic, considers surveillance, and works to shift/subvert/or highlight the dynamics of power and gaze.

Viewing/Performing
Peter built on Matthew presentation by sharing brainstorming he had done, thoughts on ways to surveil or inhibit the audience.

Myths of/Themes on Surveillance
I reported little progress other than a budding interest in the surveillance/monitoring of power by the public. i.e. politics and the press.

Sounds of Surveillance
Boris led a short discussion of sounds of surveillance, tapes, etc.

Movement basis
Annie began to describe the score for Tuesday’s improv.

Group process
We ended class thinking about group process and our personal roles and interests in the class project.

After class, we discovered that the cameras don’t have night vision.

Panopticon Group Dynamics

2006-04-09T14:58:00.000-04:00

Incomplete as of 3:00 Sunday, have a rehearsal- will repost. Dealing with the rules - a panoptic POV

I don’t do well in groups. I never have. Even as a young child, I was loathe to join any organized activity, unless it had an independent vein to it - gymnastics, art club, drama club, and the like. My adult working moneymaking life has been more of the same. I have never worked for a large corporation or institution. For the last 15 years, I have run my own business, where I have been the general factotum and sole employee.
I have worked for others – in restaurants, in dance companies, as the assistant to the company manager for the Trocks, but each of these situations relied heavily on independent thinking and autonomous self-directed activity. I know, however, that I have always been a part of larger power structure.
It was interesting to have Ashley’s group dynamics workshop based on our individual reflections on a set of categories. There even in this simple set-up there was a panoptic relationship. We answered questions posited by a designated authority. Is it possible to have a functioning social situation where power is not designated and distributed? Each of us has tactically agreed to sanction distribution of control and power. We are all part of the New Ground class, a panoptic situation of observation. We have all joined in the workings of The Ohio State University (all capitals, please). We all are a part, by nature of birth, of the capitalist military-industrial state and fledgling democracy that is our country.
The examples of the Panopticon that Foucault sites in his article “Docile Bodies”, military institutions, prisons, hospitals, boarding schools, monasteries, all have an ominous and somewhat distressing pallor to them. Accurately dissecting these systems of power and efficiency, he implicitly indicts the social order as ultimately dehumanizing. The power and necessity of the machine over the individual. I am prone to agree with his assessment. And to further complicate matters, we have no choice but to participate.
I am currently working in a classical example of a Panopticon. ARC North is a sheltered workshop for developmentally disabled individuals. In this institution, I can get past my resistance to structure and authority, when I see a young disabled man proudly display his bi-weekly paycheck for his work at the center. The placement of power structures when focused on human development and change are benevolent and necessary. I am positive, however, even this example is prone to abuse and excess. Life imitaes life.

Docile Bodies

2006-04-09T09:28:00.000-04:00

In the article, I could not help but think of dance training, and particularly the study of ballet technique in relation to Foucault's words. If we think of the lexicon of ballet as being a product of the 18th century, the parallel is easy enough to spot. "The classical age discovered the body as object and target of power." But, I think the use of his word power here is not a description of the self being empowered, but rather a description of the body as a focus for discipline and rigor. Foucault goes on on pp. 136-137 to say that "...the body was in the grip of very strict powers, which imposed on it constraints, prohibitions or obligations," and that "These methods, which made possible the meticulous control of the operations of the body... might be called 'disciplines.'" I think modern society sees the denial of self in pursuit of a discipline to be a denial of freedom in some way. But Martha Graham stated that the way to true expression through the body is through the "absolute discipline" of technique. I look forward to our class discussion about this....

Airport Surveillance

2006-04-02T15:58:00.000-04:00

Today I sat in the food court of the Columbus Airport near the security check at the entry for A and B Gates observing how people interact with each other in a large public space and how their actions are affected by the architecture in which they are situated. I sketched what I saw in my black sketchbook/choreography journal from a table nearest the thoroughfare: departing passengers navigated the carefully proscribed maze of stanchions; arriving passengers swept quickly through the gate exits, passing the towering yellow abstract sculpture evoking banana/macaroni/hot-dog associations without a glance; a dark-haired man in Nikes and blue-jeans paced back and forth on a clear diagonal between the food tables and the trash bins holding a newly-bought red rose wrapped in plastic at his hip.

Appearing suddenly, a woman security agent with handcuffs swinging from her waist and a polite smile made direct eye-contact and a fast line towards my table. Somewhere in the midst of the airport bustle, someone had been watching me watching the crowd. I never noticed surveillance cameras outside of the immediate security check area, but they were there - hidden and undetected.

Maybe someone had noticed me notating their movement and orientation in my drawings, gotten nervous, and alerted security to my presence. But the quick appearance and immediate address of the agent leads me to believe that somewhere not far away, security was looking at everyone in the building and interrupting any potentially threatening activity. I was being called out for watching by those who had been watching me.

The woman was kind and efficient. "What are you doing there?" "You understand why I am approaching you?" "This is an international airport." " We are very concerned about safety." "We don't think you are a terrorist." Who was this 'we'? The watchers. The absent, unseen surveyors analyzing my actions. I explained who I was and what I was doing there. I gave her my student ID and my drivers license. She took down everything - my race, my height, my weight, my address, my phone number, my graduate student status... "Only a bachelor's for me," she said. I could keep observing she said, but should not write down anything more about the security check point. Averting my eyes from the rigorous surveillance process that I have walked through many times over, I went back to my business - watching the people in the airport closely until they entered the "security zone," until they became the objects of someone else's gaze, the someone who was also watching me.

Foucault and Panopticon

2006-03-29T22:21:00.000-05:00

Here is the link to excerpts of Foucault's writing on the Panopticon:
Foucault

For Future Reference

2006-03-08T23:16:00.000-05:00

Hi, Guys,

Just found this great glossery of media theory from U of Chicago. Might prove helpful in the continuing development of our ideas.

Media Theory

Re: Teletubbies

2006-03-08T11:39:00.000-05:00

I would have to agree with Manovich's definition. I feel that telepresence without the ability to act is just voyagerism. I guess the real concept is that it is all a scale. The OnStar operator is not telepresent himself except for his voice being at the scene, but the system of OnStar is fully telepresent as the ambulance acts as a giant arm that can pull you out of your car. Although, I would agree that this definition may change as new technologies come about. One day, a virtual self will be able to present itself to a new location via some realistic type hologram, and then anything less than that will not be considered telepresence. What Manovich defines as telepresence by being able to act and see through a robot will not be enough since the robotic application will only be a puppet relationship and not the full sensory machine that would ideally be invented.

project proposal

2006-03-07T13:35:00.000-05:00

My project proposal
PWR: Webpage

Teletubbies

2006-03-07T01:23:00.000-05:00

Lev Manovich discusses the ideas of teleaction by describing the recent way in which communication has changed in the information age. The Internet and the world wide web have changed the way we interact with each other. In my short life I have seen communication change from using a telephone that was in the home or a telephone booth downtown to having a phone in my pocket that I can use talk to others, send text messages, play video games, look up the location of thousands of busniesses in Columbus and many other cities, read newspapers, check movie times and write this paper. It is a different world from when I was younger but even though much has changed much has stayed the same. Manovich explains that in this world we are "accessing new media instead of creating it" by way of teleaction.

With the Internet we "travel" to different web servers and access the information on them. We also use the web to interact when we use web camera, email, chat and instant messaging. Manovich says "web cameras allow users to observe remote locations" so the web is portal that allows us to see places that we are not physically present in. Television does this but television does not allow us to choose what we see or to interact with others at that location. Because of the unique nature of the web Manovich says that "websites with hyperlinks allow users to teleport to different remote servers" and that some "web designers try to keep users on the site" through the design of the site" but he contends that "no new object is being made" so this is a different idea of cultural representation.
Instead of creating new art objects we are "navigating conceptual space." When I saw the movie "The Lord Of The Rings" directed by Peter Jackson I was struck by the power of the story and less interested in the incredible special effects. I felt that the effects enhanced the story, but effects alone are incredibly boring. I am reminded of Peter Jackson's King Kong movie whose story took a back seat to the effects. This three hour movie cold have easily been done in one and been an incredible movie. It does not surprise me when Manovich speaks of the cinema being more interesting than real-time communication like talking on the telephone because as he says "recording reality does not contribute to aesthetic principals." However effects that do have aesthetic principals cannot stand on their own as in time we tire of them. I am reminded of the dreaded blink tag in HTML. Although it captures your attention it continues to do so over and over long after you get the message. Similarly, when I would go to a restaurant food court in DC the restaurant kiosk I frequented was more interested in giving away samples than taking my order which I found very annoying.

Manovich asks "can we expand aesthetic theories to include search and communication" I think it depends on what you mean. Search can be a scavenger hunt but there are objects that can be found and presented. However, the skill and the fun is in the search. But search observed is not very interesting at least not to me. In reality television, the enjoyment comes from the conflict between people and not simply the show itself. I believe the television show, Lost, takes advantage of this idea by scripting a kind of reality show as a fantasy.
Manovich makes a distinction between the image and interaction when he says "web cams are not true telepresence because you cannot act on the images, where as a remotely navigated device is telepresence because you are operating the thing." I disagree with this assertion as it simply takes a surveillance camera as an example to disprove this. In surveillance watching is the operation and not being in one place is vital to the operation. I also disagree that "using the web is teleportation because the pages come to you or are revealed to you through the browser.

Manovich says "telepresence is the ability to act and see at a distance" but does not a monitor act when watching a home through a security system and sends the fire department when there is a fire. I think it is hard to define these in terms that are too concrete. I realize that the article was written in 1999 which was many years ago and things that were true then are not true now but in the case of the above example it is simply a matter definition as to whether one agrees with Manovich. When he says that the "essence of telepresence is that you do not have to be present at a location to affect reality at this location" I think that my example of the security monitor fits within his definition. When we use a web controlled robot we are no more in contact with the remote space than the OnStar operator who call the ambulance to the scene of an accident but just as effective.

Boris Willis

Spain GPS game experience

2006-03-03T14:02:00.000-05:00

I thought someone would send this earlier:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/lafuga.html

Spore

2006-03-03T13:12:00.000-05:00

Future of the Virtual Body?

The Future of the Body

2006-03-02T23:51:00.000-05:00

The Future of the Body

Magazine article by Steven Drukman; American Theatre, Vol. 16, September 1999

Check out this article. I don't have a link, but I have a hard copy that I can print for anyone who wants it. It is a survey of nine artists (Richard Schechner is one of them, Eve Ensler, Tim Miller, and six others) talking about the future of the body in theater. Some of them discuss the mediated image, virtual reality, and how technology and the body will collide. They talk about a lot of the ideas we were discussing today. It's on www.questia.com if anyone is a member.

The Social Body

2006-02-27T21:16:00.000-05:00

My preference for social interaction is triggered when looking at these sites. For me, art is a communal experience. I am a dancer. I'm used to being close to other bodies in space, to being inspired by the complexities of their interactions. I've worked in companies and collaborative ensembles for the entirity of my professional career. The following opinions are colored by my personal experience.

Social tele-presence seems like a great idea to me for a sci-fi novel, but doesn't seem socially viable to me as described by Auger-Loizeau. The idea fails to address the potential discomfort in the actual social reality between the camera-wearing "rented" body and the people with whom (s)he is interacting. Similarly, RealReplay advises its participants to "Get ready for a head-to-head competition," actually replaces competition between live persons with you racing against a recorded track of a live person, which seems that in reality would not feel (and by feel I mean sense kinesthetically) any different from you racing against your phone. Again - competition, especially athletic competition is a socially motivated practice. This idea is not really very different from the simulated races found on treadmills. No one's doing those for fun.

Pac-Manhattan, on the other hand, siezes on the simulated social energy of the original game and projects that energy into the real social world. Noteably, it takes many more people to play the real version of the virtual game. While technology definitely makes this game feasible, it is noteably one of the least high-tech of all the locative games presented, depending largely on manpower and cell phones.

Rixome - I love the idea of "an exchange environment where our trace always last," of publication in the literal sense - projecting of art into public spaces, art coexisting with the real world. Of course, the difficulty is just what the author (whose name is not readily available on the webpage) has presented, the practical ownership of our streets by the advertising industry. Some of the most impactful art I've seen was in my urban environment: a shadow puppet show by Redmoon Theatre projected onto the walls of the MCA in Chicago; the artful living of Australia's Urban Dream Capsule in the Sears' store window on State Street. There's something transformative about art appearing where you live, work, and experience day-to-day reality. Public art allows the onlooker to find himself unwittingly encountering art -- without expectations, without presciousness, without distance.

TRON and me

2006-02-26T20:06:00.000-05:00

That TRON GPS game is a great idea. I could not stop boring my wife about it. Not only do I love the idea about making games more physical, but I love the idea of what the kids who play these games will look like. No more obese children on the playstation, but techno-kids running around making sure the laser trails do not trap them. As a side note, the little artificial intelligence of the little TRON light cycles game on the GPS page is very good...I could hardly win.

A project that I want to make that I have been thinking about for the last year is to make virtual sculptures that are positioned around campus. You would walk around campus with Augmented Reality goggles and see virtual objects all over the place. Perhaps a virtual representation of the "sculptor" can be standing around talking about the project. It would be sad not to be able to touch it...but who knows, maybe we can work with OSC virtual lab on this haptic device.

As the link, I would like to point to our very own interface lab in this same building http://www.osc.edu/hpc/bale/interfacelabinfo.shtml. For those who have not seen this lab, they are very nice and love giving students tours.

Body Cartography

2006-02-26T17:24:00.000-05:00

http://www.bodycartography.org/

place

2006-02-26T17:17:00.000-05:00

For a while I've been really interested in what it is that leads us to come to understand and know a place, whether it's a 'site' or a physical landscape being present or telepresent, there is something so rich and significant about how we understand ourselves in relation to our surroundings and in relation to the experiences of others in different places.

I like the idea of looking at elements of place, i.e. the sounds of "Silence of the Lands" and the questions that arise surrounding much of the locative media work. I'm looking forward to hearing more in class, because many of the websites confused me. One thing though that strikes me is that in considering locative media as something that transports us to the mediated space of another it seems worth considering the implications of dissociating ourselves from our temporal spaces and our natural and interpersonal communities. Certainly I understand the connective opportunities of technology--I'm just starting to work on a project with girls in Mocambique--but there is something to that mediated relationship that is significantly different from being physically connected to and responsible for one's local environment and community.

Location, location, location

2006-02-26T14:18:00.000-05:00

Would love to try the gaming stuff. Not sure if I would like it or not. I think the concept of GPS Tron is interesting, where you do not know, or for that matter ever meet your opponent. I was most taken by the Node project, and love the application as an educational tool for travelers. It is a bit like the audio headsets at museums they have now. I also am into mapping. In fact, on the first day of class, I wrote a note to myself for an idea of a piece "United," based on the real-time map that the Star Alliance website has showing flight status of planes around the world. Found Blast Theory's "Kidnap" to be extremely creepy and frightening. I don't think being kidnapped would be "fun" or a "game," and find the idea very unappealing. It was easy for me to see how this could (and probably will be) developed into a sexual kink, to be honest.

Re: Foucalt Backwards

2006-02-26T00:11:00.000-05:00

Thank you for tips on reading Foucalt Boris. I will try to read other Foucalt pieces and see their relevance, but I do agree that this paper once read a few times becomes more elementary, yet in my view, more confusing as to his goal. What I mean by that is that I DO ask why is he defining simple locations and giving them names. If his other works/papers connect the current culture with what he is defining, I wish he did it in this paper too. I am looking forward to your views on Foucalt and seeing more of his cultural pieces described until I read them for myself.
Steven G.

Manhattan mapped, along with the rest of us

2006-02-23T20:35:00.000-05:00

The focus on urban gaming reminded me of this work, by my friend, Brian McGrath, an architect and philosopher.

Brian McGrath

As we have become more tech savvy, and dependent on our PDAs, (the lack of telephone number recall ability), we face a loss of autonomy that has many ramifications. The only factor that stops the Orwellian disapora, or Big Brother from becoming a reality is the fact that there is no omnipotent central command. However, th

We can use this new technology for “fun and games”, such as shown by the phenomena of “Geocaching”
Geocatching

National Geographic

Trimble

As the GPS technology becomes more proficient, and we are able to track positions inside buildings, the ability to watch and be watched is exponentially increased.
GPS indoors
GPS indoors

Surveillance/Red-light cameras can make travel faster, and roads safer, but they are monitoring our daily pathways, and storing that information without our knowledge or consent.

traffic

stoplight crash

traffic control game

I end with the most blatant example of such travails and misuse of the pulbic trust.

CNN

Daily Kos

Fault with Foucault?

2006-02-22T01:20:00.000-05:00

The attempt to define the space other than the one we inhabit and are aware of, is a cultural more, as Foucault states in his first principle of heterotopias; “there is probably not a single culture…that fails to constitute heterotopias.” I would imagine it might come from the ability to see stars, yet that is as subjective an example as the places he uses to define his concepts. The focus and categorization of the heterotopias, those specialized places he mentions (in the order listed in his article); the mirror, boarding school, military service, ‘honeymoon vacations’, rest homes, psychiatric hospitals, prisons, retirement homes (as some how essentially different than rest homes), cemeteries, theaters, the cinema, the garden, cemeteries again, museums, libraries, festivals (meaning for Americans fairs), Polynesian vacation villages, Brazilian guest-bedrooms, ‘no-tell motels’, Puritan colonies in North America and Jesuit colonies in South America, brothels, and finally boats, indicate the thinking process of a highly privileged white male of Western cultural heritage.
The idea of defining space as a relationship of ideas to specific points in space is important, however, his opening salvo, equating boarding school and military service with the female equivalent of deflowering seems to be an unintended confessional detail that would have been best understood in psychoanalytic terms. His focus on death and sexuality, and his example of the Jesuit colonies in South America as perfect examples of regulation, thus perfection, seems to be limited by his very myopic western focus, or else is intended to be highly ironic. It seems possible to me that the translation of the article into English was missing something. The other side is more likely, that I am missing something, however, his statement ”Until the end of the eighteenth century, the cemetery was placed in the heart of the city, next to the church”, precludes a highly specific cultural focus. He does place this example within the scope of Western society, yet his choice limits the impact of his idea. He also states; “in a time of real belief in the resurrection of bodies… overriding importance was not accorded to the body’s remains. One has to only research the fetish of relics in earlier centuries, or look to the rituals of the Egyptian culture, to name an overused example, to see the limited focus of this argument, even if it is a viable attempt to define an alternate view of space as culturally determined. The defining of the garden and the fountain as “a sort of happy, universalizing heterotopia since the beginning of antiquity” minimizes the fact that gardens are essential for human survival, as well as an important civilizing factor, and places the idea into the realm of the decorative, a perspective that could only be seen from the halls of academia. It is interesting to me that such a cavalier use of words could have such an impact. When he states “the rediscovery of Polynesian life abolishes time”, is he discounting the relativism that makes an actual representation of such an event impossible, or simplifying an entire culture for sake of argument, a very neocolonial point of view?
The article ends with a particular male fantasy, one of sailing away on a beautiful, unthreatening sea from port to port, brothel to brothel. In this way, I think the lecture predates the actual heterotopia of the internet at present, one of unlimited information, filtered solely by the skipper at the helm of the search vessel.

Reading Foucalt Backwards

2006-02-21T11:13:00.000-05:00

If you start with the last paragraph of Michel Foucalt article "Of Other Spaces" and read backwards to the beginning you have an understanding of what Foucalt is trying to mean. The way he writes becomes simpler as he goes on, so reading from the end gives you context for what he is saying. For instance, instead of reading about utopias and Galileo and heterotopia and why you come back to yourself when looking into a mirror, you read about rest homes, prisons and psychaitric hospitals being places of deviation, which is his point. Then all other information that comes before it informs you from something you actually understand. Then, it makes sense that he talks about looking into a mirror because the mirror becomes reflective of society. So then why is it interesting to read about someone saying that places exist and we occupy them physcially and in our minds. Actually it is not, but what is interesting is how he places those ideas in different cultures which informs us about human behavior and our knowledge increases. Reading this the way it was written assumes that we know what he is talking about and he is leading us to a conclusion that he has discovered. However, if you are not familiar with the history he describes or if you are familiar with the history and don't understand how they relate to concepts such as heterotopia the information can be overwhelmingly simplistic and you feel like so many postmodern dance audiences when they understand that there was a relationship between two people dancing on stage but they don't get it.

on place

2006-02-20T18:16:00.000-05:00

Deep North

Foucault and Architecture

2006-02-20T11:35:00.000-05:00

Check out this exhibit at the Slought Foundation in direct theoretical conversation with Foucault. See the slideshow for some amazing renderings - and then read the description for the ideas behind the work.

Slought Foundation: "Architecture Against Death" with Arakawa, Gins, et al.
Architecture Against Death

non-blog

2006-02-19T21:57:00.000-05:00

Foucault Action figure

Re: The Body, Interactivity, and Technology

2006-02-19T18:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, the remark on Pandora's box is an important one: As we begin to play with technology we must remember to focus on the art and not on the novelty of technology. I do want to remain optimistic with technology and see it this way instead: Technology is here to help, and we should think of what we want to do first. Naturally, obstacles may arise that may be solved by using technology, but just because technology is used to overcome the obstacles does not mean that it needs to be credited for helping. In other words, technology can be hidden and not the center of attention in the performance.
Steven Gutierrez

The Body, Interactivity, and Technology

2006-02-19T15:18:00.000-05:00

THE BODY, INTERACTIVITY, AND TECHNOLOGY

As sentient beings, we apprehend the world around us through our five senses, creating reality in our minds from a vast amount of sensual input from the body. In order to make sense of this constant onslaught of information, the mind looks for and recognizes patterns and changes in the outer environment in order to make choices. The senses are in fact a type of interface through which we interact and communicate with the outside world. This need to interact and communicate is a primary urge in humans. Perhaps because we are “trapped” in our own bodies, this need has a particularly strong outwardly directed drive in us. This concept of interaction/communication can exist on many levels, informing our relationships to ourselves, our bodies, other individuals, and the world at large, as well as our interactions with the non-human world of technology.

THE BODY
Because all of our perceptions are filtered through the body, we are thoroughly anchored in our corporeal selves. Over years, we develop patterns of behavior and automatic responses to stimuli based on past experiences. These behavioral patterns can sometimes become encrusted onto ourselves, eliciting knee-jerk responses without any real analysis or consideration. But what of the immense number of responses that are actually available to us, at any time? The study of improvisation is one method of breaking through these patterns of unconsidered response, opening up new possibilities of interaction, and, finally, communication.
Simone Forti’s article “Animate Dancing” and Susan Leigh Foster’s article “Taken by Surprise” both offer insights about how to approach the discipline of dance improvisation and how it can aid in freeing ourselves from predictable and pre-conditioned responses. Indeed, dance improvisation could be seen as a fundamental type of generative art. Forti writes of her training: “One of the instructions Anna [Halprin] sometimes gave was to spend an hour in the environment, in the woods or in the city, observing whatever caught our attention. Then we would return to the workspace and move with these impressions fresh in our senses, mixing aspects of what we had observed, with our responses and feeling states.” This statement beautifully synthesizes two of the principals we are exploring in this class: interactivity (in this case, with the self and the environment) and generative art (responding to an input to create a unique output).
Forti’s approach to improvisation emphasizes the personal experience informing the final outcome. By focusing primarily on sensory input, immersing ourselves in an environment and soaking it all in, that material is then filtered through ourselves and expressed through movement. Without a doubt, this approach is highly experiential for the performer, and hopefully this experience projects itself outward to the viewer.
In contrast, Susan Leigh Foster seems to take a more analytical approach to dance improvisation. Foster encourages the improviser to push themselves into the territory of the unknown. Included in the introduction to her paper is a definition of the phrase “taken by surprise: the unexpected seizes control, resulting in a sexy, vertiginous encounter with the unknown, an encounter that raises issues around the workings of desire and power...” Obviously, Foster is making some strong aesthetic pronouncements in this definition and how it applies to dance improvisation. She then goes on to compare the “known” with the “unknown,” identifying the “known” as “...behavioral conventions established by the context in which the performance occurs...”, “Predetermined over-arching structural guidelines that delimit the improvising body’s choices, such as a score for the performance, or any set of rules determined in advance...”, “...an individual body’s predisposition to move in patterns of impulses established and make routine through training in a particular dance tradition...”, and finally “...any allied medium with which the performance is in collaboration....” The “unknown” is more succinctly identified as “...that which was unimaginable, that which we could not have thought of doing next. Improvisation presses us to extend into, expand beyond, extricate ourselves from that which was known. It encourages us or even forces us to be ‘taken by surprise.’”
Foster encourages exploration as Forti does, but employing a much different artistic strategy. In Foster’s version, the performer is striving to interact in a more self-analytical fashion, as well as forcibly trying to subvert the self in terms of context, movement preferences, and the relationship to fellow performers and audience.
Both Forti and Foster offer different ways of exploring the relationship we have to ourselves, specifically in the realm of dance improvisation and performance. While Forti emphasizes a more self-expressive and organically inspired mode, Foster prefers a more self-reflexive and contextualized approach. Of course, each approach is equally valid, but each will have a different impact on how it will engage an audience.

INTERACTIVITY
In New Ground, interactivity and performance are the conceptual cornerstones of our work. As a wonderfully varied group of artists, we all have our own preferences and goals, and collaborating on making a “performance” opens up many avenues for discussion. Richard Schechner’s article “What is Performance?” addresses some wonderful and basic concepts of performance theory that can be used in developing a work of art that is a “performance.”
For purposes of brevity, I would like to limit my discussion here to the idea of performance in the context of art, as we are working towards a final art project. Schechner refers to four ways in which the words “to perform” could be understood, in terms of “being,” “doing,” “showing doing,” and performance studies themselves expressed as “explaining showing doing.” Of these distinctions, “showing doing” is the most useful for this class. As performers, there is a large element of display in what we do, and as dancers, much of that display is of the body. When people watch a dance performance, much of the impact on the audience is physical, with the audience members feeling (to a greater and lesser degree) kinesthetic echoes of the movements they see. This gives dance a wonderful and unique power in the realm of performance. The human body in motion, whether just alone or with other performers, is an amazingly rich source of interactivity, due to this transference of kinesthetic echoes and information. The drawback, though, is that it is completely subjective in terms of how it impacts individual viewers. For example, a dancer will view any kind of physical performance differently than a doctor, a physical trainer, a school teacher, or a banker would. That certainly does not mean that the dancer sees it “better,” nor does it mean that they would have a particularly deeper understanding of it. All viewers will have a different and equally valid response to the work.
The performance also interacts with the viewer in a highly intellectual sense as well, which also brings up huge questions of art and performance. The viewing of someone “showing doing” immediately raises questions: Why are they doing that? Why are they doing that here? What are they trying to communicate? These are questions to be considered as the artist creates work. Schechner sums it in this way: “Performances exist only as actions, interactions, and relationships.” This can actually serve to define the substance with which we work as artists: the interplay of the individual with themselves, others, and the outside world.

TECHNOLOGY
Now we come to the wild card in this trilogy which includes the body and interactivity. Technology, in a broad sense, has always been with us, since the first early human crafted a tool to aid in completing a task. Modern society has inextricably intertwined itself with digital technology, completely changing the way we live our lives, and how we view ourselves in relationship to the world at large. The advent of digital technology has been so fast, with new technologies added and developed daily, that it seems to give a sense of acceleration into the future. Traditionally, American society has viewed progress as king; therefore, such a vast amount of progress could only be beneficial. But there are those who feel that technology may be a Pandora’s Box of a kind, with consequences which are perhaps as yet not understood or imagined.
Ultimately, this brings us back to the body. Vivian Sobchack addresses this relationship to the self, the body, and technology in her powerful and shocking article “Beating the Meat/Surviving the Text, or How to Get Out of the Century Alive.” Her article criticizes Baudrillard in particular for his celebration and fetishization of Ballard’s novel, “Crash.” Ballard himself wrote in an introduction that the novel “is a warning against the brutal, erotic, and overlit realm that beckons more and more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape.” Sobchack writes of Baudrillard’s praise of the novel, “ he ‘get’s off’ on the convergence of ‘chrome and mucous membranes’ and ‘all the symbolic and sacrificial practices that a body can open itself up to-- not via nature, but via artifice, simulation, and accident.’” He describes the body and self being subsumed by technology. This disconnect between the self and the body through the invasion of technology is a common theme of much of science-fiction. Certainly for many people, they distrust systems they do not understand and that involve a non-human entity as a point of interaction. Somehow, these interactions can make us feel objectified, viewing our bodies as a “thing,” which is put up against another “thing,” that is made by us, but not human at all. Sobchack states: “This alienated yet highly fetishized fascination with the body object (the body that we have) and the devaluation of embodiment and the lived body (the body that we are) is a consequence of an increasingly dangerous confusion between the agency that is ‘our bodies/ourselves’ and the objective power of our incredible new technologies of perception and expression.”

So what does a body, in performance, and incorporating the use of digital technology saying? Certainly this is one of many questions we are trying to answer. Technology has seeped into every corner of our lives, and yet as dancers and artists, we seek to make connections with others that transcend the technological, and are rooted somehow in the self and in the flesh. We make our statements in the realm of a specific type of interaction, that of performance, or put another way, “showing doing.” What does this context of display and view, of the inherent voyeuristic feel of performance, the action, reaction, and relationship of performance communicate? Our use of the technology available to us in performance is the final key, rooting the performers and viewers firmly in the here and now. There is no real escape from technology anymore, without completely removing oneself from society altogether. But human nature is naturally social, curious, and interactive, and technology has made communication easier than ever before. People need to decide what to say to each other, what to value, treasure, and share in this new world of the digital, the virtual, and objectified.

Foucalt uses words

2006-02-17T13:20:00.000-05:00

Indeed, the reading is a little dense and I hope I understood what he was geeting at. I will write more after I see some other thoughts that will help me understand if I am on the right track.

What I WOULD like to submit for now is http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/ &
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/making.html It is a good site covering some basics of String Theory. It is coincidental that I was reading about this right now: it deals with reinterpretation of space (and also time). This is something that I felt Foucault was alluding to except with more grounded known facts.

Steven G.

Interactivity

2006-02-16T12:12:00.000-05:00

As tends to happen every so often, a definitions debate about "generative" and "interactive" is in progress on the eu-gene mailing list. Vitorino Ramos just contributed a nice quote from Simon Penny, pulled from an interesting article called, Computers and the Development of Interactivity:

"An interactive system is a machine system which reacts in the moment, by virtue of automated reasoning based on data from its sensory apparatus. An Interactive Artwork is such a system which addresses artistic issues. A painting is an instance of representation. A film is a sequence of representations. Interactive artworks are not instances of representation, they are virtual machines which themselves produces instances of representation based on real time inputs."
Simon Penny, 'From A to D and back again: The emerging aesthetics of Interactive Art", 1996

Convergence and the Highly Plastic

2006-02-12T21:46:00.000-05:00

Two from Anne Galloway:
* Design in the Parliament of Things
* The aesthetics of decision-making

Complexity and on

2006-02-10T03:05:00.000-05:00

my webpage

A New Symbolic

2006-02-08T14:46:00.000-05:00

Synchronicity.

In readings last night, I came across the following quote articulating the potential for new critical discourse through the merging of dance and technology. It is in this spirit of continuing to develop the socially transformative power of performance that I am approaching ideas of interactivity, redefining/expanding/transgressing the performance space, and blurring the lines between artist and audience, art and entertainment. Kozel said it much more clearly than I did in class yesterday - but my intentions are similar:

"In the spirit of forward-looking mimeses, I see great scope for the transformation of our cultural symbolic through the overlap between art and technology, particularly between dance and the techno-aesthetics of virtual reality.... A new poetics and a new generation of artistic mimesis can indeed emerge, particularly if the theoretical advancements are animated by the dancing body."

(Kozel, Susan. "'The story is Told as a History of the Body': Strategies of Mimesis in the Work of Iragaray and Bausch."MEANING IN MOTION. ed. Jane C Desmond. Durham: Duke UP, 1997. p108.)

add ons

2006-02-07T00:44:00.000-05:00

Hi - am posting my 'report' about complexity later this week - ran across several articles I thought you might like, about Alan Turing, one of the acknowledged founders of the computer, and what it means to be human, basically. We can generate whatever art we like, being humans, regardless of whatever rules we think we must adhere to. One might think that rules are objective, but the subjective nature of all decisions, and the ability to decide what is known has an unlimited, and human, thus indeterminate...

New Yorker book review

Wired, "Happy Birthday Hal"

Wired, Turing test

moma

2006-02-06T21:44:00.000-05:00

Good article in TNR this week How the Museum of Modern Art Sold Its Soul . I'll bring it in tomorrow. It touches on issues of control, art in society, and what is today's museum for/who is...

In the way that Levin names "systems of expressing" in discussing illusions and elements of control in creating generative art (or the illusion of relinquishing control) it is interesting to consider the role of institutions and administrators in authoring systems of availability and accessibility, and of course quality, in the art world.

Sol Lewitt

2006-02-05T19:47:00.000-05:00

Here is a great link to Over 400 detailed images of Lewitt's work including a bio that talks in detail about his generative art approach. I am most interested in his collaborative wall paintings which sound very much like they are essentially improvisational painting scores.

Sol Lewitt

Against Greenberg: A Call for Postmodern Interactivity

2006-02-05T17:03:00.000-05:00

The high modernist project advanced in Clement Greenberg’s essay on Modernist Painting (1960) championed the isolated exploration of individual art forms in order to demonstrate “that the kind of experience they provided was valuable in its own right and not to be obtained from any other kind of activity.” Greenberg’s self-reflexive modernist project surfaced initially in the dance world within the composition exercises led by Robert Dunn in the Judson workshops and later came to its full fruition in the analytic postmodern dance (1) epitomized by Yvonne Rainer.

By rejecting both Louis Horst’s method of finding choreographic structure and style in music and Doris Humphrey’s arced movement phrase, Robert Dunn reasserted dance as an art form independent of music and initiated a self-critical examination of compositional structures and the fundamental elements of dance. Paradoxically, Robert Dunn was himself a composer and turned to experimental music as a basis for his compositional assignments. The choreography class practiced an analytical, rational approach to dance epitomized by the participants’ solving on paper compositional problems proposed by Dunn. Their answers in the form of written scores were then brought to life on the bodies in the classroom, but the art object was the score itself. This early incarnation of Judson Dance Theater made clear that the compositional method was the artistic content, completely self-referential and, therefore, according to Greenberg, justified as an independent, valid art form.

When viewing dance through the reductivist lens of the Greenbergian project, Judsonites found at its essential core the body and motion. Moving further, Yvonne Rainer, as evidenced in her No manifesto (1965) and Trio A (1966), sought to extricate these core elements of the medium from anything that might be construed as theatrical or performative affects, replacing the performing body with the 'neutral doer' (2). I would argue that Rainer overshoots the ‘everyday’ body in Trio A, achieving instead a mechanical neutrality (3) that is itself an affect as it is impossible to truly strip the body of its kinetic personality. Affecting neutrality and unaccented evenness while moving requires that a dancer master the natural discontinuities of the body’s physical processes. To achieve the appearance of a 'neutral doer' the dancer must mask the physical forces of gravity, instinctive reflexes, and dynamic changes in biological rhythms such as a slowing or increasing heart rate. While this quiet struggle is undoubtedly a kinetic experience for the dancer, the resulting image in Rainer’s Trio A is a “smooth unaccented continuity rendering some illusion of sameness,” (Jill Johnston, Village Voice, April 18, 1968).

The use of task-like operations in Rainer’s dance pieces constituted a primarily intellectual rather than a physical exploration, focusing on context and semantics rather than on the movement itself. How ordinary could the movement be and still be called dance? What are you left with when you say “NO” to everything that dance once was? When the performer is no longer involved? When the spectator is no longer seduced?(4) According to Sally Banes, you are left with “Something that perhaps could only be fully realized in the imagination, the reduction of dance to its essentials,” (Sally Banes, Terpsichore in Sneakers, 1977, p44).

The minimalist experiments of Rainer and her contemporaries (Paxton, Brown, Childs, Gordon, et al.) shattered the conventions of concert dance that limited choreographers’ movement choices to intense expressivity or athletic virtuosity. This access has translated into a collagist anything-goes aesthetic shared by many contemporary choreographers who are more likely to juxtapose one dancer tying a shoe on stage with another performing a series of fuetés en pointe than to remain loyal to any fixed technical vocabulary. But like many avant-garde movements, the extreme minimalism of the original experiment was interesting and accessible only to the cognoscenti – a gallery crowd of intellectual elites who were at least peripherally aware of Greenbergian Modernism and the self-reflection that it inspired among the artists whose work they were witnessing.

The potential dance audience was alienated further by a Greenbergian disdain for entertainment(5) , articulated by Rainer and other Judson artists in terms of their anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, egalitarian social values. Involvement with the audience simultaneously pulled the performer away from the internal investigations of the modernist project and placed the dance into a consumerist construct: “A noncommittal manner was yet another antielitist strategy. It appealed to those who didn’t wish to manipulate the audience or seduce them with the power of the dancer’s personality. That’s why Rainer averted her gaze in Trio A, why Judith Dunn and some others adopted a motionless face – “glazed,” as Paxton put it,” (Deborah Jowitt, Time and the Dancing Image, 1988, p328).

While Greenberg’s anti-consumerism demanded that art be saved from the clutches of postmodern Kitsch, the analytic choreographers inadvertently obeyed. In an idealistic egalitarian desire to put an end to performances that manipulated the audience’s emotions, sympathies, and politics, Rainer and many of her contemporaries turned away from them. In a bizarre twist, dance makers traded capitalist entertainment and consumerism for intellectual elitism. By reducing dance to pedestrian movements that anyone could do, they constructed performances in which few could engage. By averting the performative gaze, dancers denied audiences empathetic, kinesthetic, and participatory entry into the creative space. This inward looking project needed no audience.

Greenberg’s charge – that of art to establish itself, justify itself through rationality, save itself from going the way of religion (with Greenberg’s implications of uselessness and indulgence) – has too much infected our art making process as choreographers since the Judson Workshops. Greenberg belittles entertainment – naming it unjustified and valueless in our culture. Entertainment for him is Kitsch – part of the consumerism that substitutes for culture in contemporary urban society. And we the students, teachers, and creators of dance have integrated his ideas so completely that we have cut ourselves off from that culture of urbanity, rarely daring to engage in dialogue with our audiences lest we be mistaken for attempting to entertain or patronizing them. Did Greenberg’s essay interrupt the acceptance/coming together of fine art and pop culture, shooing artists away from that which not only engaged popular audiences, but in so doing offered the artists social and political currency with which to elicit social change?

Although Rainer and her cohorts eschewed audience participation, their palate-cleansing minimalism, incorporation of objects and tasks, and experiments with media and technology paved the way for Interactive or Responsive Environments in dance. This interstitial medium has the potential to be the most fully realized counterpoint to Greenbergian modernism in contemporary dance performance. Interactive Environments modeled on human conversations as described by Dan O’Sullivan (6)and composed by Myron Krueger(7) not only allow, but depend upon the artist/architect’s creating an interesting, accessible, intuitively understood space in which an audience member/participant actively engages in creating a reciprocal artistic experience.

Interactivity is a consciously postmodern tactic capable of making performance systems accessible to a wide range of diverse populations. By definition, interactive systems establish shared authorship, forcing the artist to relinquish agency to the participant who, in a successfully user-friendly environment, can then customize her experience within the limitations of the composed system. An interactive performance environment not only offers, but depends upon an intellectual and physical entry of the audience/participant into the creative space, forcing either an end to the alienation of our dance audiences or an end to the performance system as constructed. The system must engage its audience to survive. Ironically, this candidly Darwinian concept guaranties interface, dialogue, reciprocity, and collaboration – ideas that resonate with the anti-elitist goals of the vanguard dance of the 60s and 70s.

The adoption of interactive environments by artists in the dance field necessitates the letting go of our consumer-phobia. To construct workable environments, we must resume the gaze, look at our audience members and learn about them. Who are they? What is there level of comfort/discomfort with technology? How much or little do they want to engage in the creative art-making process? Continuing the self-critical investigations of our field, we must consider our compositional goals for interactivity. How much, where, and how do we as artists want to relinquish agency to the audience/participant? What does the interaction mean within the environment? What is the compositional reason for the variable experiences, the messiness that an interactive performance environment implies?

I propose that one of the most important experiments of Post(Greenbergian)modern choreographers is the search for and investigation of the interstitial rather than the immanent. Greenberg uses "immanent" (8) to refer to the rationally justifiable, real, earthly, tangible, testable essence of a thing(9), the aspects of the form that cannot possibly be anything else. Our analytic predecessors have examined, investigated, and experimented with that which is immanently dance. They have said NO to anything that could possibly be construed as extraneous, superficial, or other. Interactive performance environments give us the opportunity to say YES - to search for variable experiences, to create hybrid art born between the mediums, to collaborate across disciplines, to further blur the boundary between art and pop culture, and to integrate the audience into the creative experience, and in doing so, integrate ourselves as artists into the experience of the world around us.

-----------
1. The semantically problematic term “analytic postmodern dance” is borrowed from Sally Banes who gives a thorough account of modernist principles in the work of Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Trisha Brown, David Gordon, Lucinda Childs, and the Grand Union during this era. (Banes, Sally. “Postmodern Dance Revisited.” Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism. p.301-310. Wesleyan University Press, 1994.)
2. See Senses of Cinema:Rainer for further discussion on how Rainer has continued to explore these concepts in her films.
3. Sally Banes asserts that the analytic dancemakers’ project of presenting pure and simple movement called attention to the workings of the body, (Writing Dancing…,p. 255). Banes’s word choice highlights the aesthetic mechanization of the body as it was stripped of its ‘theatrical’ personality.
4. These questions paraphrase Rainer’s “NO manifesto” (1965) discussed at From Objecthood to Subject Matter:Yvonne Rainer's Transition from Dance to Film
5. “Having been denied by the Enlightenment all tasks [the arts] could take seriously, they looked as though they were going to be assimilated to entertainment pure and simple, and entertainment itself looked as though it were going to be assimilated, like religion, to therapy,” (Greenberg, Clement. “Modernist Painting.” 1960.)
6. For description see O’Sullivan, Dan Et Al. “Physical Interaction Design, or Techniques for Polite Conversation.” Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers. International Thomson Publishing. 2004.
7. For descriptions of his work see Krueger, Myron, “Responsive Environments.” Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings. University of California Press, 1996.
8.Immanentis, ironically, used in theistic discourse to refer to God’s presence in the earthly essence of all creation as opposed to a transcendent God who remains distant or separated from earthly matter/reality.
9. In Greenberg's "Modernist Painting", the “thing” is specifically religion and later art.

Generative Art

2006-02-05T15:55:00.000-05:00

While I doubt I will go the route of creating a virtual actor in a virtual world (although I may some day), Perlin's article brought up some interesting thoughts for an interactive environment. The importance of visual noise or textural shading is one way we can make an experience seem more "real," whether this is strictly a surface texture (a marble-like surface on a vase) or a physical texture (a tilt of the head, random blink times). Also, the question of agency in affecting VR actors by the participant will bring more realism to the experience- are we participating through a joystick, or an interactive body suit, for example.

Galanter's article seemed less revelatory to me, but was a useful deepening of my understanding of the use of algorithms in creating art. The comparison and explanation of chaotic and random systems was quite useful though. Also, the question of authorship is one which will come up again I am sure. How complete does one make an interactive system, or to put it another way, how "closed" or "open" is the system? How much control does the system creator have on the output versus the system participant?

I found Carlo Zanni's interview with Golan Levin to be fantastic, and found my initial ideas in conceiving interactive art closely allied with Levin's. Levin states that he "...is a little skeptical of artists who endorse an uncritical attitude toward its [generative or aleatoric systems] results." Citing an example of one artist's over-zealous presentation of flower portraits produced with a generative system, Levin concludes that "...they were all equally good-and he [the artist] failed to see that this made them allequally bad as well." This seemed to me to be a fundamental argument for self-critique, and brings me back to an earlier thought I had shared in class during the beginning of the quarter concerning "creativity" and its relationship to "art-making." Levin really confronts concepts of authorship as well, noting that "Control has been supplanted by meta-control," and that these systems, up to now, remain to a large extent outside the traditional sphere of aesthetic critique. Not only must we evaluate the artistic content of the output, but the generative system as well.

starter post

2006-02-05T15:29:00.000-05:00

Helpful link to see generative art: art links

I've been thinking recently about values systems and the ways that we connect with performances, and how our aesthetic values shape our connection with the performers in live art. In some ways I think Perlin's references to believability, realism, and connection with virtual characters could interestingly inform my considerations of audience members' reactions to the realistic, but often unbelievable performers in dance.

More on this later tonight...

Lavarand

2006-02-05T14:10:00.000-05:00

I do not remember if we read about Lava lamps in this class or another, but they are relevant to the idea of true random generation. Golan Levin spoke about using more advanced algorithms to create random numbers, but these two mathmaticians used lava lamps instead:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/random.html

It was interesting that in Floccugraph they use the darkness of the face for random force generation.

Virutal Actors

2006-02-05T13:13:00.000-05:00

I found Perlin's article on building virtual actors to be quite informative. In fact it is something that I have a lot of interest in. However, my thinking is more in line with interaction in performace rather than how to make The Sims more realistic as a game. I personally like the fact that a game is a game although I do find it annoying that the characters in The Sims have to finish one amimation in order to begin another. Instead of making virtual actors seem realistic how can one make real people virtual and use canned animations for impossible and improbable situations. I am thinking of Headlong Dance Theater's "Impossible Dance" http://www.headlong.org. Perlin's website was also interesting to me because his face demo, http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/facedemo/ is a very similar to the program John Simmons created called ADEL. We used this program to move the virtural actor in real time. http://www.gmu.edu/news/gazette/9804/dance.html here is a video of the performance. http://dancelab1.dance.ohio-state.edu/%7Ebwillis/sirobandaadelle.htm I enjoyed Galanter's extended defination of generative art at first but it became too choatic and random.

the need to define

2006-02-01T22:01:00.000-05:00

In "Physical Interaction Design, Techniques for Polite Conversation", Dan O'Sullivan states that when dealing with digital sensors, there are 2 possible values - either you sensed something or you didn't. He goes on to explain the use of analog sensors, and how the use of multiple sensor would give one more information, from which to make an informed choice. He states that even though computers can only do one thing at a time, they can process that information fastter than we can perceive it. He also states that we, humans, automatically look for patterns in everything, which I gather is what computers do best as well. My reasons for restating his ideas here is that I feel we, humans, look for order, thus meaning in everything, using patterns, which is possibly the most obvious, direct and ubiquitous way to perceive some semblance of meaning, but possibly not the main way of perceiving reality for some. His article focused on expectations as well, and how successful our interactions are in any situations depends on how clearly our preconceived notions of correct behavior is met. I wonder about this establishment of such standards when it comes to a clearly subjective standard as art-making, art-viewing, art-judging. Everything is not crap, yet everything is not great. Co touched on the point of wonder (the syncronistic coming together of natural events in a phosphoresent wave under the moonlight...so arty), which Ashley so clearly restated when discussing the aspect of a performance piece that is unknowable. This is what fascinates me most as well - what is unknowable, and why must we know it? All in all, I prefer the pragmatic approach of John Maeda's teacher, Morio Shinoda, which was to avoid at all costs things that cause problems, basically addressing another profound idea about permanence and timelessness, or lack there of.

As nothing, or everything really matters, to paraphrase a "Queen" anthem, here is the link to the article by Steve Jobs, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us (Wired 2000) which is still being referenced on line 6 years later http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

Misc Links

2006-01-31T11:30:00.000-05:00

Odds and ends I've been meaning to link to for discussion:

Afterglow
Don't have a LAN connection, use your body
AR Kitchen
Paper programming for children
Mindstorm Pong
Mirror Neurons
Ambient Intelligence
Computer to User: You Figure It Out
Parasitic Humanoid
Radio Controlled Human

environments

2006-01-29T14:28:00.000-05:00

I am interested in the interplay between O'Sullivan's commentary on creating patterns that are comfortable and recognizable for viewers and Co's interpretation of our understanding of natural versus synthetic experiences. While I recognize that, especially when the premise is that the work is about the human--system interaction rather than aesthetic value or visual experience, people like to figure things out, it seems to me that we risk losing the transformative power of art. If I play a game, figure it out then leave, I really leave it. But if I experience something that I may not understand, or may not be able to diagram, but that is so captivating that I trust and encode something from it, I'm more likely to feel richer for having seen it. And am more likely to carry the imagery with me. I like the idea of creating systems that are intuitive, thus believable, but not structured in a way that people would actively try to figure out the rules. I'd like to figure out how to combine the two and still retain the value of visual experience.

Unrelatedly...

I found this presentation:
Multimedia Art History

Here's a paper by my collaborator describing his work making some sensors:
Peter and Dave's paper

Physical Comupting

2006-01-28T17:52:00.000-05:00

I was interested in Rosin, Co and Madea's articles on physical computing as compared to O'Sullivan's article on sensors. Several years ago I was asked by the Engineering department at George Mason University to create a work for a conference they were having. The asked me to use a robot which would show off the work of their doctoral students. The idea of physical computing came up quite a bit for me as I had to wrestle with how to make the robot execute a series of movements in the same spatial patterns while dancers moved around it. The process was quite interesting as I looked at the abilities of several robots and decided to go with one that looked like a Shop Vac. It had sensors all around it and could be make to follow an object or avoid an object or it could be programmed to move a certain distance along a path. I chose the latter because I could choreograph the dance around the robot that way. O'Sullivan talks about the difficulty of programming as compared to having a conversation. I would like to add to that creating a dance. One must listen, hear and resond as O' Sullivan mentions in a conversation but must create those systems in a program. The challenge of making a dance is that everything must happen exactly as it is rehearsed or there will be problems.

The day of the show everything went well except for one thing. The dancers were moving to the music but the robot did not have that instruction. The sound operator was behind a wall and had to be given a cue by the programmer that the robot had started. The sound operator was late and the dancers were behind the robot instead of with the robot. They did not change the choreography but had to move around the robot instead of with it. I was not surprised to read in Maeda's article that Morio Shinoda thought that working with technology was a "bitch". The whole process was scary. The robot almost ran into some people who did not move. I guess they trusted the technology more than I did. The dancers almost tripped over the robot on several occasions. The floor was very hard and the robot was very expensive. It is something I can do without.

The tempo of interactivity

2006-01-28T16:09:00.000-05:00

Dan O'Sullivan's article revealed to me how much we take for granted in interactivity, whether it be with a human being or with a technological system. The expectations people have in terms of response times, including the physical and aural cues which let us know that the dialogue is still engaging to the participants, are particularly embedded behaviors which I know I take for granted. It was good to have these simple concepts reiterated exactly because they are so "obvious" to us, especially as we begin creating interactive systems with the tech tools. Letting the participant know that their interaction is being "heard" by the computer seemed particularly important, and the subtle cues which could let them know this (changing button colors, auditory cues, changes in environment, etc.) seem central to fulfilling this need. O'Sullivan says, on page 187, that "When you're planning interactive systems, no matter how abstract, keep in mind the tendency to look for patterns." I think this is a key component to successful interactive environments.

Krueger's article expounded upon the same themes, giving examples from his own work. (I was also impressed by how long ago they took place.) I think we could also go deeper into how most interactive environments are almost exclusively based on visual and audio interaction, with touch ( or movement) being used primarily in simulators or thrill-rides.(http://www.trudang.com/simulatr/simulatr.html) It brings to mind the question: How much do we want to interact with a computer system? Perhaps we are not quite ready yet for a full imersion in a VR environment, or fearful of the potential power it may have. I got a tour of The Cave VR environment several year ago at the University of Illinois and found it to be literally a nauseating experience. Both Krueger and O"Sullivan's articles also bring up issues concerning the need of humans to exert control over a non-human entity, or conversely our fear of giving control over to a non-human entity. Loved his six conclusions about his own work and found these to an invaluable outline for interactive environments.

Finally, I found that I agreed with Co's assertion that "Much of what is so enticing about natural phenomena - the mystery, the unpredictability - is contrary to what we want from machines." In fact, I think a mysterious, unpredictable machine would be downright frightening to most people. Indeed, many of the baby-boom generation still find computers suspect even today. Rozin's article was a little unclear to me and I hope to get some further input from the class on Tuesday.

Interactive system

2006-01-28T14:56:00.000-05:00

I am interested in a system that allows the audience in a theater to control many of the elements in the performance. Many years ago I saw a performance where the sound was controled by the presence of shadows over an image, if I were able to place the same kind of image over the audience every movement they made would create a sound score or trigger an event when I decided they could. The audience would move arms mostly to trigger events but it could also be designed so that the slightest movement would trigger events.The audience would have to know or figure out that they were controling the events and that way they could manipulate the rules. I would need a camera system that would be able to see the audience so they could interact. For instance the audience could trigger a menu that would determine the next dance or change the order of sections of a dance or watch a video about a section of a dance. I think of it like going to an exhibit in a museum and watching a video or learning something about the artist.

Physical Computing

2006-01-27T14:42:00.000-05:00

The Krueger article is fascinating to me because it made me excited about my own work. I would love to create the ultimate VR environment where people can communicate even if they are at different places in the world as in his VideoPlace project. When reading about his Psychic Space, I thought it might be a fun project to do a similar piece with a physical space. I would like to create a MAZE that is contained in a 10’x10’ area, but that has walls that constantly appear and disappear to create the illusion of an infinite labyrinth. I think the psychology of using a real space might produce some interesting results. (In a related project, University of Tsukuba is working on floors that move to simulate a bigger space than the one you are in. http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/081104/Shifty_tiles_bring_walking_to_VR_Brief_081104.html) This is a tool that is an extra step in making the input controls with technology a bit more transparent.

I was also particularly fond of Maeda’s essay on pragmatism and Co’s essay on the role of nature in technology. They both emphasize the idea of using technology for more than simple processing of information. Bringing the ambiguity and unpredictable features of nature is not only interesting, but required if we want to have the computer be a better participant in the performances of the future. They both also speak on the idea of the computer being an element in real physical space (rather than just viewing visuals on a screen), which is also worth considering when thinking about technology and performance.
Also related to performance and robots: Please read this months Wired article on robots in theater. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.02/posts.html?pg=3

Social Life

2006-01-27T14:28:00.000-05:00

We live a social life.

Our class has focused on understanding and developing systems and rule sets for performance. We’ve experienced and processed the experience of interacting with these systems as audience members and as performers. As we developed rules for our individual and group systems and put these into practice, we experienced what it was like to attempt to overlay a set of guidelines onto a highly complicated system, ourselves.

We exist in highly structured social systems that guide our behaviors and shape our experiences. Our social systems are filled with rules. While trying valiantly to act like the systems we had programmed we each also participated in the social system that has shaped our lives How many social rule sets are so ingrained that we couldn’t think to "program" them into our list of instructions? Too many. A couple of the social rules or metanarratives that I obeyed were:

*Participate, be a good student.
*Don’t collide with another performer, do no harm.
*Don’t get worn out, it’s just a class.
*Keep moving or be present in stopping, stay in it.
*Slow down before you come to the edge of the space or near someone, it takes some time to stop.

I’m reminded of the assignment that many of us have had in an undergraduate composition class to watch in a public space how people in their everyday lives negotiate the physical and social world. How do people on the bus shift when someone sits down next to them (not why, but how)? How often do you see collisions between two people on the street?

When one observes the shifts in space in a social environment one can see the rules structuring everyday behaviors.

But, how do we learn how to act in our everyday lives? And what does that mean for unusual experiences, like performance events?

Social Cognitive Theories

Social Learning, Bandura
Social Learning Theory suggests that in addition to learning from experiencing events and their consequences, humans learn through observing events and the emotional and behavioral responses of other individuals. Environments can reinforce behaviors for learning is situational and experienced socially. Social Learning helps us understanding modeling behaviors and contextual experience.

Social Development Theory, Vygotsky
Complimentary to Social Learning Theory, Social Development Theory is a cognitive developmental theory that understands learning as a process that is first interpersonal then intrapersonal. Simply put, Vygotsky suggests that everything starts with interaction, or interpersonal social behaviors, that become internally known concepts or skills.

As we consider potential audiences and developing intended experiences for these audiences, we may use elements of social learning and development theories to understand the possible cognitive processes at work in the constructs of witnessed or interactive performance.

Social Presence Theory
Short, Williams, Christie (1976)

Social Presence Theory suggests that social presence, defined by Richardson and Swan (2003) as the "degree to which a person is perceived as ‘real’ in mediated communication" (p. 3), is the key factor in the efficacy of a new media technology. The question is: When using a technology, how aware are you of the presence or nature of those with whom you are interacting?

For our purposes, this is an especially interesting concept. How important to our interaction is the recognition of other beings, as mediated by the technology. An easy example might be the exercise on Tuesday, improvising with the improvisation digitally mediated and projected. Because we shared both physical and digital space, we had a high degree of social presence. There was a clear and believable connection between the real people and the digital representation. So our interactions fit within our social norms and the medium mediated a very lifelike experience.

Imagine that Peter and Matthew’s first assignment was mediated by a projection onto the floor and that they were sitting at a computer moving images as we threw bean bags. Here I imagine we’d find a lesser degree of social presence, even if Peter and Matthew were sitting at computers next to us, they would be less real and we probably would have been more apt to throw the beanbags directly at the ‘digital performers’ with less consideration of social consequence.

The degree of social presence one feels in digital environments, is of particular interest to those studying online education, or elearning. Richardson and Swan (2005) found a predictive effect of perceived social presence and perceived learning overall. Another interesting look at social presence in learning environments is Gustafson, Hodgson, and Tinkner’s (2004) look at notions of dialogue.

Identity in New Media

Identity construction in new media is of particular interest to me. Identity is the constantly shaped understanding of one’s self. As is evident in my inclusion of social theories as a framework for this essay, I am particularly interested in the consideration of self in relation to individuals and I think that connection is one of the primary psychosocial needs.

Identity construction in a digitally mediated world can mean two reflexive but distinct things. Firstly there is the creation of the "cyber-persona," or who you’ve decided to be for the purposes of online interaction. This could range from the creation of a completely distinct personality to the selection of particular characteristics to represent online.

Secondly, there is the process of meaning making, or constructing your real life, through a myriad of available digital tools. Which pictures do you put on Flickr , and which ones do you make public? What’s on your list of 43 Things and what are you consuming? Who blogs, and who reads which blogs? What is your homepage? Mine
How do we fit into online social networks?

Art considering identity:
Artists Sascha Pohflepp and Jakob Schillinger have an interesting project at:
www.pohflepp.de/flickr.html

A blog with interesting ideas about adolescent identity development and new media.

For more academic inquiry:
Pew Internet

Audience, Identity, and the Social:
From Information Transfer to Shared Construction of Meaning
In interpersonal interaction, feedback loops provide us information about our relationship and our communications. In The Lost Art of Listening, Michael Nichols notes how often people while "listening" to another are actually formulating a response, a mental activity that is distinct from listening or witnessing or absorbing someone’s story.

In considering the experience of the audience member in an interactive or digitally mediated performance, I wonder if we can create work where the audience member can experience a piece without an anticipatory inner dialogue.

"Is she going to touch me? Should I move back? Can I throw this? What are they doing?"

Experiencing interactive art, audience members function within several feedback loops. They interact with the environment as a whole, directly with the performers (everything from ignoring to watching to dancing together), with the other audience members (figuring out norms, or appropriate behaviors), and with the output and process of the technology. Similarly, the performer interacts with the technology, the audience, other performers, and the system as a whole.

Social worlds, mediated worlds, and individual identities converge in interactive media art. As we progress in this class we will continue to understand interactivity as a multilayered construct. Older learning models are less useful. We’ll be less likely to pass knowledge directly, having a message to communicate, and more likely to create an environment or piece where participants can construct meaning given direct social and mediated social interactions. Today even simple concepts like categorization have been reframed with the advent of folksonomies and other user or audience driven methods for making meaning out of information.

As artists we can consider the complexity of social interaction, the impact of both available performance technologies, and the cultural shifts in the digital age on the experience of our audience.

As a reward for reading my essay, I’d like to direct you to this super fun website. Retrivr

The Magic of Algorithms

2006-01-26T21:30:00.000-05:00

My comments and explanation of today's work can be found at http://matthewnewground.tripod.com/ Loved today's interactions and experiments with these systems. Even though I am a week late in posting these comments, I am almost glad for it because it has given me greater insight into the previous weeks' readings on robotic theory, movement, programming, etc. Honestly, most of those readings went clear over my head, but I was able to understand the problems posed of introducing human-like behavior to a non-human system, and the importance of setting up parameters which can take into account unforseen responses. Predicting the non-predictable. What came to mind most directly was the desire to re-create or mimic human and/or animal responses to movement: grouping, evading, capturing, approaching, flocking, etc. Desmond Morris is a wonderful British zoologist who has written "The Naked Ape" and "The Human Animal," two wonderful books that attempt to explain some of our behaviors and habits (I remember the mimicry/sympathetic movement which resulted in most of our systems) based on biological drives and environmentally conditioned responses. Finally, I think this can lead ultimately to the trend towards VR environments (a simulacrum of "real" experience) which tends to be a big part of creating interactive environments. Some questions: Why do we try to replicate or mimic organic systems? Why not a completely new reality? Are we moving towards a more artificial simulacrum, or pushing the VR environments to be more life-like? WOW. Lots to think of there. Great to be back everyone. Thanks again for all of your patience. Matthew

Re: Manovich, Dinkla, and Kay

2006-01-25T23:54:00.000-05:00

Indeed, the next level IS the full virtual reality effect using all the senses. Stahl Stenslie has researched and created hardware in that direction: http://www.stenslie.net/stahl/ (There is an English link on the pages)...and yes, the applications noted here are a little more risque so cover those innocent children's eyes that are looking at your screen.

Manovich, Dinkla, and Kay

2006-01-24T13:22:00.000-05:00

In Manovich's article, I was struck by the "layering" of early telecommunication, how a prerecorded and finite media object is transmitted to a remote viewer, and how this lack of interactivity with the media object has drastically started to change with the advent of the Internet and digitized media. In light of the recent mining accidents in West Virginia, I was also drawn to the concept of safety in telepresence and its ability to allow us to control a remote tool from a safe distance. But also, Brenda Laurel brings up that we only teleact with a subset of our senses, most often vision and hearing. A teleaction which includes smell, touch, and taste surely cannot be far off. This would truly pull us into a virtual reality situation.

Dinkla's writing brings to mind the empowerment of the audience member, from passive observers to participant; I imagine this more active role would perhaps lead some people to a feeling of creative satisfaction for themselves, even though they are not the primary creative mind at work. Also, the Happenings of the 50's and 60's began to blur the distinctions which existed in defining what is a discrete media object (work of art).

I found Kay's article on computer interface to be a great history lesson, and also found it surprising how long these problems concerning user friendly tools have been discussed and solved. I tend to thing of computer technologies as being a 20, not 40 or 50, year old system. I also really found the use of developmental psychology as a means of creating an understandable interface fascinating. "Doing with Images makes Symbols."

radical activites

2006-01-22T16:57:00.000-05:00

Starting with Manovich, "The concept of an aesthetic object as an 'object', that is, a self-contained structure limited in space and/or time, is fundamental to all modern thinking about aesthetics" reinforces my belief that dancing is the most radical of all activies. Even with his explanation of Barthes reworking of the concept of text, Manovich maintains that there is still a traditional object, a reader reading a text. He believes that the use of ''process, practice and concept' only serve to "highlight the stronghold of the traditional concept [of traditionally aesthetic objects] withing the cultural imaginiation. Dance is considered within the classical definitions within the history of visual representation, and yet, I find that even with a score or map, a reading of any one dance is a subjective and arbitrary phenomena. Also, even if the score is actualized in some form of documentation, the actual dance, the art, the artifact, only exists in the moment of its performance. All external sources, whether they be observers or participants empowered with technology are then only embodied, or actualized at the moment of the 'doing'. Kay, in describing his explorations of a user-friendly graphic computer interface (GUI) brings to the discussion the slogan, "Doing with Images makes Symbols", as a way to define boundaries that our different 'mentailities' can cope with.

I could find no real links to substantiate this claim, but this page is interesting.

Dinkla reference related Link's

2006-01-22T16:48:00.000-05:00

Soke Dinkla’s article Toward the Origins of Interactive Art referred to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti whose graphic and written works available online through Moma (link below) look very much like choreographic scores with tons of movement captured in the design.
➢ Marinetti's Work

A link to Marinetti’s Variety Theatre Manifesto. This is "marvelous!"
➢ Variety Theatre Manifesto

Dinkla also referenced Norbert Wiener’s 1948 popular description of his theory of cybernetics and its impact on the theory and practice of reactive art. Here are some links I found that helped clue me in about Wiener.
➢ Norbert Wiener A nice overview of Norbert Wiener’s biography, investigations, and impact.
➢ Norbert Wiener Quotes Selected quotes form Norbert Weiner’s 1948 introduction to Cybernetics provided by John Goldsmith of the University of Chicago for his Fall 1998 class, Linguistics in the Context of the Cognitive and Computational Sciences. Most relevant to our dialogue are the last two quotes dealing with information and the idea of mathematical logic. These final quotes resonate with Manovich’s ideas re: teleaction.

Connectivism

2006-01-22T15:05:00.001-05:00

Considering both the audience's ways of knowing how and when to interact with a performance system; the idea of knowing another environment, through telepresence or teleaction; and the end users means and methods of interacting with a computer; makes me wonder more about the internal processes that mediate the learning that takes place between an individual and a system, be it a performance, computer, or environment.

Connectivism
I haven't completely digested this theory, but it is interesting in relation to some of our class considerations.

GUI

2006-01-22T14:22:00.000-05:00

The article by Soke Dinkla From participation to interaction was particularly interesting to me because for the first time I could see a path to my project. I also enjoyed seeing the relationship of Kaprow to Cage and how they intersect with art and technology. I have done a lot of site-specific improvisation and been a part of events that were like Happenings so I understood them from a sensory point of view but this article makes them seem relevant to where I am now. The last line “The artistic material of interactive art is the automatized dialogue between program and user.” (Dinkla 289) really solidified my understanding of what I am attempting with a live video game. I kept thinking that the user(audience) would drive the performance but this cannot be for several reasons. The audience would not know how to respond unless given explicit instructions like at a Happening. If one show up to a traditional theater and expects to observe, the expectation itself would prevent them from initiating anything. As I have learned with Liz Lerman one can trick the audience into participating getting them to do what they are already doing and making a game out of it. Simply tell them they do not have to participate and tell them to sit down. They would have to stand up in order to not participate in the game but would be interacting none-the-less.

After reading the Alan Kay article I could not help but think of my first computer, an Atari 400. http://oldcomputers.net/atari400.html I was so hopeful that I would learn all about computers, become a programmer and get rich. The computer played video games and was more powerful than the Atari 2600 and had better graphics but one had to program using BASIC. I only ever learned to program a few things. I could make text scroll up and down the screen in patterns and I could make text flash on and off. The interface was quite challenging and so was the programming language but then again I was only about 12 years old and did not have any instruction and I hated math. Thinking back to my first windows machine and the OS Windows 95 there was a huge change in what the computer did and how one used it. Finally, I was using programs to accomplish tasks instead of attempting to write programs and there was the Internet which meant that I could seek lots more information than what was on my local drive. One of the best GUI that I know of is in the game You Don’t Know Jack. It uses the principals that Kay discusses in terms of doing, hitting a button to buzz in, with images, after reading the question and deciding on the correct answer, makes symbols, either you are correct or incorrect and you are punished or rewarded.

The relationship between robots and humans

2006-01-22T13:22:00.000-05:00

Current culture is fascinated by the ever-growing presence of robots in and among us. Vivian Sobchack refers to Ballard’s narrative about fetishes with robotics. This fetish indeed has been a common story theme that has been written about over and over again. The movie Millenium Man (based one of Isaac Asimov’s stories), He, She and It (by Marge Piercy), Blade Runner, and other similar stories discuss the relationship between robots and humans. What is the robot’s place in our society and how intimate do we become with them? There are many aspects of this question to explore.

One of the most important questions to ask is whether or not it is even beneficial to encourage closer relationships between people and robots. For example, with the world full of lonely people, are robots safe companions? Multiple research studies (Beck & Katcher, 1996; Katcher & Wilkins, 1993) have concluded that pets are good for the well being of elderly. Due to logistics of animal ownership in some apartments or homes and the possibility of accidental neglect of live pets, some researchers have been looking for pet alternatives. Kahn, Friedman, and Hagman (2002) investigated the effects of giving a robotic dog like Sony’s AIBO (http://www.sony.net/Products/aibo/index.html) to elderly people living alone as well as to children. Interestingly enough, the effects on the two age groups were different. Although there were positive effects on the elderly (decreased loneliness), the same research discussed the negative implications of youth forming relationships with robots since the lesson of responsibility and obligation (moral value) is lost with mechanical pets. Other types of relationships include romantic ones, such as the one Asimov covered in the movie Millenium Man, but I will leave it to the books and movies to do a more entertaining job of discussing these interesting and complicated issues.

If we accept that we are going to have relationships with robots, how do we facilitate this bond? One of the barriers to full acceptance of the robot is its physical appearance. The more mechanical the robot appears/sounds/acts, the more difficult it is for people to form an attachment. So do we just make them more life-like or humanoid to take away this obstacle to full acceptance? Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori addresses this issue in his theory known as the ‘Uncanny Valley.’ (a.k.a the Creepy Factor) This theory attempts to describe how people respond to the level of realism in a robot’s appearance. If it looks like a robot, then we are okay with that, but as it looks more human, we begin to get “creeped out” as we approach the “dead man” look. Then, as the model moves past that, looking more and more lifelike, we begin to again feel more comfortable with the appearance. Here is the famous graph:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/Wpdms_fh_uncanny_valley_3.jpg

So let us say we are successful in creating a robot whose appearance promotes comfortable interaction (the peaks of the valley): now what? One aspect of humanity that has always set us apart from machines is the creative process. What happens with robots and the body and performance…our triangular focus! What role do robots play in creative expression and performance? Please view this performance by robots:

Qrio: http://www.plyojump.com/movies/qrio/qrio_fandance.wmv

(To see other videos of Qrio: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QRIO/videoclip/index_nf.html)

One of the inspiring things about performance is the agility and strength of the live dancer. Robotic dancers, on the other hand, are amazing right now because of the intelligence of the scientist who made it. Unfortunately, unlike our persistent appreciation for human agility, we become easily desensitized to the robot’s ability over time. As we see in the movies, cutting-edge realistic computer effects rapidly become the standard, and anything less is disappointing. Unlike the movies, live performance is just beginning to integrate with robotics, and we are still more comfortable with the left-hand side of the Uncanny Valley.

For example, the “ballroom robot” is very obviously plastic and shiny:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/06/07/robots.ballroom/

The Uncanny Valley concept does not just apply to visual appearance, but also to how the robot moves and communicates. The effects on movement and performance have been graphed below, and as you can see (and imagine), a moving human-like dead person walking towards you would indeed be pretty scary.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a2/Moriuncannyvalley.gif

To see the progress on life-like physical robots, see Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro Repliee Q1Expo. http://www.ed.ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp/development/Humanoid/ReplieeQ2/ReplieeQ2_eng.htm
What does this mean for the future of performance art? When we get bored with the advances of robotic motion and life-like appearance, are we going to use them or reject them? Will robots be a standard prop in the performances of tomorrow? Will they replace us? Will dancers become puppeteers of these stronger and more agile robotic performers, or will humans still yearn to see the human form in action? Will the audience be happy with a synthetic score created and performed by robots?

Some other interesting thoughts for discussion:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/Final_Fantasy_TSW_DVD.jpg

Final Fantasy (a 3D movie with life-like characters) had many reviews that basically stated that we are not able to fool the viewer with computer graphics yet. If this is the case, it will take longer before we can do it physically. Nevertheless, robots are looking more real and will be able to fool us one day. Do we allow them to be part of our existence, or will robots be banned to going in circles vacuuming our floors?

On the more technological innovations front:
See Darpa 2005 – Stanford’s Stanley is one of the first cars to be able to navigate a desert with human intervention. http://www.grandchallenge.org/

Artificial Intelligence “AS” performance:
The DARPA challenge was not just a test of AI, but also a performance where an audience was observing the story. Year one (2004) was a comedy of errors (none of the cars went more than 8 miles on the 142 mile path), and year two (2005) was a feel-good story. In addition, the $2 million dollar prize made it very similar to many game shows people spend hours watching.

Issues from the 2004 “performance” that will help us avoid common mistakes when we create our performance:

Palos Verdes High School reason for 2004 failure: Software contained decimal point error. Slammed into 2-foot-tall cement barrier at 22 mph. Knocked barrier over.

Team CajunBot reason for 2004 failure: On-off switch located on side of vehicle. Bumped into a wall on way out of start area. Turned self off.
Read about other issues from the 2004 challenge:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/start.html?pg=15

(Read the full article about the 2004 challenge. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/robot_pr.html)

My only wish was that this was advertised a little bit more. Instead of watching people kick each other off islands, here is an opportunity to get the world (especially kids) excited about the sciences. But we will leave this for another blog space to discuss this wish…

Stelarc

2006-01-21T17:01:00.000-05:00

When thinking about interactivity (especially after talking about robotics) AND the idea of telepresence, it is important that we mention Stelarc. Peter was fortunate to have taken a class with him that I hope Peter will expound on or discuss in class. The project in particular that I wish to link you to is his Parasite project: http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/parasite/

“We shouldn’t have a Frankensteinian fear of incorporating technology into the body.” - Stelarc

Email

2006-01-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

In this reading, I was most interested in Manovich’s discussion on Distance and Aura. Specifically, I want to address Virilio’s “Big Optics” essay. Although I do not agree fully with his theory that distance is destroyed by telecommunication technology, I do agree that communication does need to be re-examined. For example, email is a tool that has taken away the “time for critical reflection necessary to arrive at a correct decision.” This has been a change in the way we communicate, and many rules have developed around it. For example, one rule is to never argue over email due to the inability to show that you are also listening. Other rules include NO YELLING by using all caps.

Realistic Robotics

2006-01-17T11:28:00.000-05:00

How much like a human does a robot need to be in order for us to ignore non-human qualities? We are perfectly happy seeing movies at 24FPS and accepting the illusion of realistic movement so wouldn't a robot simply need to approximate certain humanistic signs before becoming anthropomorphized to an acceptible level. Like those machines that pull the shopping baskets at target would we be happy if our robot just went where we wanted via remote control. Maybe what we want is a robot that is easily manipulated to carry our groceries, download and play movies on demand, play satallite radio, give directions, give definitions, call people, email and have a flashlight.

The Perfect Ten Robot

2006-01-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

Derek Kelly's Top Ten Capabilities an Ideal Robot Would Possess, is pretty interesting from a values perspective. Why does he idealize a mechanized human? It becomes 360 degrees “different” from cloning. Same quagmire, different route.

2006-01-16T20:26:00.000-05:00

What is a robot's hierarchy of needs? And, if we could think one up, which needs would be instinctive/programmed and which could be learned? We know from the start that we need to have our physiological needs met, and as we grow and find a stasis or satisfaction of the base needs, we explore our capacity to love/belong/transcend. If Cog is able to learn from its human caregiver, responding and eliciting response until it returns to its homeostatic range, at what point will Cog have or discover an additional need (i.e. I want to be homeostatic, and I'd like you to fix this loose bolt) and express this through "sadness" until the caregiver figures it out. Of course my train of thought is really about consciousness and wondering if Cog's learning could ever be self-reflexive or self-aware. Perhaps so, look at this little bot

Robots

2006-01-16T19:06:00.000-05:00

The Cog Project document explains commonly held beliefs about human behavior and where they are incorrect in relation to building humanoid robots. The authors show the difficulty of creating a human computer because the computer operates from a central computing processor and the human operates by way of several interdependent systems. They state that there is no monolithic whole to use as a guide with human behavior. They understand that human behavior is learned incrementally and want to apply that system of learning to robots.

What is evident is that life is more complex than reason. As I read the article it became clear why it took billions of years for life systems to evolve. Everything is connected and independent and can only survive if its needs are fulfilled. Their approach while commendable is unfathomable to me even once they achieve their goal of human like behaviors, responses, and interactions it is not a human which has needs.

This is an example of a robotics, school of drama and computer science working together on a humanoid robot.

http://www.roboceptionist.com/behind_scenes.htm
http://roboceptionist.blogspot.com/

Boris

A Bridge into Economic Viability?

2006-01-16T17:04:00.000-05:00

I’m intrigued by the discovery that so much programming research is done under the auspices not only of academia, but also of computer entertainment corporations (see the acknowledgements and notes of this week's articles). There is no equivalent support in the dance world. This cross-over of art/business is a vital component of my own evolving understanding of the (postmodern) contemporary experience. The dance world’s isolation from rather than participation in this market economy is potentially dooming for the field. Perhaps the continued exploration of technology in performance and performance in technology will provide a bridge into the market economy for the field of dance.

Cheap Choreography

2006-01-16T17:01:00.000-05:00

The phrase “computationally cheap” is appearing repeatedly in this week's articles. We dance-artists train for efficiency of movement in our physical practices, but we might do well to be more aware/ conscious of the idea in the process of choreography. What is the most efficient way to get the idea across? Experiencing packed, distilled movement is akin to experiencing poetry. Unfortunately, many contemporary choreographers (myself included) tend to fall victim to the ego-driven impulse to create the epic novel.

"Real"

2006-01-16T16:52:00.000-05:00

In his Steering Behaviors for Autonomous Characters, Craig Reynolds writes, “This paper will use the term virtual (as in virtual reality) to denote these agents which, rather than being simulations of a mechanical device in the real world, are instead real agents in a virtual world. (Analogous to a physically-based model in computer animation.) Hence the autonomous characters of this paper’s title are: situated, embodied, reactive, virtual agents.”
Reynolds's questioning/defining REAL reminds me of Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an Author in which the characters and actors are arguing about who is more REAL – the characters who are themselves but exist completely in the virtual world or the actors who embody someone other than themselves but in the real world. Of course in the play it is further complicated by the fact that the actors are actually characters and that the characters are searching for their “virtual world” which was left unfinished by their missing author. But the shared questions about the idea of "reality" in terms of performance and the virtual world of cyberspace are worth investigating not only through discussion, but potentially through practice (i.e. as performance content).

2006-01-16T14:16:00.000-05:00

Really never having had any interest in robots (except the vacuum iRobot, which I covet) I did a bit of googling and found:
Ultra-Lifelike Robot Debuts in Japan and an interesting article Robots are getting more sociable .

This morning on Speaking of Faith Esther Sternberg talked about mind/body interactions and immune response. It is interesting in relation to our discussion of last week's readings and perhaps to the scope of this week's readings. She talks about George Beard's 19th century theory that stress, which he called nervousness was caused by, "...very rapid increase of nervousness is modern civilization, which is distinguished from the ancient by these five characteristics: steampower, the periodical press, the telegraph, the sciences, and the mental activity of women." (Beard, 1881 via the SOF website)

Sternberg equates the rapid technological advances of the second industrial revolution to the modern rapidly changing meshing of our lives and digital technology. Whether it's the strain of keeping up with ever changing product lines, interfacing so often with something so impersonal, or the fear of being made useless by automation, I think the interface of technology and the psyche is a very interesting point of study.

Robot Art

2006-01-15T23:31:00.000-05:00

I am not sure if I am suppose to do a small blog since I am doing a bigger one after our talk this week, but I thought I would do it just in case. Especially because this blog can give you a better idea of the type of work I want to do or that I am doing.

http://accad.osu.edu/~ayoungs/rearm.html - One of my favorite pieces as of date by our very own OSU faculty.
http://accad.osu.edu/~rinaldo/ - We spoke of this already (specifically his Autopoiesis piece), but since this is also what I like I thought I would include it again.
http://www.raaf.org/ - great environmental robot type work (make sure to look at her CO2 robot-"Grower")

EMMA: New Ground

2006-01-15T17:05:00.000-05:00

EMMA: New Ground

The Ideas of Definition

The readings relating to robotic intellegence bring to mind the idea there is no such thing as a straight line, that within two points there are an infinite number of addtional points. A Mandelbrot set is a graphic representation of this concept, an example of an aesthetically pleasing 'artistic' model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal.

Question: Is there any way to fundamentally place a finite relationship in space and time to any other fixed point? WIthin this wonderous place of doubt, (uncertainty?), we are researching the ways those in the A.I. field define a relationship between the most arbitrary and automatic of machines, the human being, and its man-made simulacra. The attempt to embody a simple set of the most basic of movements and the conceptual underpinnings of the necessary decision-making involved serves to underscore the conundrum of defining any simple task, regardless if the vechile of expression is artificial or biological. Even with my limited understanding of algorithms I know that every equation contains a constant and a variable. Is that constant one that is empirically determined, or defined by an agreed upon, yet arbitrary starting point? How would one find a similiar place to discuss the labyrinth of ideas posited in the arena of experimental performance art, using technology to expand the range of information and opinion, unless it be simply that, the subjective nature of individual aesthetics?

The Dancer's Mind

2006-01-10T19:45:00.000-05:00

A few notes for this week:
We are working this week under the rubric of “the dancer’s mind” as a means of discussing the subjectivity of the body and thinking critically about what it means to make work that integrates performing bodies and performing technologies.

Our purpose in grappling with Sobchack’s argument for the radically material nature of human existence is not so much to decry technology itself (love your treo Matt) or even the increasing prevalence of electronic technologies in our lives but to better consider the “ethical significance of the body” in this equation and to re-value the “bod[ies] that we are”. Do we want our tools to incorporate us or do we want to incorporate our tools or perhaps neither/both?

For our work together in this class we can use Sobchack’s critique of technophilia to ask ourselves how we want to represent our bodies. Do we want to represent our body selves as objects, no-bodies, obsolete meaty receptacles for the meaning provided by the technologies our bodies begot? perhaps. Or perhaps are we are interested in this lived body that Sobchack articulates, the body as “subjective object and objective subject”? This is the bodily practice Foster and Forti help us understand. The intimate interrelationalities of the body/mind at work in the practice of dance improvisation. Theirs is an articulation of improvisation as an alternative theory of bodily agency. These are thinking bodies, meaning-full bodies, specific, contextualized bodies in pain and pleasure, in action, in the moment, in performance.

Readings for cited in this discussion:
Forti, Simone. 2003. “Animate Dancing.” David Gere and Ann Cooper Albright eds. Taken by Surprise. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press. 53-63.
Foster, Susan. 2003. “Taken By Surprise: Improvisation in Dance and Mind.” David Gere and Ann Cooper Albright eds. Taken by Surprise. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press. 3-10.
Schechner, Richard. 2002. “What is Performance.” Performance Studies: An Introduction. New York: Routledge. 22-44.
Sobchack, Vivian. 2004. “Beating the Meat/Surviving the Text, or How to Get Out of this Century Alive.” Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. Los Angeles: University of California Press. 165-178.

Integrated Intelligence

2006-01-09T22:43:00.000-05:00

Simone Forti’s ideas of moving the telling and movement memory snapshots call to mind kinesthetic intelligence as theorized by Howard Gardner’s (http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm).

Forti’s practice not only highlights the importance of the body as a communicative medium in its own right, but also the deeply integrated functions of kinesthetic and verbal intelligences in communication and memory. If “…we think differently when we are in motion,” (Forti, 62) , then it follows that we will also perceive and remember differently when we are in motion.

The experience of integrated intelligence turns the Cartesian mind/body dichotomy on its head and complicates Vivian Sobchack’s adversarial meat-beaters' vision of a computerized escape from their flesh and blood. "Ditching" a body means sacrificing not only a grounded earthly physicality and sensuous experience, but also a kinesthetic intelligence that is an integral aspect of consciousness itself.

Matthew...some links

2006-01-09T13:32:00.000-05:00

Just a few things to add....

Orlan is a French artist who has used (medical) technology to alter her appearance in order to more deeply immerse herself in her modes of visual expression. www.orlan.com

I saw Cronenberg's movie "Crash" and still vividly remember its eroticism and obsession with the technology of cars. A good text overview of the film at www.davidcronenberg.de/cfqcrash.html

And finally just a link on some other performance theory writings. www.palatine.org.uk/directory/index.php/Drama/perfth/

One Trees

2006-01-08T21:08:00.000-05:00

I have to admit that the idea of becoming part robotic like the Bionic Man has appealed to me in the past. Sobchack's article has made me contemplate the reality of such a wish. Her article also made me think about cloning and the advantages and disadvantages of that science.

Multiplicity, a movie where Michael Keaton gets cloned to be at different places at the same time is the train of thought that I was entertaining. It reminded me of one of my favorite artists. Her project One Trees at onetrees.org investigates the idea of cloning by using trees. It also acts as an environmental recorder (as the 1000 clones were planted in different locations around San Francisco.) During the life of the trees, you are able to see the environmental effects of their unique location. She also brought the idea to the web using Artificial Life concepts to simulate the same idea by using CO2 sensors and digital trees.

Link: Onetrees.org

Gaming

2006-01-08T19:08:00.000-05:00

My interests lie in video games and live performance. There is a new catagory of video games called serious games www.seriousgames.org in which games are used for something other than entertainment. These games are used mostly by the military for training but also used by health care professionals, police and firefighter training, political canvasing and other ways. Where is the line between the symbolic interaction and the real interaction? I once made audio tapes of myself being whatever I wanted to be and it helped me to not be so shy. Be hearing my own voice give me advice I could llisten better and I trusted the speaker. I find the same kind of symbolic interaction in video games. Often especially in the beginning of a game you are led through the lanugage of the game and how to interact in that world. Online chat or video Chat is similar in that you invent a personality and can interact with real people in real time.

I really liked the Kaprow readings because unlike the intellectual thoughts of Wilson in his article "Light and Dark Visions" Kaprow just does the thing that he sets out to do. Like Chris Burden the study is in the act of doing and to learn what it is he does, you have to do the thing rather than talk about it. http://www.crownpoint.com/artists/burden/burden.html

Vivian Sobchack clearly sees the difference between the body and technology having a prosthetic leg and an open mind. Her rant against JG Baudrillard for his erotic fantasies with metal is different from gaming. She states that one is a gamer to escape the body but one cannot escape the body only distract the mind. I believe that what games do is distract the mind from survival issues and create an experience similar to arriving in a foreign land.

Sorry/Not Sorry

2006-01-08T19:06:00.000-05:00

Thinking about the following three concepts reminded me of the similarly titled, but quite different websites: www.sorryeverybody.com and www.imnotsorry.net.

1) Schechner: “is” and “as” performance

2) Warshaw in Forti: Three points interacting “That which you are referring to. The way you’re perceiving or approaching it. And the actual thing you are making.”

3) Sobchack: the importance of the “bodily sense of gravity, finitude, and …pain”

1) Both websites are about processing an event and responding to it with an action that has been constructed and reconstructed (pose to image or memory to story) for the web.

2) Both websites are all about perspective, both concern issues that are surrounded by performance, postulating, and judgement.

3) And both, I’d argue are really about extending the physical body into cyberspace to express something that they physical body/voice either cannot show or say in the performance of daily life but that the body can show or tell virtually. It's not about the digitization of the body or the expression of the individuals, but it’s about performing an activist action in human but anonymous way.