During my latest live-performance I explored the presence of movement, speech, sound and image in a durational work of two hours. I was interested in taking myself outside of my comfort zone and I decided to do so by exposing something I have always considered very intimate: the process of creating an image by drawing. It was the very first time I dared to make this public and by doing so, to make the paralysing feeling of being witnessed during something so personal, feed the performance as it evolved.
I took this as a pilot example, being it a first attempt at converging the currently focal aspect of my research, vulnerability, with the idea of feedback-loop informing and being informed by a dancer's states of mind.
The initial considerations when embarking on this quest across technologies, were made based on the use of scientific data retrieved from a dancer’s body, not for the sake of collecting data alone but for potential involvement of the data into a creative process. I later started to consider how I could turn this information into artefacts and feed these back into the performance to influence in the first place the dancer, and consequentially an audience, or in the case of video material a viewer.
This quest has been a step in the direction of testing the possibilities of a dialogue between mediums, with interest in the experiences of both audience and dancer through the use of various technologies.
The project prospects itself as a long one and the material I gathered in this process is only the prototype of a study to carry on developing. Given the measures of social distancing in place and the lack of the majority of resources I was expecting to be able to access (which I do not find problematic, it being in line with my approach to research -see description of an ATE-) I am adapting to the situation and embracing its conditions as external stimuli to the study.
I begun to cultivate an interest in the technologies I engaged with, which came in as handy tools to make use of in the current circumstances. Having a background that ranges from visual art to dance, I have always felt that mediums were just means to communicate, and certain messages were not necessarily to be born in a medium, but could take life when approached through a different one or transcend their content becoming something else. The explorations of transliteration that I attempted to do showed me the fluidity with which I could move across ways of working, and how some things became less relevant along the way and how others reached the foreground.
I asked myself what happened to the elements that disappeared in the translation: at times they detached and fell off, at others became constitutive of the less visible foundation on which the work keeps on building up.
The loop was made by factors of which I was an agent (such as the sources of movement); elements beyond my control (such as the circumstance and what they led to); and changes provoked by altering the work through the use of different technologies (such as the ones involved in this study, which gave unforeseen directions to the work).
I considered internal and external stimuli as the feed of the loop, and the idea of getting acquainted with the changing variables as another aspect to be considered and perhaps used as a turning point.
I started to think in terms of smaller and larger picture, about what constitutes the bare essentials of my work and practice, and what the parameters that I can alter are, through which I can reveal other, possibly concealed aspects of the work.
I asked myself how would I go on about not consolidating habits or creating systems to manage changes, both in performance and in the use of technologies, and how would I keep introducing alterations, acknowledging the form that shifts shapes but not always content.
My first answer to these questions was an attempt not to master the tasks (whichever mediums I would be engaging with) for as long as I could. Not arriving to completion or consolidation but keeping on translating and through these means re-defining the work.
Are ATEs then a coping-technology to be able to handle change and the challenges it brings?
I cannot yet answer this question, and I probably will never want to. I do not wish to 'close the case' but rather to perpetuate the search. I hope not to find complete answers, so territories will keep on unfolding before me, with the limitations they may come with, which I will try to poke.
In retrospective I recognise in the latest sketch of the video a feeling that moved me deeply in body and thought during my recent live-performance: the internal restlessness produced by the confinement I had decided to adhere to, as a challenge in polar opposition to the urge of escaping that characterises my practice. By watching the video I now sense a tension between staying and leaving that was embodied in the performance, giving roots to my search for glitches or disruptions in linearity of thought and feeling, to access an emotionally rich state which I have identified as a 'void'.
I consider this another aspect of the loop, one that is not instantly effective but needs time to feed back. It is part of the dialogue between myself and the work, between body and thought, history and present.
I took this as a pilot example, being it a first attempt at converging the currently focal aspect of my research, vulnerability, with the idea of feedback-loop informing and being informed by a dancer's states of mind.
The initial considerations when embarking on this quest across technologies, were made based on the use of scientific data retrieved from a dancer’s body, not for the sake of collecting data alone but for potential involvement of the data into a creative process. I later started to consider how I could turn this information into artefacts and feed these back into the performance to influence in the first place the dancer, and consequentially an audience, or in the case of video material a viewer.
This quest has been a step in the direction of testing the possibilities of a dialogue between mediums, with interest in the experiences of both audience and dancer through the use of various technologies.
The project prospects itself as a long one and the material I gathered in this process is only the prototype of a study to carry on developing. Given the measures of social distancing in place and the lack of the majority of resources I was expecting to be able to access (which I do not find problematic, it being in line with my approach to research -see description of an ATE-) I am adapting to the situation and embracing its conditions as external stimuli to the study.
I begun to cultivate an interest in the technologies I engaged with, which came in as handy tools to make use of in the current circumstances. Having a background that ranges from visual art to dance, I have always felt that mediums were just means to communicate, and certain messages were not necessarily to be born in a medium, but could take life when approached through a different one or transcend their content becoming something else. The explorations of transliteration that I attempted to do showed me the fluidity with which I could move across ways of working, and how some things became less relevant along the way and how others reached the foreground.
I asked myself what happened to the elements that disappeared in the translation: at times they detached and fell off, at others became constitutive of the less visible foundation on which the work keeps on building up.
The loop was made by factors of which I was an agent (such as the sources of movement); elements beyond my control (such as the circumstance and what they led to); and changes provoked by altering the work through the use of different technologies (such as the ones involved in this study, which gave unforeseen directions to the work).
I considered internal and external stimuli as the feed of the loop, and the idea of getting acquainted with the changing variables as another aspect to be considered and perhaps used as a turning point.
I started to think in terms of smaller and larger picture, about what constitutes the bare essentials of my work and practice, and what the parameters that I can alter are, through which I can reveal other, possibly concealed aspects of the work.
I asked myself how would I go on about not consolidating habits or creating systems to manage changes, both in performance and in the use of technologies, and how would I keep introducing alterations, acknowledging the form that shifts shapes but not always content.
My first answer to these questions was an attempt not to master the tasks (whichever mediums I would be engaging with) for as long as I could. Not arriving to completion or consolidation but keeping on translating and through these means re-defining the work.
Are ATEs then a coping-technology to be able to handle change and the challenges it brings?
I cannot yet answer this question, and I probably will never want to. I do not wish to 'close the case' but rather to perpetuate the search. I hope not to find complete answers, so territories will keep on unfolding before me, with the limitations they may come with, which I will try to poke.
In retrospective I recognise in the latest sketch of the video a feeling that moved me deeply in body and thought during my recent live-performance: the internal restlessness produced by the confinement I had decided to adhere to, as a challenge in polar opposition to the urge of escaping that characterises my practice. By watching the video I now sense a tension between staying and leaving that was embodied in the performance, giving roots to my search for glitches or disruptions in linearity of thought and feeling, to access an emotionally rich state which I have identified as a 'void'.
I consider this another aspect of the loop, one that is not instantly effective but needs time to feed back. It is part of the dialogue between myself and the work, between body and thought, history and present.
-
Possible futures:
At the moment I am testing the idea of a hard copy flip-book of a selection of images from the video, which can be flipped front to back and back to front, producing different sequences. It is being made with in mind the possibility of using it as a score, another feed to the loop, to be interpreted by a dancer through a set of instructions on how to read it.
This is backed up by an interest in further exploring what another medium has to offer to the 'bare essentials' of my practice, and in finding out what can grow when I plant the same seeds in different soils and let the rain fall.
Possible futures:
At the moment I am testing the idea of a hard copy flip-book of a selection of images from the video, which can be flipped front to back and back to front, producing different sequences. It is being made with in mind the possibility of using it as a score, another feed to the loop, to be interpreted by a dancer through a set of instructions on how to read it.
This is backed up by an interest in further exploring what another medium has to offer to the 'bare essentials' of my practice, and in finding out what can grow when I plant the same seeds in different soils and let the rain fall.
First dummy [no particular reflections on this yet. To be crash-tested].
In terms of the artefact feeding back into the performance, another option could be worth exploring, where the video element becomes scenography:
[no reflections on this either. To be crash-tested].
SOME REFERENCES: Data: Physiological data -paper https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326018201_Open_Tool_for_Collecting_Physiological_Data_Collection_of_Emotional_Data_During_Gameplay Making a gsr sensor -tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljVQpwVHpOo Sound affects emotions -article https://www.salemaudiologyclinic.com/6-ways-your-brain-transforms-sound-into-emotion/ Map of emotions made with noises -projects https://curiosity.com/topics/scientists-have-created-an-audio-map-of-emotions-using-only-noises-curiosity/ https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/vocs/map.html# Sound into light and vice versa -project https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/exploratorium-ddp/expl-electromagnet/light-to-sound/v/light-to-sound-introduction Skin temperature into colour -project https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-All-the-Things-Mood-Detecting-Light/ Audiovisual installation Aura -installation http://www.nickverstand.com/projects/aura/ Dancers moving and thinking -article https://terp.umd.edu/new-study-unravels-how-dancers-think-when-they-dance/#.Xi6pReLPzHo Dancer’s brain waves in real life environment -article https://www.stir.ac.uk/news/2017/04/dancers-brainwaves-under-the-spotlight-in-art-and-science-link-up/ Movement / sound translation -video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdjSOnU2TQg -paper http://www.palindrome.de/d2/RQ3.pdf Colour / BW: -blog http://www.photographyvox.com/a/color-vs-black-and-white-photography/) -article https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/about-us/press-and-media/press-releases/monochrome-painting-in-black-and-white -article https://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-black.html) AV/editing: Recording and enhancing voice -tutorials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs92BVVL6V4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qZ9291KzwQ Photographing blur -article https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/how-to-photograph-dancers-with-motion-blur/ -tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRC15IdqxOw Stop motion in dance -paper https://www.academia.edu/236263/Still_Moving_The_Revelation_or_Representation_of_Dance_in_Still_Photography Stop motion software -blog https://www.bricksinmotion.com/forums/topic/21891/boats-animator-free-opensource-stop-motion-program/ Kinaesthetic empathy -paper http://www.watchingdance.org/research/documents/MRPhotographypaperedit.pdf Content: Dialogue of affects -paper https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W03-2127.pdf Vulnerability through photography -blog https://sleeklens.com/the-power-of-vulnerability/ -article https://viewbook.com/articles/we-need-to-talk-about-vulnerability Daring Greatly (courage to be vulnerable) -book https://books.google.nl/books?id=3rF7vvXa_yIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=brene+brown+vulnerability+book&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiryuLrzrjoAhUL3KQKHYFKBXAQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=brene%20brown%20vulnerability%20book&f=false Delivery: Digital archive examples -project http://digitalarchaeology.msu.edu/kb/2014/04/11/example-digital-archiverepositorylibrary-projects/ -book https://www.cairn.info/la-mediation-numerique-renouvellement--9782804182274-page-11.htm# -online archive https://www.routledgeperformancearchive.com Dance for camera -website https://www.dancefilms.org/dance-on-camera/archive/ Preserving dance across time and space -book https://books.google.nl/books?id=1AYfDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=dance+for+film+in+basement&source=bl&ots=tyJ8XntJtB&sig=ACfU3U2C5wUCkEDel8lyHfDJ1C5YYERDSg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi9pbuG2qjoAhXM0KQKHfJaAoMQ6AEwFHoECAsQAQ#v=onepage&q=dance%20for%20film%20in%20basement&f=false |