Questions

What frameworks and technologies for inter-disciplinary performance facilitate collaborations between art forms?

Inter-disciplinarity draws insights from and integrates two or more disciplines. - Wikipedia

Foundations

This essay starts by considering what are the meanings that we give to 'inter-disciplinary' performances. It investigates how they facilitate open-ended collaboration among art forms. It concentrates specifically on the ways in which network technologies bring together dance, music and video. It draws on Latour's accounts of frames, which situate signs in terms of time, space and actants: ... [constructions which] are animate, inanimate or even abstract entities ...' (Williams, R. 1992, paraphrasing Latour 1988). Signs may involve description (to write down, creating a trace), inscription (to make a text), subscription (to support another frame, text, trace), conscription (to mobilise a frame, sign, text, trace in performance), transcription (to write across and thus to rework or transform a frame, text, trace in performance). Frames may take many forms. My concern is with the ways in which sets of performances, involving music, dance, art and video are framed by and frame one another.

My initial project is to consider examples of how inter-disciplinary performances have worked within and across these frames - and the signs, texts and traces which they situate. My second is to examine the contingent dialogues that may take place within and across the frames, in which the movement of each defines the movement of one or many others. The study will examine the possibilities and limits of specific technologies that have been used and which might be developed to create new kinds of performance.

In my own practice, with a focus on interactive video, I work with people from different disciplines, both 'artistic' and 'technical'. This led me to work with Jonathan Green to develop Collaborative On-line Distributive Art (CODA). This study will look at the opportunities this systems enables, the work I have created with it, and my own use of it. CODA can create networked environments where dance, music, art, video and data streams can interpolate over local or global networks.

Performances typically use a call and response frame to situate actants. Dancers, musicians, actors respond to one another and audiences whether these are improvised or set in time and space. The recording and play back of dance is not the same as live performance. Video, like film, is produced according to its own language and technologies. Live, non-linear and interactive editing and manipulation systems allow video to collaborate in live performances. The editior or 'VJ' can now edit/ perform live in reponse to dancers and musicians.

Network systems that allow interpolated data streams between video, music and dance create new possibilities. The performance space is constructed from multiple feeds of sound, image, movement and architecture. My own work concerns itself with presence within an architectural space. The human element is the live control and response to the constructed environments. It creates resonances, tensions and disruptions among all these elements. Networked systems allow us a fluidity among sets of frames. Does this create space for emergant forms of expression?

Examples

To explore the themes and constructs I have identified I need to set my own work against that of several differrent practitioners. The examples I have chosen identify different ways of combining artitic performances and network technologies.

An example of the inter-diciplinary work I will consider is the collaboration between John Cage, Merce Cuninngham and others, specifically in their 1960's work, Variations V. The dancers perform in a space constructed by movement which generates and triggers sound. These are then filtered and reconstructed by the audio artists. Mixed television images and film are projected on to screens around the space but are themselves unaffected by the performers other than their physical placement. Cunningham's recent productions use the Lifeforms software to choreograph virtual performers the movement of which is then transposed onto live dancers. The video instillation 'Ghostcatching' uses virtual dancers transposed from motion captured of human dancers. (Cunningham and Jones, 2004)

I will investigate Matt Gough's critical work on hyper choreography. My interest lies in his theories of the possibilities for audiences to create and alter perceptions of work by creating ' ... a networked environment where all links are revealed and 'new' links can added by users, multi directional - two way connection enhance the perception of intertexts. No longer must the author use chance procedures to disrupt their unconscious constructions of meaning, the provision of a mechanism to explore, expand and visualise the intertexts of their authored text performs the same function.' (Gough)

Michael Takeo Magruder by contrast uses algorithmic programming to take live feeds from the internet. 'Each article is deconstructed into its basic image and text components. This material is then algorithmically recombined into an aesthetic entity in which the informational content is still partially discernible.' (Magruder)

These issues emerge out of and provide instances of wider overlapping traditions of multidisciplinary performance. The final dissertation will be written and submitted as a blog. This allows readers to access hyperlinked references to the text, include video, sound and images embedded within the text. The ability to tag paragraphs enables the reader to reorder and filter the text they want to read. This approach will reflect both the subject matter and method of this essay.



References

Latour, Bruno, "A Relativistic Account of Einstein's Relativity', Social Studies of Science, 1988, Vol. 18, pp. 3-44.

Williams, Roy, "Discourse analysis of social documentaries on television" Ph. D. thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1992.

Magruder, Michael Takeo, http://www.takeo.net

Gough, Matt, http://binarybutoh.blogspot.com/

Cunningham, Merce and Bill T. Jones, "The Ghost in the Machine" A Journal of Performance and Art, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 94-104. 2004

Bibliography

Gould, Stephen Jay. Wonderful Life : the Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. MIT Press, March 13, 2006
Antin, David. Video: The Distinctive Features of the Medium. Touchstone/ Simon & Schuster, 1967.
Massumi, Brian. A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia : Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari. MIT Press, 1992.
Pressing, J. "Cybernetic issues in interactive performance systems" Journal of Comparative Music, Vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 12-25. 1990
Deleuze, Giles and Guatttari, Felix. Anti-Œdipus. Viking Press ,1972
Deleuze, Giles and Guatttari, Felix .A Thousand Plateaus., 1988
Cunningham, Merce.. A Lifetime of Dance DVD: John Cage and Merce Cunningham, Director: Charles Atlas.
De Spain, K. " Dance and the Camera. Envisioning Dance on Film and Video, (ed. Judy Mitoma, Elizabeth Zimmer, and Dale Ann Stieber). Dance Chronicle Vol. 28, Issue 3, 2005
Roberto Morales-Manzanares, "SICIB: An Interactive Music Composition System Using Body Movements". Computer Music Journal Archive, Volume 25 , Issue 2 (2001) pp. 25 - 36.
Lichty, P. Caught in the Grid: Towards a Digital Minimalism. cited - voyd.com

http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/ - Timeline and discussion of pioneers of network and technology based art work.
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/paci/projectingperformance/home.html -' Projecting Performance', Dance, motion capture and scenography.
http://www.turbulence.org/ - Net art commissioner
http://www.turbulence.org/blog/ networked performance - Networked performance references
http://www.david-o.net/wordpress/ - Interactive dance and network blog
http://binarybutoh.blogspot.com/ - Splines in Space, Matt Gough's dance Blog
http://www.jg1983.co.uk/ - Jonathan Green, Network and music researcher,
http://greatdance.com/danceblog/ - Dance technology Blog.
http://greatdance.com/danceblog/archives/dance_and_technology/000478.php - Spreading Dance with Mashups, March 10, 2006