Critical Dialogues 12 Technologies of the Choreographer: Slow Interviews August 2020
Project pompom, photo by Vincent Roumagnac
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Table of Contents Technologies......................................................................................................................4 Choreographers in the Slow...............................................................................................5 Technologies are Us...........................................................................................................6 Artist Bios..........................................................................................................................8 Alternative Connections.....................................................................................................9 Choreoreading...................................................................................................................9 Transmission....................................................................................................................10 Ecology............................................................................................................................10 Identity............................................................................................................................12 Community......................................................................................................................14 Movement.......................................................................................................................16 Culture.............................................................................................................................18 The Choreographic...........................................................................................................18 Image & Body.............................................................................................................................19 Scarface......................................................................................................................................19 Cof Y Corf..................................................................................................................................21 Stafell B+C..................................................................................................................................21
Perception........................................................................................................................23 Foundation......................................................................................................................25 Future..............................................................................................................................26 References.......................................................................................................................26
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Technologies Matt Cornell When I think about digital, I think about digits as in fingers and then I think about numbers and then I think about the binary regulated electrical current that runs all the programs on all of our information technology. The list of technologies that I use in the studio going away from sprung tarkett flooring, to lighting, to the rubber sole shoe production, to glass pane manufacture because I usually light things that I film with natural light. To plumbing, to fans, to electricity, to the land cruise that I have that I sometimes use when I am doing site-specific work and outdoor work. But the digital technologies that I use in terms of information technologies range from sound amplification, to video recording, to the internet and that is a pretty massive thing. I am talking about the undersea cables; I am talking about the satellite connections and I am talking about all the infrastructure and the coding that goes into that including the telecommunications infrastructure. But as well also including the HTTP protocols that the web is built upon and then HTML5 protocols that replaced flash so that you could carry a video streaming. Because a lot of my music in the studio is played directly from videos. I am also using in the studio server farms to call down things from the cloud or to share with other people because I have long distance collaborators across Asia. I frequently use in some projects wireless sharing technologies like Bluetooth, wi-fi, and 4G across things like Airdrop or messenger services. That is either to share because quite often I won’t give my own notes on what people have done I just let them watch themselves or it is because we are working on a specific project like The GIF of Dance. That includes generating digital assets and so I think when you have a personal electronic device that you are using I don’t think that is a group electronic device so I share the assets to different people’s devices they can use it. I also use wireless headphones, air pods to give the dancer’s different inputs to respond to as far as sound goes. I’m constantly using touch screens although I’d much rather not use the touchscreen and move towards using keyboard shortcuts because I like the idea that a button has a purpose like those old photos of old nuclear power plants or whatever… There are some things that are actually platforms like Spotify, Instagram, YouTube, but they are not technologies as such. However, what I do find fascinating is the algorithm technologies that underlie the suggestions that you keep getting fed, and I have made an album about that actually that I released last week. So even I released that on band camp, and I use that a lot in the studio, but I would refer to that as a platform rather than a technology.
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Scarface, a blue screen show, Photo by Dave Daggers
Choreographers in the Slow Jodie McNeilly Renaudie The purpose of this edition of Critical Dialogues is to understand how the choreographer uses technologies in their creative process and practice. Technologies are here broadly understood and are not just limited to the digital, despite their omnipresence in the everyday. This edition forms a material part of Critical Path’s Digital Interchange Festival 2019-20. The artists, introduced on page 6, were identified for their explicit involvement in using technologies to research, create and communicate their choreographic worlds. The interview process is based on the idea of the Slow Interview. Slow is a movement against the too fast. The speedy economies of getting things done, now, yesterday in knee jerk thoughtless reactions. A moving that scrolls, clicks, smothers, or honks at you in traffic, never gaining traction to dwell in careful, attentive, reflective thought. Speed brings more than the tyranny of time over the thoughtful, it loosens our grip on what it is to be responsive, responsible humans; being human is a condition we can never shirk no matter how we position ourselves. Slowness reveals to us the hidden power structures, the counterculture, the beauty and truth of our sensorial contact with the world both real and imagined. Technologies are often seen as contradictory to the slow. We associate the rise of the digital with all things speedy, normatively embodied when baring our frustrations at a colossally 5
slow hard drive, or a boomer texting. When really, time and the human are inextricably fastened to the speed of the market and the quick satisfaction of product gain aligned with an abstracted vision of goal end happiness. Thus, the slow interviews on technology use are far from oxymoronic. If there is any “user” to appreciate the slow both politically and philosophically it is the artist who works, for the most part, against the market. A slow interview allows for a thoughtful reciprocity of responses between interviewer and interviewee. It is a generative and cooperative way to ask meaningful questions that emerge from the one who answers, rather than the one who asks. It allows for a more meditative and creative response than interviews in one sitting permit. We started with a pool of questions, each artist at different points. My responses attempted to interact thoughtfully and were responded to in kind through audio, video, or image over a week, sometimes over several. Initially, I envisioned that the interviews would be stitched into a video essay, but the openness of the approach shifted this idea into a meandering mosaic of audio and video grabs, a continuous dialogue that has found an ending in the following pages.
Motion Capture Studio Screen, Photo by Monica Stevens
Technologies are Us Jodie McNeilly Renaudie Each of the four artists recognise the use of technology in their practice differently, from quite specific uses of sophisticated systems like motion capture to the idea that technologies feature in everything they do. Ultimately the interviews expose us to the idea that technologies are us, and to ask the question “what technologies do you use?” presupposes that they are mere third-party mediators between creator and receiver.
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Each of the four artists recognise the use of technology in their practice differently, from quite specific uses of sophisticated systems like motion capture to the idea that technologies feature in everything they do. Ultimately the interviews expose us to the idea that technologies are us, and to ask the question “what technologies do you use?” presupposes that they are mere third-party mediators between creator and receiver. Each artist in their own way speaks to a more radical ontology. Technologies are no less part of how we lift an arm, get from a to b in a “land cruiser” or converse with collaborators by telematic device; they are part of deepening one’s cultural practice, and revealing the hidden at a palpable scale through our witness. Each show that this part of themselves is as distinct as their experiences, geographical location, culture, aesthetic and choreographic choices. And so, to inquire into the practices and processes of their technology use is no surface attention to an interaction between bodies and machines; it is to probe more deeply into the artist’s life and their way of bringing something into being: creating, connecting, communing. The purpose of these interviews was never to taxonomically survey the use of technologies in current dance practice. It was to inquire into complex relationships between the corporeal, mechanical, digital and algorithmic through varying modes of access that explicitly or implicitly reveal artist process, creative impact and forming of identities. In this, certain themes and debates within the dance-tech field are brought to the fore, a field that has in some respects fought for its right to exist in a world where physical body, liveness, a certain kind of ‘here—now’ presencing has dominated; a world that has spectacularly eroded, not only in our current Covid condition, but as we positively react to the impact of fossil-fuel burning travel on the environment. This has been and will continue to drive a creative and tenacious technicity. The message really is in the medium, not obscurely nor dangerously, but more in step with our Prometheus bound. Keeping in with the spirit of the ‘slow interview’, the following interpretive text follows a ‘call and response’ structure that attempts to deepen certain themes raised by the artists. Responses cross-fade into one another, threading and rethreading the discussion; all with the express intention of foregrounding their voices and contextualising technologies in their practice and processes. I begin with First Nation Artist Monica Steven’s response:
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Artist Bios Matt Cornell is an Asia-Pacific based choreographer who grew up in Darwin, on Larrakia land. His work interrogates how we embody systems – social, cultural, political, or technological – & in turn how these systems embody us by forming communities & informing identities. Across and between forms incl. dancing, performance, sound composition, writing, podcasting, & curation, passing through contexts incl. theatres, galleries, public spaces, & online. With the core notion of creating sacred spaces, pivotal events, & transcendent experiences amongst which we can come together, to share something that might give rise to deeper ways to know ourselves & each other & the stories at our foundation. That we may get better at living together. http://MattCornell.com Eddie Ladd is internationally renowned as a maker and performer. She was brought up in Wales, graduated from university College of Wales and has worked with Moving Being, Hijinx, Taliesen, Theatrig and Brith Gof. Since 1993 her work has been showcased in national platforms including Spring Loaded, The Place (2010), British dance Edition (2003 & 2010) and internationally in Spain, France, Germany, Canada, USA and the Balkans. She is the recipient of a NEStA fellowship, a Creative Wales Award and her work Club Luz won a Total Theatre Award at Edinburgh Fringe (2003). She won a Royal Television Society award (1994) for presenting the BBC Wales arts’ magazine, The Slate. Her powerful performances feature dance, bilingual text, music and new media technologies. Simo Kellokumpu is a Finnish choreographer and researcher based in Helsinki. He received his DfA (Doctor of Arts) in 2019 from the Performing Arts Research Centre, Theatre Academy Helsinki. His artistic works examine the choreographic relations between corporeality and materiality in various scales and contexts. His work operates in the entanglement of contemporary speculative fiction, interplanetary culture, and queer(ing) space. Kellokumpu is a ss Q Q uAQ founding member of the QQQ QQ QllloolQl oo ǘǘǘ̴̼ḓḓḓ sḓQ QQ lA QrḓQQṭṭr zṭṭ ṭ zz -research cluster with artists and researchers Outi Condit and Vincent Roumagnac. Monica Stevens is mBabarum. She is a Bama woman of Kuku Yalanji and Yidjini ancestries from Far North Queensland, born on Yidjini Country in Far North Queensland. She moved to Sydney after graduating with her HSC from Innisfail State High School to pursue a career in dance. She is a 1984 National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association, NAISDA graduate. Monica performed as a professional contemporary dancer for 12 years: first with the original Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre (AIDT), and is a founding member of the Bangarra Dance Theatre, where she toured and educated people about Aboriginal Australian people through performances and classes in national and international arenas. Monica has been a member of the Australia Council Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board and continues to explore her choreographic and artistic roles in the industry, including Chair of BlakDance Board 2014 - 2017. Her passion for dance and technology started in 2007 and partnered with Deakin University MotionLab to produce Coding Indigenous Dance in 2008 and the 2012 Dance Research Forum. Monica continues to contribute her expertise, knowledge and experiences to design, produce and stimulate provocative and intelligent dance theatre. Recent highlights are Threads (2018), the NAISDA alumni 40th Anniversary performance Chjowai (2016), Birrang Creative Workshop (2016), Campbelltown Arts Centre on Walking Ways and The Ink is Black and the Page is White (2014, 2015).
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Alternative Connections Monica Stevens For question one I chose, "How do they shape your practice and/or processes?" The technology I use is, motion capture. My exposure to motion capture transformed my dance practice. My world view is from a Bama perspective, where everything is connected. My culture and people, the land, sea and universe, are these connections. My dance practice with technology began to shape an alternate connection to my known dance knowledge and world view. My inquiring to technology was exciting and made me think differently. I found these parts of studio booths, base process is challenging. However, this line of inquiry was encouraging. As I moved forward, I examined dance phrases and each movement was reexamined for placement of limbs, and the dance qualities were remodeled, for example, my grand plié in my dance movement required a distorted interpretation to the classical grand plié image. Finding connections to the motion capture technology began to link the examination of captured movement to my cultural views and animation was created from a choreographic piece, creating a cultural link to my practice. Although immature, compared to known dance styles, a shift in accepting alternative movements became my contemporary dance extension. Alternative ways of thinking may seem unsettling, but I think this is the nature of creating nuances in dance. My purpose in contemporary dance technology practice and its processes is evolving. Through Monica’s deeply “evolving” contemporary dance-tech practice we find a potent means for finding “alternative connections”. This is not only found between movements in dance (as her description of the plie suggests), but highlighted more readily and wholistically in the relation between her technically derived discoveries and interconnectedness with Bama culture. In Simo’s work, alternative connections are generated in the gulf between human bodies, earth and space. These three placial dimensions are traversed through his “choreoreading practice” that combines the everyday hyper-readings of computer-generated texts. He writes:
Choreoreading Simo Kellokumpu Forewords Choreoreading is practice that stems from the examination of the relation between two bodily practices namely writing and reading. In my practice the prefix ‘choreo’ can have various attributes, and while exploring the notion of choreography I have come to understand that the artistic and choreo graphic potential of reading as bodily practice has been neglected in the history of the wester dance and choreography. More closely, when I was developing the practice of choreoreading I was interested in the practice of the hyperreading which shortly means computer-assisted reading. I practice it every day while browsing the web, or reading emails, text messages, tweets, and so on. 9
Simo’s multi-mediatic hyper-reading begs the question of what kind of “communication” he intends. Is it conversational? Or is it epistemological—providing a means to know? Or, are they exercises where we can reveal something of ourselves in a corporeal correspondence between different orders of experience? He responds…
Transmission Simo Kellokumpu Pompom made me understand something about the practice of transmission, rather than communication. There is no tacking between caller or receiver, where a ‘power over’ by one might be assumed; nor is there an over-arching choreographic aesthetic to smother the potentiality of connections. I also notice a lack of distinction between inner states and outer influences, or what is often the noticeable scramble to address this relation. The movements themselves are antennae extending a flow of feeling between terrestrial and astral atmospheres in what he terms an “astroembodied choreostruction”. There is a reciprocity of listening with no deafening or defining speech.
Ecology Simo Kellokumpu It is important to note here that in the choreoreading practice there is no written linear text which is read. Instead, choreoreading examines the movements that constitute non-linear conditions in which my body takes place. So, the place in my practice is a dynamic multidirectional constellation. In other words, I am interested in movements, which form the conditions for the choreographic to emerge. A movement which is at stake in my practice refers to movements, which extend beyond human scale. For example the rotation of the planet Earth around its own axis and its orbit around the Sun or the movement of the tectonic plate under my feet or satellite bound datashowers and wirespeed which touch my body in the everyday life constitute the movement realm with which I work as an artist. For example, how does one embody the velocity that is present and produced by these movements? In my practice movement that challenges immediate and direct perception operates as one constituent of the choreoreading practice. Nowadays I call my works with the term ‘astroembodied choreostruction’ which indicates to my interest to explore what happens in the place-responsive practice when the notion of place is extended towards outer space, its anti/materials, movements, forces and energies. My performance-installation works aim to materialize what kind of body emerges through this exploration of the amplified site-specificity. How the body, outer space and planet intertwine in the practice? In order to explore many included questions, choreoreading operates as a way to translate such interplanetary dimensions and data to lived, experienced and re-imagined. 10
I would say that in my practice there is no separation between technology and ecology. I live and make art in techno-ecological conditions. So from this perspective I am not particularly interested in using digital technologies as external artistic tools, but instead I explore the relation between materiality and corporeality in such conditions, how the body inhabits such infra- and macrostructures, how to take place in this kind of dimensions and what kind of body emerges through such inquiry. What does the technological devices do to my body and how do they set conditions and affect my place-taking on this planet? Concretely, for example in the current astrotrilogy -project, I am interested in the relation between the body and the satellites and the data they produce from space. Through making art I am interested to critically examine, engage with and re-imagine this kind of production of knowledge, representation and politicization of outer space and planet Earth. Simo’s idea that there is no separation between technology and the greater ecology, coupled with his question of: “what [do] technological devices do to my body, and how do they set conditions and affect my place-taking on this planet?” draws me to Welsh Choreographer Eddie Ladd’s response to the question about how technologies figure in her exchange with First Nation Choreographer Jacob Boehme that features in their inquiry about the separation of place, landscape and the forming of identities.1 1
Click on link for details of Eddie and Jacob’s collaboration in a digital residency at Critical Path in 2019: https://criticalpath.org.au/program/digitalresidency/
Project pompom in collaboration with manga-artist Nao Yazawa, Photo by Vincent Roumagnac
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Identity Eddie Ladd Eddie’s second project with Jacob directly addresses the tyranny of distance and avoids the contradictory issues of international travel on the environment in a project about farming practices and the most pressing concern of our time, climate emergency. Here the idea of the planet as one place comes to the fore as Jacob’s Indigenous farming knowledge is virtually “stitched” into a Welsh discussion addressing solutions for food security. It is through the practice of this ethical gesture that the virtual reality technologies enabling this remote exchange positively impact upon every aspect of the collaboration and is the “substance” of the project. Hello Jodie. Here is the third question, which is about the collaboration with Jacob Boehme and how technology figured in this project and influenced our exchange in relation to place, landscape, and identity. The digital project that we collected together was entirely the right way to connect two artists who live thousands of miles from each other. I am in Wales, Jacob is in Australia, and the topic that we identified, that we were most interested in dealing with was the climate emergency, hence in South. The only way I think to deal with this was to deal with it as a digital project, rather than make the situation worse by flying one or the other of us to the other one, so that we go talk about it in our respective countries. It has led eventually to Jacob being invited to take part in a project that I am doing this year at The Eisteddfod. The Eisteddfod is an annual event in Wales. It is a huge festival, Welsh language festival, which features all aspects of Welsh language culture. It is a competition. It is full of music. It is full of art, recitation, composition of poetry, novels, dramas, all sorts of things. And I have been awarded what they called a special exhibition this year, in which, in my home county, Ceredigion, which is where the Eisteddfod has been based. I get to make a special artwork, and I wanted to invite Jacob to be part of that simply because the main theme of my piece and was required was that we talk about farming practices about the climate emergency and all the various cultures of Ceredigion, Jacob would be making an excellent contribution by talking about Indigenous farming practices from the initials that he is a member of, I believe. But the main problem is I should not be flying Jacob over to Ceredigion to the town of Tregaron, burning up. I do not know how much aviation, if we want to get that on to go back this problem with obviously the digital project highlighted this problem. And it is made me think of that one of those possible solutions would be a virtual reality project in which Jacob could film his contribution to a 360 degree camera in Melbourne. We got someone to stitch it together, and that is a new term for me, but that you stitch together these films so that you have the 360 performance, and then that we can watch that performance through headsets, VR headsets on the extended field. I have only recently seen what VR is. I thought I understood that by looking at it on television programs, it is an amazing, amazing format. And I simply cannot believe that you turn it on, 12
the things are still there. You are in a building, you are out in the- in the environment, I would like to do this I have yet to propose it to Jacob, but we were trying to work out ways of getting him to Wales now very, very difficult these days, without flying, the industry has made it. Digital work here, I think is a way to connect performers worldwide. As performers who want to tour internationally, want to connect to people internationally, I think we really have to think about how are we going to do it from now on. It could be ending up making shows about how bad it is, and then going thousands of miles. And then I would have to tell people how bad it is. So I think we have to look at our own solutions for this. Technology really did figure in this project, it was the substance of the project. I think it would be excellent if Jacob were able to transmit this information to the audience on The Eisteddfod field. There will be so aware of the issues. They will so want to discuss the ideas and to propose solutions, and I think if his presence could be there virtually, I think it would really benefit and push the process forward. I would exchange in deletion to place landscape and identity, I think I would have to say that that is the major thing really, it has opened up the new aspect of this project. The digital project was really successful in that it sort of got us back together again after meeting out in Australia like two years ago. It meant that we both wanted to work together. And really, I think this would be the second project in this series then. I think I will leave it there. What we understand from Australian Artist Matt Cornell’s response to the question about how technologies shape his identity also feeds into how he understands his relation to earth. There is a mobius-like exchange between the technologies, platforms and his communion with others in the creative process. Like Simo, the technologies set some kind of condition to support the “play” and deepening of states for making. While he suggests that like a “tool” they augment and extend his abilities and diversifies his role in the creative process; this total immersive relation to technologies in the everyday foregrounds a deeper ethical aspect of self “to be inspired” and to inspire others: an energy profoundly essential for creating collaborations and sustaining community. While the idea of technology as a tool can be thought instrumentalist, there is something more revelatory and fundamental about the role that technologies play in shaping the human beings that we are. In the studio this may be as “director”, “performer”, “improvisor”, “muse” and sacred space maker that allows collaborators to enter and be supported by the technologies, platforms and algorithms that underpin all offerings for creating work.
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Community Matt Cornell I am going to answer the question, “How do they shape your identity?” because a lot of the other questions come out of that even including “How do they influence your experience of earth?” My experience of earth because I can connect with people that I have met in real life. Instantaneously is that I do not assume that the time of day that it is, is everybody’s time and day. The technologies that I use in the studio and they shape my identity by instead of reaching out say to Google to ask a question about something that is going on in Manila. I will Facetime my friend in Manila. It is also one of the benefits of having a lot of collaborators within the Asia Pacific that we live in rather than in time zones at offset hours. But to sum up, I would say that the technologies that I use in my practice, I use because they augment and extend my abilities. They make me more valuable to have in the room. They are tool that I know how to yield so that I may activate, provoke, support, counterpoint, inspire. I think “inspired” that is the state that I am chasing and that I take responsibility for facilitating for myself and for my team. So that can be memes or can be songs or can be apparatus. But anything that supports play and realization and deepening of different states and that expedients the idea to manifestation. That moment from it popping up to the moment that you can show it to each other, that is crucial. The whole day for me really is an improv where we perform for each other or with each other with the creative team with the props and the tools and the skills that we have for using those tools. The technology is just those tools, it is no different than putting on a hat and coming in as a different character, putting on a song that you are streaming from the other side of the world and then having that embodied and move you in the space. I think it also allows you to play multiple roles. This is how it shapes my identity. Capturing technology means that I can delay switching between director and performer of improvised. I can delay being the director for a later date. I can capture now and I can critique later and that tech support means that you can for now, you can be the muse and you can spring forth with hopefully a stronger signal to noise ratio because you are supported. The moment that you are building towards is underpinned the sacred space that you are generating with your body that is in response to the lighting and the sound and the costume and the flooring and the temperature. That is all an extra asset that is coming in to support your sensitivity to human to human interactions. So now that has context your performance has context and it has scaffolding and it has residual foundations that is left there once you finish your showing or performing or presentation or embodiment. Somehow the space is set up as the dispositive and then you may enter it. Where it goes from there is the exciting part and how quickly you can call upon the next thing you need is also the exciting part. That is the beautiful continuous interplay between the tools you have access to and the skills that you have to use those tools and then how that informs your first second and third viewpoint of the situation and what it needs next. Perhaps in an improvisation my mode of supporting the person who is on stage is not to enter and it is not to stay out and maybe it is just start singing or maybe it is to play a hip hop song or maybe it is to turn the lights off so there is this aspect to it. 14
I would say the way the technologies I use help to shape my identity is that it means that I can work out what is needed and then I can try and work out from all the tools out of my disposal and how I can apply them and how to be most valuable. It shows my identity because I consider that I live within a time zone region of the world. Billions of people in that time zone are also within reach to be part of my creative team as instantaneously as someone that I am calling on the phone across the other side of town. Matt builds community in a “hyper-distributed” world, where people and the dances they make and do are no longer bound to one geographic region as they once were in preindustrialised society. Certain moves and grooves are contagions: hypermobile gestures that transcend notions of belonging to one cultural dance. Here, Matt reflects on his work: “I Learnt My Cultural Dance From YouTube” “What can this understanding mean for building communities of dancers and artists?” I guess everybody’s worked out by now that it is horrifically draining and cold to try and drink from a fire hose through a straw by putting real life gatherings into a video conference situation. But having said that... the communities that can exist of dancers and artists and the way that they can nourish and support and validate and legitimise each other... Maybe it is summed up in my project from a couple of years ago, titled “I Learned My Cultural Dance From YouTube”. I worked with a pretty inspiring team who helped me generate a structure whereby you could work out how to dance with people, even though you do not know the same dance. And when I say dance, I guess, I mean that you feel that itch that you feel when you have not had a good dance, that you feel that that has been scratched. And when I say together then, I mean that you feel a synergy or shared vibration, or I guess what anybody’s chasing when they do corporate team building exercises, a sense of motor neuron engagement and activation that builds to what otherwise be referred to as comradery. And that has been achieved through the moving together of your bodies through space and time. And having this experience that you have held a sacred space for each other to have that dance. The project looked at the concept that while dance forms used to be in their genesis pinned to a particular geographic location, whether that be an urban setting or a pre-industrialised setting, that now that you are part of communities that are hyper-distributed, then there are dance forms that have their genesis within hyper-distribution. Not just that they start somewhere and then spread, but actually they begin everywhere. And the community that does them is everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean in places where enough people are living a similar enough reality that they have the time or the space or the desire to engage in that way physically. And they have freedom and safety and security and access to electricity and food and internet. And through that, the iteration that happens across bodies, which is where dance forms spring from, that is no longer geographically centred.
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Dawns Ysbrydion 09.02.63. A “straight forward” solo in a theatre space Photo by Warren Orchard
Movement Simo Kellokumpu When it comes to digital and new media technologies, the algorithms which underlie our computational lives are what digital theorists refer to as the ‘inhuman superstructures’ that operate at invulnerable speeds beyond the limits of human perception and action. These nonhuman forces are seen to transform us in “social, political, material and cultural” ways, thus inviting critique about the inhuman powers that govern us, and/or enable the exploration of our posthuman possibilities (Atkinson, Barker & Anikina 2020). Reflecting upon these concerns and fascination with the mediation of algorithms in our encounters with digital technologies through these slow interviews, the prefixes ‘non’, ‘in’, and ‘post’ human fail to capture the experience of these artists’ encounters with technologies as an inextricable aspect of everyday life. What is missing from new materialism thinking (arguably still endowed with souped-up anthropomorphic agency) is the feature that all bodies, human and non-human alike share—movement. There is a profound lack of understanding or valuing of movement, always seen tied to a particular intention and action of the human who subsumes and/or constrains all things under its control: the ‘in itself’ of the world is always “as it is ‘for us’” (Meillassoux 2008, 3). However, what seems clear from the artists in their discussion of technologies is that movement takes on the ‘intermediating’ role, connecting and influencing all these technologies. A medialising conception of movement best describes the relationships between cameras, any number of social networking platforms, algorithms, our sense of earth in a broader planetary system, and the person creating. 16
Simo’s Twitter project, Meteor brings this understanding to the fore. In response, I asked: I notice the lack of a human (bodily) ‘visual’ presence in the images of events: what is the importance of this? This project called “Meteor” was an attempt to filter words and concepts from perceiving, experiencing and documenting with the mobile phone, certain material conditions, which I called in the project queues. In short, the project can be described as a collection of themes, that set conditions for my movements, so the focus of the visual documentation was on these conditions. What kind of relations did /do you make with those beings who interact with your twitter account? Was it important that you had responses? What does it mean for these events to exist in this space? I have not got any particular feedback about this project. If that is, what do you mean? It exists in Twitter since 2017, and one can go through there if one happens to find it. I took Twitter as a poetic platform for this project. And recently I printed a small booklet from the tweets, and I am planning to make a reading performance with it so that the audience have their own copy from where they can follow the performance. Maybe in the end, then we could make tweets together for this project as well. Have these “cues/responses/actions” formed the basis of further/other choreographic trajectories? Or are they discrete, isolated events? By choosing these three terms and setting them in a linear written form, I was trying to find vocabulary for my developing choral reading practice. At that time, the practice was transforming from the contextual towards the atmospheric, and which later on moved towards the interplanetary. The project was an important phase of building understanding about the notion of choral reading, even if later on I let these three words go. Twitter functioned as a platform to examine questions such as, how does nonlinear practice translate to linear text? What kind of operative words emerge through the reduction of the characters? How do reading and writing operate simultaneously in my practice? Sometimes the linguistic nonsense revealed the more quiet sides of the practice, as well. In this project, I was also curious about the hashtag from the writing perspective. What happens when it is time to make a hashtag? How do I go through it? I find it a very playful moment. In tweets, hashtag links focuses, categorises, channels and contextualises the tweets. The simple hash is one of the symbols that couples and connects the material experiment to the material of the surroundings in the interplay of lived conceptual, ecological and technological. The visual form of the hashtag suits well to the idea of intersection and interplay. Two horizontal vectors cross two vertical ones. It carries the potential directions that I can imagine and beyond. It operates as a tool to create an imaginative relationship with the surrounding planetary condition. It functions as kind of a conceptual and material transfer, which can help to bring out the spatial and temporal striatum of the actual virtual embodiment. 17
In this project, a hashtag offers an extended way of embodying the relationship with the sphere. It couples the lift and conceptual in the gradual process of choreographic forming, and it is located simultaneously in many places. The sense of body and its spatial orientation is multiplied by going through it while making a tweet. Imagined hashtag is a teleporter that takes the embodied depictions to the virtual spheres and vice versa. Writing a tweet becomes a process in which the technological device, the body that has and uses it, and the experience of the movement are all entangled in virtual actual surroundings, including the whole technological infrastructure that grants access to the internet. Thus, the combination of choral reading practice and writing activates sub and hyperspaces. For me, this project also brings out the intimacy of the solitary in between us with the playful 140 characters.
Culture Monica Stevens A further medialising feature of movement in the artist’s dance-tech practice is its connection to culture and the influence of the latter on choreographic practice. Monica’s use of motion capture technology creates significant synergies between her Bama culture and non-Bama approaches to dance. At first, I was interested in just how deep this influence through motion captured movement was and whether her and her collaborators cultural view had shifted in anyway: Question two. My cultural view has not shifted. The word culture has another meaning to me as a Bama person. My culture is integral to my understanding of who I am and where I belong. This incorporates ways of doing and being on country. What has shifted for me is my choreographic processes. The lens I have used is the absorption of Bama and Non-Bama processes. My practices to find dance movement and technology connectivity. It is the revealing of new answers in my choreographic practice. My investigations to find a harmony with these disruptions to thinking, is to present my findings. The glitches and the strangeness in the studio processes, and the motion capture examination is what I'm looking for in dance tech compositions. Monica’s culture has another meaning, which allows her to understand who she is and where she belongs; and while her dance-tech practice has not changed her way of “doing and being on Country” the mix of Bama and non-Bama processes through the avatar related technologies have significantly shifted her approach to choreography.
The Choreographic Eddie Ladd In Eddie’s first response to the question of ‘how do these technologies make you think choreographically?’ we are provided insight into how working with cameras in her solo work “Scar Face” (2000) dramatically shifted her choreographic approach even once there was an absence of technologies on stage, and where her choreography suddenly gained a different purpose to “trigger” sound, or was kept alive overtime by a software program. Eddie explains: The digital technologies that I use in my practice and research are cameras and 18
sensors. And somewhere out there in a world I do not understand, software programs. Cameras I have used onstage for a long time, and I started making work in the nineties and they’ve been there in many shows since then. And what I like about cameras, they’re always on the stage. They’re never remote relay from anywhere. And what I like is the difference between the choreography that you can make on stage. And what you might call normally, the choreography that your camera will make you do. And cameras like depth of field a lot. And so if you have trained, keep on making depth of field kind of choreography on stage. It looks quite odd and unnecessary. And I like the fact that the choreography on stage does not look adequate if you are making it to camera. Camera also allows him to make micro choreographies. And I found many times with a show like “Scarface”, which I made, that eventually the stage choreography reduced and reduced into making micro choreography. The other stuff that I like using is sensors, only use it for one show “Ras Goffa Bobby Sands”. Part of the choreography involved trying to trigger the sound truck on a running machine, surrounded by sensors. And I think that gave the choreographer like a poor person. Software programs I have one piece online “Staffel B” it is now kept alive by a software program. It was made in 2006, I think. And software program is still making it. In Scarface, the camera technology became deeply integrated with the moving body’s relation to space and gesture (“depth of field”, “reduction to micro-choreographies”) rather than insisting upon the visual representation of a dance, or creating an image (while also being a piece that subverted the imperialism of cinematic culture through the image). My second question to Eddie inquired into this idea of the technologically mediated/mediatised image (the 2-D) and interactions with the material forces of her stage body (the 3-D).
Image & Body So, the technically mediated image in the body, their relationship, how does it feed into the choreographic? I would say that in general, and this is without reference to any of the shows. If I know that I am working to camera especially, mostly that will help me focus the choreography. And it stops me splashing about tiredly in the rehearsal room. Once you know that you have got like five centimetres to play with it for a closeup, and you have got two meters at the back to play with for a long shot that is such a help, the limitation is fantastic. And then you can really concentrate on the qualities and you notice things about yourself rather than sort of, like I said, splashing about. As soon as you think, well this is only happening with my fingertips and you can make some really nice work then. And if you knew that oh right it is going to have to be, I do not know, I can move like two meters and one meter in front of me then, then that makes it a very detailed and thoughtful thing, rather than I know I will shoot my leg up. Just, I do not know, go into some kind of centrifuge.
Scarface
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Hello Jodie, here is the next question and my next answers. What is the relationship between the technologically mediated image on the body, in your practice and process? How does this feed into the choreographic? I am going to answer with reference to four of my productions. First one is “Scarface” and I think choreography there was informed completely in a way that arrived as a complete package, the mediated image on the body. They arrived completely together. I knew that from the very beginning, I was going to make a piece of work on stage in front of a camera and that everything, all the choreography, that you saw would appear within the frame that the commoner offered you. Did not always rehearse like that. I must say that when I was trying to work out some material, I would do it in the ordinary way, in open space. I found as I went on that some of the stuff that I really liked, that made in open space, filled up too much of the frame. And so then it was like the frame then told me, well I would have to edit my live material. Move less, sometimes, look more at the camera, let it look at me and do the thing that happens in film, really where you get to... We are back into micro choreographies, your audience can look at the face and see all those tiny things that move on anybody’s face naturally. So I had to do a lot with the choreography sometimes as well, I just had to do less I think . What I liked about “Scarface” was that it made the choreography on stage, the stuff that I am putting down the lens, it made for choreography in open space look very strange. For Eddie, the body is completely mediated by the camera, and like Monica, this mediation creates movement that is “strange” or ‘glitch-like’ enabling a whole other way of working with the moving body in “open space”.
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StafellB, a work on the web. Pictures from video stills. Credits to Michael Day and Jamie Andrews
Eddie’s historical piece Cof y corff /muscle memory was “made from the body first of all” as a deeply physical process. While the presence of the body is not occluded in the final presentation, the choreography and performance experience become highly mediated through five different kinds of cameras within a screen dominated, digital environment.
Cof Y Corff The next piece I would like to talk about is “Cof y Corff.” It is a piece called “Muscle Memory,” and that was a piece in which I talked about Welsh history, describing it through movement analysis, almost like Laban movement analysis. I talked about bound flow, free flow... Shaping in planes, it is called, when you are upright and vertical or horizontal, and all of these states mean something psychologically. They mean things for real, actually. If you are using free flow all the time, it means you have no way of... You cannot grip things and you cannot stand up properly. And for me in “Cof y Corff,” for example, that applied to the period in 1277. Just go right back, when the Prince of Wales at the time, Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf, had to give in to Edward I and had to pay him homage. Homage means you pay over lots of money and you acknowledge that that is your overlord. And he had refused about five times already, so that means that is someone... That is really having some grip on your body, isn’t it? Some grip on your behaviour. Being able to refuse is to grip, to hold, to bind strongly. But at that point I was saying, oh, Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf has to go into free flow. He has no grip on his body. He is not allowed any grip on his body. He has to flow over the floor. He’s completely abasing himself. So that piece was made from the body, first of all. I had to think about all the states that I wanted to deal with in Welsh history, all the things that I wanted to deal with, and then I had to work out the choreography then. And so that was a deep physical research. And then, the show is highly mediated. “Scarface” has got one camera. “Cof y Corff” has got... I think it has got about five, actually. And they are not all going at the same time, but there are moving cameras, there are handheld, there is even a bit of live editing that goes on. We managed to do that. So in other words, the material was made physically, and then I wanted to physically edit it into the camera frame. So I did that in two stages, really. I was not making material for camera straight away. So that is completely different from “Scarface”. StafellB is an interesting example of a ‘software choreography’, where the program chooses from 1000s of photographic stills to create the moving image that lives online. Here Eddie created all the physical material but the ultimate editing and is software driven. StafellC carries the same relationship between choreographer, movement and image, but is arbitered live by the programmer in the space.
Stafell B+C
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“Stafell” was made in about 2003. And there I was working very closely with a choreographer called Margaret Ames, who really helped me through the whole thing, guided everything. And it was done completely through the sensations of the body. What happened then was that “Stafell B” is a web work, it still exists. And it is the software program that is choosing what goes on screen. So this, again, is another example of me being separated from the technology, even though I knew that is how it would be in the end. So I did everything in open space, definitely. And then we filmed everything. And then what the software program does is that it picks stills. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them. So it is making a piece that moves about, but only from stills. And there, I did not think about the technology at all. It was purely, purely physical for me. Thinking about the themes and thinking about the sensations, things like that. The same is true, I suppose, of “Stafell C”, which does what “Stafell B” is doing. “Stafell B” is still alive. That is what I like about it. And it is, like I said, it is one of the software programs that is doing it. It is just like picking things every day, every day. I do not know, it can go on forever now, I think, I hope. “Stafell C” then was trying to reverse the situation where it was trying to produce the work on the stage. And they would be combined straight away in the rehearsal room onto the screen. It was composed on screen in the auditorium. It was not a theatre auditorium. It was just a studio auditorium. “Stafell B” went online after it was ready to go online. “Stafell C” went online, there I am then in the room. And in a way it was a little bit the same as “Stafell B” in that I did not really know what was going to go on screen. I produced all... I prepared all the physical work. And then what went on screen was what the camera man in the room... Sometimes he would be near me. Sometimes he would not be so near, he would be doing passes along... He had a steady cam and he would just pass along the three rooms, because there was shots on the three room set. And I did not know really what our programmer was going to choose. He was the editor, he is editing it live. And so, he would select shots as they came in or he would have a program which just picked up a shot and put it somewhere on the screen. So that was my choreographic process there, it was purely physical, and the mediation came from other people. So the composers and other people as well. Lovely talking it over, I hope that does the trick. Eddie’s choreographic process is a deep physical process with the technological influence entering later, but never deprioritising the body. She establishes a movement language that mediates the shifting spatial dimensions through lens, screen and algorithm.
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Perception Monica Stevens Monica’s work with avatar-based animations is a complex negotiation of bodies and movement in both corporeal and non-corporeal space. She speaks of how “lateral perception� grounds her entire process such that there is never any hierarchical valuing between the physical body and animations; her practice is neither one sided, nor stresses one form over the other. Question three, I believe the idea of lateral perception is there to be recognized. I speak for my individual ways of interpreting, responsive and reactive synergies. I think corporal understanding is to cut and dry and it leaves no room for the unexpected. So yes, lateral perception is an area where I am flexible about using glitches, and movement selections to create my choreography. Throughout my research, I have found the same debate regarding reality and the known. Generally, not everything can be explained. Yet humans have continued to navigate through many disruptions by questioning the norms. This is significant to my interpretation, and representation of dance and technology, and the reasoning away from hierarchal valuing. In my case, I have discovered that transforming my reality of choreography into an avatar to dance, has given me a sense on all the dimensional crossover. It is on this cast that a unique edge to understanding sits well with my views of dance and digital technology. I had mentioned crossovers and cusp, because I believe in dimensional plane, the spirit world, my aboriginalism. The answers to reality and the digital melee in ontological approaches. Therefore, finding nuances in my dance practice, with digital technology, and the idea of dimensional experiences, may lead to new ideas. Overall, my outcomes may begin to illustrate the tangible, whether it's seen or felt. Okay, thank you.
Performance Screen Shot, Photo by Monica Stevens
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‘Lateral perception’ provides a culturally inflected legitimacy to what I’ve always understood to be a non-hierarchical equivalency between bodies and media when we experience their interactions. This has not always been the favoured view and why the dance-tech field has not really flourished in tandem with technology’s untrammeled development. On the one hand, dance is often at the mercy of the technology it uses without its full potential being met, and on the other, dance itself has not been all that tolerant of the technologies in its proclamation as the final frontier for live, unmediated physical bodies of (political) presence. Even though the debates between the live and mediatised are somewhat jaded, the general reflex within the dance community is to prioritise a live dancing body over its digital representation. Ironically, these slow interviews coincided with a pandemic and dance has found itself by necessity, like most areas of our lives, existing primarily online. Lateral perception as a form of indigenous thinking reasons away from the tiredness of any hierarchies (real/virtual, live/mediatised) to help us understand the interaction between dance and technology as “lying within the ontological”. In opening herself to other “dimensional planes” and the “spirit world” there are greater possibilities for nuanced creations emerging at these “crossovers”. Monica’s research engages a whole Being approach, where choregraphed movement is the “tangible” connector between the physical, spiritual and digital.
Gulgii Dancer and Shadow, Photo by Monica Stevens
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Foundation Matt Cornell Viewing technologies in the broadest possible sense, Matt had this to say when asked about whether the role of technologies being ‘foundational’ to human life lead to new cultural and aesthetic paradigms for creating work: “Do you consider that viewing technologies in a foundational way, leads to a new cultural or aesthetic paradigm for making work?” I think that each generation views the technologies that they are born in amongst as foundational, and then the new ones that come along in their lifetime seem perverse or an incursion. So yes, and also no. I do not think there is ever been a time before technology. Money is a technology. Counting is a technology. I think what affects our cultural or aesthetic paradigms is which technologies we find foundational. And they shift, first of all, what is possible to be made, but then also what is possible for us to craft. And the amount of social status or power or resources we must yield so that we have the opportunity to turn our ideas or vision and manifest it into the object or product or work or project that we then want to show people and have them experience Matt understands that these paradigms are created when the body’s senses are led to a new experience through the “craft[ing]” and “curat[ion]” by the artist using certain technologies, and rearticulating the multiple platforms that permeate everyday life as modes of communication in ways that provoke new sensations and perceptions. Further to that idea, sound artist, Gail Priest makes a good point that we had electricity for a long time until synthesizes became more readily accessible. And then we started to get sounds for the future, sci-fi sounds and such that came from this because that is when we started being able to make music with this electricity. That of course is completely arbitrary relationship that we now have between music that sounds like that in sci-fi movies from the past. I think within this question about viewing technologies in a foundational way, of course I do, but the only reason that I do is because my idea of technology is the broadest one, that a seesaw is a piece of technology. And that leverage is an incredible concept that we can use for exerting our agency on objects in space and time. The more standard response would be, of course, the platform TikTok is having an incredible paradigm shift on dance and dance communities and people who are not dancers, who are internet connected communities around the world. But I am not sure if we are not somehow limited by the sensors that the body can take in and the speed that it can take that information in. And that if you have light and particles and you have air being vibrated and you have some sense of balance so that all of your bodily senses are being spoken to in order to... Crafted and curated by somebody, in order to give you a specific experience to lead you towards a certain experience that you may then be transformed by or think differently of. Then I think the discussions about that is that you do what you can with what you have and some of us have much more than others, but we are all still going to keep making whatever we can so that we can bring people into the specific, special, quirky angle that we have managed to glimpse a strange new world from. 25
Ultimately the receivers of these transmissions, images, or any mediatic creations are “transformed” to “think differently”, and are delivered into the “specific, quirky angle that [makers manage] to glimpse a strange new world from”.
Future Simo Kellokumpu It appears that the future of technologies in the hands of choreographers as our prime ambassadors for movement (even when “exhausted”) will be as expansive, ethical, transmissible and spiritual as the artists who use them.
References Anikina, Alex. “Algorithmic Superstructuring: Aesthetic Regime of Algorithmic Governance.” Transformations 34 (2020) : http://www.transformationsjournal.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/05/Trans34_03_anikina.pdf Meillassoux, Quentin. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, New York: Continuum, 2008. 26