Record, Pause, Replay, Repeat: Video and the (Re) Production of Dance Knowledge (original) (raw)
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Laura Karreman The Motion Capture Imaginary > Digital Renderings of Dance Knowledge
Motion capture-based renderings of dance performance constitute a complex, but highly interesting cultural phenomenon at a time when motion recognition and haptic technology increasingly affect society at large. Applications of digital motion capture technologies that aim to support the analysis and transmission of dance performance can be understood as an alternative way of bringing dance into the ‘orbit of writing’ (Rotman 2008). Despite the growth of these practices and their significance for the contemporary discourse on the transmission of dance knowledge, this phenomenon has not yet been thoroughly investigated from the perspective of dance research and practice. This thesis evaluates implications of contemporary practices of digital dance capture. How is dance conceived of as a type of knowledge that can be transmitted in these practices? How does motion capture invite us to know dance differently? This thesis examines different modes of ‘corporeal computation’ of dance by analyzing different ways of making motion data speak. The notion of ‘the motion capture imaginary’ is introduced as a conceptual framework that interconnects various characteristics associated with ways of seeing and knowing dance in the motion capture setting. Foregrounding the value of dancers’ embodied experiences, the thesis suggests that the pursuit to render motion data into accessible feedback calls for further investigation of topics that are typically part of the tacit knowledge of the dancer, such as the central importance of the breath. The process of making sense of motion data streams thus encourages new investigations of technique and knowledge transmission in performance and presents opportunities to articulate the corporeality of dancers in different ways.
Dancing the digital age: a survey of the new technologies in the choreographic process
Journal of Genius and Eminence, 2020
This article considers fifty-eight selected dance works created during the time period of 2000-2018. In doing so the work of renown artists Wayne McGregor, Garry Stewart, Dawn Stopiello and Bill T. Jones have been used as case studies to highlight how the eminence of these choreographers has engaged dance as a meeting point and merging point for humanity and 'New technology'. The article reviews the impact of new technologies as an essential tool in the creative processes of dance and exploration of the moving-body. Innovative technologies in the 21st Century have offered choreographers new capacities for the creation of movement. These explorations into the performance space advance insights into broader questions of the human body at the intersection of arts and science. The choreographers' exploration of the dancing form cultivates questions about how the human body extends, begins, ends and is present. As the digital age proposes new ways to (re) imagine the communication and impact of the human body we suggest these artistic collaborations also offer insights into commonalities and places of exchange across notions of art versus science. These choreographers inter-disciplinary artistic endeavors, into how the moving body transacts and is harnessed as a mode of expression reveal deeper possibilities of the ontology of the lived-experience.
Aesthetic Engagement in Video Dance: I. Dance Video and Video Dance
The arts of dance have a strangely compelling quality. Using the human body as its material and often its subject-matter, dance directs the body's vital forces through the manifold associations and powers the body inhabits and evokes. Sometimes the movement takes the form of a solo dance; sometimes it is shared. Sometimes it is shaped by narrative, sometimes by a theme. Often it delights in the possibilities of movement itself, always shaping the vital forces that carry the body through time and space. Indeed, dance exemplifies how, through movement, the human body creates its time and space. Dance may be thought of as an " ur-art. " Using no tool or instrument other than one's body, the dancer shapes and inhabits a world of movement. Dance is one of the first manifestations of the aesthetic impulse and the fulfillment of an aesthetic need. At the same time, the dance arts, like the other arts, respond to the possibilities of technology. This can be seen in the imaginative use of set design and props, but the technological possibilities of filmic techniques are irresistible. Dance film and video do not replace the human body but are means of enhancing and extending its possibilities, creating a new artistic modality just as photography and film have done. Painting and theater continue to flourish and to innovate in their own spheres, but new and distinctive arts have been born of the new technologies. The same is true of dance. In addition, film adds the possibility of preserving a dance performance, not only archiving it but making it repeatable to a new audience. In what follows I shall be concerned with dance film and video dance. The first was born of the manifold possibilities of chemical technology, while the second, surpassing film technology, exploits the rich possibilities of digital technology and its freedom from material constraints. Both technologies offer new possibilities for the dance arts, similar in many respects but different in some others. 1 And both develop and enhance the possibilities and powers of dance experience.
TDR/The Drama Review
Dance artists and researchers have worked together and with digital media to produce tools, resources, and “choreographic objects” — experiments in how to document and transmit the processual, somatic, and multisensory properties of dance. These objects impact the artists, modes of analysis, and archival strategies in dance, and make a wider contribution to performing arts practice, theory, and education.
The Life of a Dance: Double Take Part II
The documentation of dance regularly asserts a false concept. This is that dances can be fixed, like a text, script, painting or even a musical score. Dance academics and organizations like ballet companies and the trusts that claim to protect and preserve the heritage of specific choreographers protect this idea. Focused far more on outputs than production, they decontextualize dance by ignoring its context: the working process. Notwithstanding the problematics of this assumption about the archival form of such material, that the tokens of the types that Wollheim (1968) posits as necessary are simply too flexible to be captured as definitive, this in itself presents a creative opportunity. This paper posits this working process as played out in performance as well as the confines of rehearsal, and gives as a practical example the performance of a work by the same dancers across a thirty-year timeframe, presented alongside the original video material. For dancers and choreographers there is a more subtle process of evolution that occurs with the regular performance of a dance: the dance changes itself to suit its purposes, and this often renders the meaningfulness of documentation an academic (or more lately legal) exercise. Evidence for this can be found not only in the experience of dancers, but in the actions of choreographers dealing with their own works, even when they are considered classics. Dances, it seems, simply wear out unless they are subject to regular revision and a definitive version cannot be said to exist. This is not to say an account of a dance is impossible, but to suggest there are conditional features that need taking account of, and to question the artistic validity of ossified reproduction.
Movement as the Driving Force: Empowering Live Dance Performance Through the Integration of Film
2016
Dance and film are two distinct mediums of expression. Movement drives both of these art forms and is the commonality that serves as the thread that connects them. These mediums serve as modes of discovery, thinking, and representation. Time and space are shared components between dance and film. Over the past century, there have been many different relationships on and off the stage between the two and as a result of this, new genres like screendance, dance for film, and multimedia performance have emerged. Live dance performance has been strengthened by the possibilities and uses of multimedia elements in real time. After creating the MFA Thesis Concert C’est la Vie | Exquisite Corpse that correlates with this dissertation, I was left yearning for more knowledge of the medium and discipline of film. Film expanded the possibilities of time, space, and movement for the choreographic process and the live dance performance. Therefore, I argue that by having a deeper understanding of f...
A Visions and Views Digital Dancing
s a choreographer and an inside observer looking at the recent development of Web dances and Internet performances, it appears to me that a dance community has evolved in cyberspace. The emergence of the World Wide Web has led to an upsurge of creative exploration by dance artists as they discover, in ever-increasing numbers, this new technology's potential. The pervasiveness of information and communications technologies has produced new levels of thought, new concepts, and new types of human interaction. The 3D world of cyberspace features choreog-this isn't an exhaustive list, I single out these people because their work—involving synchronous and asynchronous partnerships—encompasses both Web dance and Internet performance. Such work helps define a big part of the mediascape, a term coined by Eduardo Kac. 1 Mediascape, analogous to landscape, implies that people are no longer surrounded by a natural environment but rather by media. It suggests that our experience of reali...