----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
hi Johannes welcome back.
such a lot to compare between the different examples your draw together below
of the sonification of gestures within a wide range of different kinds of
systems .. used by very different ' performers' with less or more '
experience' of their movements being the input that generates the orchestration
of the potential of the software and the data coming into it an interaction
that results in the production of wide range of sound generative
possibilities. .
so
what does it mean for me- the subject - attentive to what is happening
physically .. sonically - ie highly aware of the nuances of what the
difference of the energy i transfer into the suite of bio data sensors can
do in ' orchestrating' a huge range of nuanced sound mean by swallowing the
system? of course i did not really eat it, but in the same way that a point
shoe can feel like an extension to your foot and the extra possibility of spin
speed etc . for me it means that i have digested what it feels like what the
sounds taste like, the flavours, their colours ,, the depth, the pitch ,
etc... i am not being literal .. I hardly ever am ---- these sounds are
not triggered ( so many military words ) they flow, and this is where the
fold between the sound the movement my attentive ness to minutia the system
dissolve
there is something about becoming so highly aware of what subtle combinations
resulting from the physics of ones gestures are doing , that this '
knowledge ' which i say becomes embodied knowledge which i also define as a
new kind of performers virtuosity .. that garth has described as rich
kinesthetic or movement awareness - you are listening to this transference
of one - effort - energy- physics, maths, perception becoming some thing else.
this is a kind of alchemy .. its not snake oil... i am not sure that its is
metaphysics either .. but as some one who has been moving around a while .. in
different kinds of ' systems' it is possible for me to feel the difference
between them as they have evolved over time - -this kind of self study , an
observable and interpretive narrative of my behaviour my agency my embodiment
in in these systems over time .. is what i meant - embodied ethnography
.. ( i am remember what it was like to move in the Very Nervous System,
some some time ago). in the bio sensors systems. with garth . i would
suggest that it is coming closer to me.. this is also what john sutton part
of the SEAM - WISP workshops (that garth was originally referring to and the
frame works used in them ) was also addressing in his use of the word as he
applied to how the three P words garth also mention. . porosity taking into
account not just content but the culture one has moved through .
> their movement gestures "made" the music we heard. (The software did) .. t
the software is like a swing . all of the potential is inside its structure
. but it needs some one to get on it and make it swing before it swings. other
wise its a sculpture in the park. so maybe they think they believed they made
the music well partially they did.
and probably they did not think they had swallowed the system because they
are not me, as far as distribution goes . ..well some where i have been part
of making the packages of bits and bytes that have been dispersed over networks
at various speeds to arrive some where and do some thing which poetically i
feel is an extension of what i was doing how engaged i was in the doing of it
to cause that particular package of data sets to be generated and now some
analysis might recognise those patters as belonging to me certainly the
military are keeping an eye on things and people by doing such things ..
certainly that is what catches some people out ..
most respectfully too .. johannes good to have you back in the swing of
things h
On 20/07/2014, at 11:58 PM, Johannes Birringer wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> dear all
>
> thanks to these discussions over the past week......
> I was in Madrid at the METABODY workshop, a European collaborative
> performance project, and could not quite participate due to our work-
> schedule but read the postings by Sophia (I liked the term you used,
> "in-fleshment"), Samantha, John, Sue and then Garth, Tamara, and Hellen......
>
> Garth - your notion of porosity of content, I was not sure how to understand
> this. How is a soliloqy or monologue unfixed, and how would it
> change in an interactive performance? and as to "interactive performance,"
> how is "rich kinesthetic or movement awareness, often aligning or confronting
> the proprioceptive and motor systems of performers and audience members by
> way of unusual, collaborative, mediated, or hybrid movement forms"
> interesting to you regarding to the question of content?
> What rich kinesthetic or movement awareness have you discerned in what I
> often (perhaps disappointedly) would consider "slapstick"? How do we really
> interpret what we see (just think of the less than really encouraging
> observations that Tamara describes after her workshops with the children
> holding their iPads (and their fixation on big screen images:
>> children were captivated by their digital representation and enjoyed moving
>> with their avatar, who on the large screen, was much larger than them ....>)
>
> I would not mind debating the 'slapstick" audience action in many interactive
> installations (whatever the virtual embodiment factor is or might be): I
> think we need to be more critical of the so-called fake embodiment our
> interface protocols induce (and John would probably agree here?). The same
> (sorry if I tread upon the somatics aspects here) holds true for performers
> performing "virtual embodiments."
>
> To shift, ever slightly, I wondered after last week's workshops directed in
> Madrid by Robert Wechsler (formerly director of Palindrome, now offering
> interactive workshops in sounding movement with his software "MotionComposer"
> to people with disabilities) - and perhaps this would be directed as a
> question to Hellen's "alchemy" --- >>in performance this agency brings with
> it capacity to, enliven performers presence, minutia of attentiveness to
> time passing from and through transformed synaesthically engender new
> forms of virtuosity - I remember in previous post I think in the last two
> weeks the word of alchemy....> --- I wondered whether we are fooling
> ourselves or whether there is something like the metaphysics Hellen points
> to? I tried my best to be skeptical about metaphysics (or out of body
> experiences and religious rapture) n my last post of the first week, but
> sadly nobody responded, so I will ask again:
>
> Hellen - what do you mean when you write >-embodied (ethnography) in '
> systems' which have dissolved borders between my physical and virtual state
> of being - distributed over networks > are you distributed? I have not
> been distrbuted , so I am curious?
>
> Porosity? Jaime del Val, also at Madrid, tried very hard to make me think so
> too (in his "Metaformance – Microsexes, Disalignments, Microdeviations" on
> the rooftop of his studio), my body mingled with his, and my perception
> becoming destabilized and confused by amorphous bodylandscapes generated by
> the camera tracking his and my skin, well, it did not work for me, I knew my
> body and his camera and could see what the camera created.....
>
> Thus, "virtual" is a convenient delusion or artistic polemic, no?
>
> For the people with physical or cognitive disabilities in Robert's workshop
> [http://www.motioncomposer.com/en/welcome/], however potent it was, I could
> not tell whether the participants actually believed (wished they surely did)
> their movement gestures "made" the music we heard. (The software did). And
> thus increasingly one could sense a feeling of snake oil magic, the
> participants may imagine to "compose" music but they surely do not "swallow
> the system" and it is not their/our system. Borders did not dissolve.
>
> Most likely I cannot speak for the participants, although I also tried the
> system (MotionComposer has 6 environments of different sounds that can be
> triggered) and failed to enjoy it; the participants with disabilities laughed
> and cheered it, so they must have felt their movements mattered ..... yet I
> was worried that it didn't (and perhaps Sue has some experience on this?).
>
> respectfully
> Johannes Birringer
> DAP-Lab
>
>
>
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Hellen Sky
digital choreographer, performer, director/teacher/writer/researcher
Hellen Sky & Collaborators
E- hel...@hellensky.com
Mob +614 03 218 673
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www.hellensky.com
artist in residence BRIGHTSPACE
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