Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Jacqueline sawatzky]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear all,

> Jacky, can you tell us more about your video and what you actually mean by 
> vector video -- watching your "Impression of Bimhuis Dance & music improv 
> Lab" (http://vimeo.com/99429183), your camera work looks like mine and I 
> don;t know whaty vector video is. I also was not sure what (in that video) 
> was the camera's observation point of view as it seemed straightforwardly 
> focussed on the dancer and the dance gestures.



Before I make an attempt to answer Johannes' question I want to acknowledge 
where I get my inspiration from. 
Dr. Laura Marks her writing on enfolding and unfolding; as well Michael 
Schumacher's ideas around instant composition and dance improvisation, and the  
concepts around, outrospection (the emphatic camera) and  Japanese Calligraphy 
the line  as a reflection of the soul and euclidian vectors. When I get into  
the reflection stage, I can be more precise about what , how, why, these 
references,  maybe if I decide to do a PHd on this topic. Until now , I am 
creating and observing the response to the videos. The risk with all creations  
is that is stays with as a novel idea, dissolves in tin air, ethereal, flakey,  
and edges on SO WHAT. But it is this edge I am interested in, aware I might 
fall of. 

A difficult and good question, and thank you Johannes for asking this question. 
My apologies for this fragmented answer.

This exploration into so called vector video, started as a hunch, an intuition, 
and motivated by the need to imagine what a different intent of video can be. I 
found the HD video quality stifled me, and the expense _monetary as well  as 
computational_frightened me; it was so corporate ,closed, and optic. 

 And to be honest I also don't know what a vector video is. The question I 
started of with: A vector has a beginning, end and magnitude; it has movement, 
direction, intention. How can this be translated into a video.

In the years I working with dancers and seeing them use the camera,, I have 
noticed the awareness of their bodies and the space around them, made for 
camera work which wasn't necessary an extension of the eye (default mode), 
instead an extension of (diverse) qualities of embodiment. I see in this 
quality of awareness a possible resistance to how the HD video quality makes 
representation.  I have also noticed that the years of dance and sports 
training I have done has the same effect on my camera work.  So in this 
context, Johannes  your comment  'your camera works looks like mine' , makes 
sense,  as your background is dance. It makes me SMILE!!  

A video vector departs from the camera being an extension of this diverse 
qualities embodiment. The topic is listened too with all the senses, not only 
the eye. When filming, I touch the person or the situation with the camera, 
which is used like a pencil, other than a tool for capturing, giving the 
resulting footage the feel of a handwritten document or a drawing. 

 Johannes, your observation  is very true the Bimhuis video seems straight 
forward, though as it was improvisation, it required from me an awareness of 
the dancers in the space, in relationship to  the camera vocabularies.  My 
intentions were, with the camera I am part of the piece, so also improvising, 
only I am restricted to my seat, and the results only visible later, as video.  
I provide for a virtual time and space which is not abstract, but embodied. I 
am not trying to capture the performance, thus the results follow, as you 
observed, the dancers and less so frames them.  

 Since a year I have made a series of these video vectors. The viewers response 
has been so far they engage with the topic not with the video, and often on a 
haptic, visceral level; they seem to forget the filmmaker  who becomes 
transparent, as Michael Schumacher said. Now the level of  transparency varies 
per video,for example when I feel too vulnerable, the filmmaker becomes 
visible. If you are interested the recent  vector videos are here 
https://vimeo.com/album/2562895 and my favorite https://vimeo.com/71007444

So here are some initial thoughts. I hope it makes some sense and it is not 
some rambling. 

I hope my response is not being inconvenient as this topic is dragging into the 
next month.


Johannes , I love your reflections on the radio, and observation on the 
increase of popularity in audio books. Do you maybe think that listing more so 
than looking brings one back into the body? 

regards, Jacky 









On 2014-07-31, at 8:08 PM, Johannes Birringer wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> 
> 
> Dear all,   
> 
> last day of July has come, and, thanks to Jacky, we are suddenly on to sports 
> and a quite fascinating subject regarding the current era of
> technological reproducibility of the aura of high performance, or as you argue
> 
>> 
> the extreme embodiment of  their sports discipline, though along sid

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[FRITZ Vivian (ART)]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
 
Dear all
something in that probably they are interested
"dQ14 Dancing in SPACE"
http://www.unistra.fr/index.php?id=19773&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=14651&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=9311&cHash=d2c7212c525a015d20eed874cafb2596
http://www.xanela-rede.net/xnl-laboratorio/dq14-dancing-in-space/

Regads
Vivi
www.seuil-lab.com
https://sites.google.com/site/vivianfritzroa/


Le Jeudi 31 Juillet 2014 20:08 CEST, Johannes Birringer 
 a écrit: 
 
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> 
> 
> Dear all,   
> 
> last day of July has come, and, thanks to Jacky, we are suddenly on to sports 
> and a quite fascinating subject regarding the current era of
> technological reproducibility of the aura of high performance, or as you argue
> 
> >
> the extreme embodiment of  their sports discipline, though along side there 
> is  a virtual body , data _video, statistics, motion capture data_ collected 
> through all kinds of tracking technology. This virtual body is there to 
> assist in elevating the athlete slightly above their physical 'limitations'.
> >
> 
> This is interesting on many counts  --- thanks also to Sue for expanding on 
> her work and the choreographic or performative "embodied presence of place" 
> (Sue schreibt:  " the kinaesthetic patterns of the there-and-then reveal the 
> presence of ghost gestures that haunt the here-and-now, wherever that may 
> be". There are some cross-overs to Moments in Place").  The feedback you 
> quoted, Sue, is of course also fascinating as I was imagining myself, not 
> having experienced this haptic-dance project, what it would be like to feel a 
> dance but not see the dancer.
> 
> This is perhaps analogous to radio. And what it leaves to the imagination, 
> Jacky.  You remembered (and made your 'Intimate Irrelevant Moments') about 
> the 1974 final world cup game (Germany-Netherlands), which I remember having 
> watched.  On the other hand, before our time, there was a final  (a few years 
> after the war, and a defeated and humiliated germany was allowed to 
> participate again), in 1954, in Switzerland, when Germany won 3:2 against 
> Hungary and there was no television, only radio, and yet the final minutes of 
> this game have had mythical proportions in German culture  and yet the action 
> was only ever experienced aurally by the listeners to the radio broadcast,  
> the voice of the broadcast commentator, by the time I grew up, had become a 
> collective reverberant, a series of vocal gestures perhaps indeed comparable 
> to a "monument" in Kirk's sense of an intangible heritage, and something that 
> could perhaps be re-constructed via archaeology...
> 
> ...and an "audio" archaeology  (of virtual embodiments of sound and music, as 
> well as instruments) seems to be at the heart of a current exhibit at the 
> Science Museum in London which I believe drew from the archives of the BBC 
> and also featured a female inventor and sound artist probably not many have 
> heard of -- Daphne Oram. The wall texts of the exhibit say that the museum " 
> unveils lost gem of electronic music", the Oramics Machine, a unique 
> synthesizer - invented in the1960s by Daphne Oram  who established the BBC 
> Radiophonic Workshop. The synthesizer machine (see: 
> http://www.nervoussquirrel.com/oramics.html) is rather amazing as it seems to 
> have been an early synthesiser that has audio parameters controlled and 
> sequenced by drawing on strips of clear film (!). Oram drew Michaux-like 
> sinuous curves, shapes, graphic signs, figures and gestures onto film strips. 
> The film is wound across a horizontal bed, with the graphical elements 
> interpreted by light sensors. 
> 
> The sound was early electronic sine waves, oscillations and noises etc (as 
> rock musicians then also started to use them when the Moog Synthesizer became 
> available); well now, Jacky, can you tell us more about your video and what 
> you actually mean by vector video -- watching your "Impression of Bimhuis 
> Dance & music improv Lab" (http://vimeo.com/99429183), your camera work looks 
> like mine and I don;t know whaty vector video is. I also was not sure what 
> (in that video) was the camera's observation point of view as it seemed 
> straightforwardly focussed on the dancer and the dance gestures.
> 
> Sue's work on inhabiting places (then and there and here and now), or Kirk's 
> experimental archaeology with digital means thus gains an interesting 
> contradictory dimension:  if we cannot see the place or experience it with 
> our own body,
> but only through virtual means (and an other body becoming virtual, yes?), 
> how  d o  we know or sense  (mentioning Harun Farocki,  whose critical images 
> surely would interest Simon Taylor, reminds of what Brecht said about 
> photography: namely that a photograph of the Krupp Steel Works does not tell 
> us anything about the Krupp Steel Works), through "amplification"  or ot

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Johannes Birringer]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--


Dear all,   

last day of July has come, and, thanks to Jacky, we are suddenly on to sports 
and a quite fascinating subject regarding the current era of
technological reproducibility of the aura of high performance, or as you argue

>
the extreme embodiment of  their sports discipline, though along side there is  
a virtual body , data _video, statistics, motion capture data_ collected 
through all kinds of tracking technology. This virtual body is there to assist 
in elevating the athlete slightly above their physical 'limitations'.
>

This is interesting on many counts  --- thanks also to Sue for expanding on her 
work and the choreographic or performative "embodied presence of place" (Sue 
schreibt:  " the kinaesthetic patterns of the there-and-then reveal the 
presence of ghost gestures that haunt the here-and-now, wherever that may be". 
There are some cross-overs to Moments in Place").  The feedback you quoted, 
Sue, is of course also fascinating as I was imagining myself, not having 
experienced this haptic-dance project, what it would be like to feel a dance 
but not see the dancer.

This is perhaps analogous to radio. And what it leaves to the imagination, 
Jacky.  You remembered (and made your 'Intimate Irrelevant Moments') about the 
1974 final world cup game (Germany-Netherlands), which I remember having 
watched.  On the other hand, before our time, there was a final  (a few years 
after the war, and a defeated and humiliated germany was allowed to participate 
again), in 1954, in Switzerland, when Germany won 3:2 against Hungary and there 
was no television, only radio, and yet the final minutes of this game have had 
mythical proportions in German culture  and yet the action was only ever 
experienced aurally by the listeners to the radio broadcast,  the voice of the 
broadcast commentator, by the time I grew up, had become a collective 
reverberant, a series of vocal gestures perhaps indeed comparable to a 
"monument" in Kirk's sense of an intangible heritage, and something that could 
perhaps be re-constructed via archaeology...

...and an "audio" archaeology  (of virtual embodiments of sound and music, as 
well as instruments) seems to be at the heart of a current exhibit at the 
Science Museum in London which I believe drew from the archives of the BBC and 
also featured a female inventor and sound artist probably not many have heard 
of -- Daphne Oram. The wall texts of the exhibit say that the museum " unveils 
lost gem of electronic music", the Oramics Machine, a unique synthesizer - 
invented in the1960s by Daphne Oram  who established the BBC Radiophonic 
Workshop. The synthesizer machine (see: 
http://www.nervoussquirrel.com/oramics.html) is rather amazing as it seems to 
have been an early synthesiser that has audio parameters controlled and 
sequenced by drawing on strips of clear film (!). Oram drew Michaux-like 
sinuous curves, shapes, graphic signs, figures and gestures onto film strips. 
The film is wound across a horizontal bed, with the graphical elements 
interpreted by light sensors. 

The sound was early electronic sine waves, oscillations and noises etc (as rock 
musicians then also started to use them when the Moog Synthesizer became 
available); well now, Jacky, can you tell us more about your video and what you 
actually mean by vector video -- watching your "Impression of Bimhuis Dance & 
music improv Lab" (http://vimeo.com/99429183), your camera work looks like mine 
and I don;t know whaty vector video is. I also was not sure what (in that 
video) was the camera's observation point of view as it seemed 
straightforwardly focussed on the dancer and the dance gestures.

Sue's work on inhabiting places (then and there and here and now), or Kirk's 
experimental archaeology with digital means thus gains an interesting 
contradictory dimension:  if we cannot see the place or experience it with our 
own body,
but only through virtual means (and an other body becoming virtual, yes?), how  
d o  we know or sense  (mentioning Harun Farocki,  whose critical images surely 
would interest Simon Taylor, reminds of what Brecht said about photography: 
namely that a photograph of the Krupp Steel Works does not tell us anything 
about the Krupp Steel Works), through "amplification"  or other definition (HD 
, 3D or other wise), what is the matter?

(radio, by the way, is back, and thus our work of imagination.  I read the 
other day that audio books are becoming more and more popular, folks like to 
listen to literature,  I find this rather wonderful, as I enjoy imagining 
places and characters).


regards
Johannes Birringer
dap-lab
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap


___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Jacqueline sawatzky]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear Johannes,

Thank you, it would be great if we could continue the discussion.

 I got thinking about my World cup soccer piece  'Intimate Irrelevant Moments' 
jackysawatzky.net/single_cappuccino/   and the relationship it has to this 
topic. None, was my initial thoughts;  however, as I got typing these thoughts 
came up. 


In my work I was interested in the mediation of the viewers experience, and 
effect HD camera technology had on the representation of the players and the 
game. I conclude that  High Definition images leave less space for the 
imagination and have the potential to give an assumption that  what the viewer 
see broadcasted is not really virtual. What do the viewers need to do to get 
back their imagination? Herein I saw an important roll   for the space and 
place wherein the World Cup was watched.

Harun Farocki made a work about World Cup Soccer, 
http://www.farocki-film.de/deepeg.htm also from 2006, the same year I did mine. 
He looks at the various ways the game is contextualized. On one of the 12 
screens on display there is an abstraction of the game, dots representing the 
players and lines their  connection, as well as the data derived from this  a 
computer analyzes of the game.  

Thinking about his work, top sports has through the onset of digital technology 
an interesting relationship with embodiment and the virtual. As each athlete 
presents an extreme embodiment of  their sports discipline, though along side 
there is  a virtual body , data _video, statistics, motion capture data_ 
collected through all kinds of tracking technology. This virtual body is there 
to assist in elevating the athlete slightly above their physical 'limitations'. 
 In the moment of performance, the virtual embodiment needs to be translated 
back , taken ownership off by the actual  the athlete. She or he needs take 
ownership of their virtual representation to come to a top performance. 

 Any thoughts , experience with this, work that touch on this?


In a next post I will reply to your question in regard to the camera and 
embodiment, as I saw Sue Hawksley recents response and want to take some time 
to read her new posts and look at the links, and reflect.  


Thank you for listing.

Regards,
Jacky Sawatzky

Artist

Models of Observation

http://jackysawatzky.net

https://vimeo.com/videovectors

"The convergence of media, which is an inherited quality of the computer, has 
become unappealing. It reminds me of processed food where if I eat alfredo 
sauce or tandoori chicken mix, I always feel like my taste buds are confined 
within the limits of the chemicals used to preserve the food, by the 
conventions of an mass-produced taste of tandoori chicken or alfredo sauce. I 
came to the conclusion that the normalization of the senses is the commonality 
between processed food and the computer screen." Screencozies





On 2014-07-30, at 11:42 PM, Johannes Birringer wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> 
> dear all:
> 
> [Kirk schreibt]
> I’m sorry I’ve not been able to participate in real-time, but I have found 
> inspiration in many of the comments several days after they were written.
> 
> understandably, and as pointed out at the end of the June discussion (sonic 
> pathways) here, not everyone is able to write/respond instantly, I almost 
> feel such discussions, if they feel worthwhile, as Jackie also just pointed 
> out in her post on/from "models observation" (and I really enjoyed getting a 
> glimpse of the videos on https://vimeo.com/videovectors, and also found your 
> comments on camera style/mediation on past old World Cups [1974] and more 
> recent ones quite illuminating), ought perhaps to continue, for a while 
> longer, and spill over, or continue to resonate and draw in more of you, if 
> needs be, slowly. 
> 
> Kirk's response to some questions were much appreciated, I had no idea, Kirk, 
> that you are in fact working on alternative modeling & archiving  -- also, 
> the debate now between John and Simon is truly breathtaking,  as far as the 
> "beyond" is concerned (John's philosophical commentary on dislocating and 
> separating memory from individual embodied memory, as well as the earlier 
> comments on "maintenance of archive", collective and individual) and thus 
> seems to bear on heritage work and what Kirk refers to as issues " 
> surrounding embodiment and bodily practices to inform our understanding of 
> past cultures. In short, we attempted to look at landscapes and archeological 
> records not as sculptures or illustrative records, but to place embodied 
> researchers in human-scale (re)constructions."
> 
> It then seems also quite relevant (as you mention a certain kind of 
> documentation made for academic research contexts) to really ponder the 
> question (Simon Taylor's) of sliding scales amongst the "factitioner, the 
> quantic surveyor, the data-garnerer", and also th

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Sue Hawksley]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Dear Johannes, dear all.


On 31 Jul 2014, at 07:12, Johannes Birringer  
wrote:
> you may recall that Sue Hawksley mentioned her work on physical practices, 
> her choreographic explorations with dancer Freya Jeffs, and she also 
> mentioned that a filmmaker was involved, Roddy Simpson, but Roddy's impact is 
> not discussed.
> 
Roddy's contribution is only briefly addressed in this short article, which was 
angled to meet the focii of the Peripatetic Studio blog 
  (which might be of interest to 
other empyreans? - it is "dedicated to the spaces we work in and how they 
impact on the creative work we produce. It’s a blog about place, process and 
product. It’s an archive of personal experience, discussion and debate. The 
posts are personal accounts written by creative practitioners from a variety of 
different disciplines. TPS is curated by two.5, a collaboration between writer 
and researcher Viccy Adams and photographic media artist Samantha Silver").

I chose to share this article because I though people might be interested in 
the shaping of ideas of and by the spaces, including how Roddy's filming and 
editing create a 'window' "through which we view the subtle presence of places 
that inhabit the dancer’s presence as she reinhabits them. For me, it is very 
significant that Roddy chose to situate the figure in the film on a plain black 
background, extracting her from any specific place and time. In Traces of 
Places we seek to bring to attention and evoke the embodied presence of place. 
Perhaps in some ways, the kinaesthetic patterns of the there-and-then reveal 
the presence of ghost gestures that haunt the here-and-now, wherever that may 
be". There are some cross-overs to Moments in Place. Of course, in the bodily 
practices and the devising of the film, we seek to bring to attention and evoke 
presence, place etc., but I'd never claim to know what is found, nor presume to 
know what the other will see or feel, as per John Hopkins' meditation on 
"hypostasis". I would like to share two little pieces of feedback from 
participants in the R & D for another dancework I made, which was to be 
received by touch. One said "It’s really strange! You did something like this, 
and I felt, I thought, I’m Sue!, I’m actually Sue!”,  while another said "I 
just felt some strokes, just meaningless strokes". Of course these are 
sound-bites, extracted from their extended comments , but to me they hint at 
the "the interstitial chasm" John described.

all the best, Sue


SUE HAWKSLEY
independent dance artist
s...@articulateanimal.org.uk
http://www.articulateanimal.org.uk




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Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Johannes Birringer]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--

dear all:

[Kirk schreibt]
 I’m sorry I’ve not been able to participate in real-time, but I have found 
inspiration in many of the comments several days after they were written.

understandably, and as pointed out at the end of the June discussion (sonic 
pathways) here, not everyone is able to write/respond instantly, I almost feel 
such discussions, if they feel worthwhile, as Jackie also just pointed out in 
her post on/from "models observation" (and I really enjoyed getting a glimpse 
of the videos on https://vimeo.com/videovectors, and also found your comments 
on camera style/mediation on past old World Cups [1974] and more recent ones 
quite illuminating), ought perhaps to continue, for a while longer, and spill 
over, or continue to resonate and draw in more of you, if needs be, slowly. 

Kirk's response to some questions were much appreciated, I had no idea, Kirk, 
that you are in fact working on alternative modeling & archiving  -- also, the 
debate now between John and Simon is truly breathtaking,  as far as the 
"beyond" is concerned (John's philosophical commentary on dislocating and 
separating memory from individual embodied memory, as well as the earlier 
comments on "maintenance of archive", collective and individual) and thus seems 
to bear on heritage work and what Kirk refers to as issues " surrounding 
embodiment and bodily practices to inform our understanding of past cultures. 
In short, we attempted to look at landscapes and archeological records not as 
sculptures or illustrative records, but to place embodied researchers in 
human-scale (re)constructions."

It then seems also quite relevant (as you mention a certain kind of 
documentation made for academic research contexts) to really ponder the 
question (Simon Taylor's) of sliding scales amongst the "factitioner, the 
quantic surveyor, the data-garnerer", and also then the facebook players  (must 
agree here, very well then, if the younger folks think facebook a game or a 
joke, that's nice), and in your case the experimental archaeologists and 
(re)constructeurs testing digital reconstruction technologies for "evocations" 
(an ethnographic term used by Latin American artists who came to Houston to 
work with us on a project in 1997 [see my archiving of "Después de la 
Etnometodología" at http://www.digitalcultures.org/research12.html // 
http://www.digitalcultures.org/Library/transart.html]) of intangible heritage. 

It would occur to me that a conversation between all of you only just started, 
and perhaps, Jackie, as you mention your concern with how cameras (observing 
and filming) "impose themselves on different qualities of embodiment and 
movement vocabulary" (are you suggesting the camera always already manipulates 
the "user" embodiment  and viewer's perception of such?) you may recall 
that Sue Hawksley mentioned her work on physical practices, her choreographic 
explorations with dancer Freya Jeffs, and she also mentioned that a filmmaker 
was involved, Roddy Simpson, but Roddy's impact is not discussed.



Sue does mention that "Roddy helped out with documenting the process through 
video and photos. Documentation of dance is something I always find 
problematic, especially as I am not a filmmaker; my own efforts generally 
reflect this lack, while professionally produced material reflects the 
presence, perspective and creative input of the person behind the camera. To 
address this concern I wanted for some time to make a piece specifically for 
camera"
but I could not find a video of "Traces of Places" and thus cannot comment on 
how cameras can "capture" or move internal pressure, internal inhabiting 
remembered space, trauma, memory.  

The repression of pain (to use a Freudian term) would not really be 
dissociative, individually or collectively, would it? How could pain of guilt 
be ever thoroughly dislocated, separated? (growing up in Germany, those 
questions, addressed to our parent generation, always cut quite close to the 
skin). Today, incidentally, Poles and Germans remember the uprising and 
massacre in the Warsaw ghetto in 1944, and the german president remarked that 
it is sheer unbelievable ["ein Wunder"]  that the two countries have friendly 
relations today. 

Kirk, one would need time to read the articles on your practice and gain a 
better understanding;  Simon's brilliant post certainly invites responses and I 
am re-reading slowly what you say, Simon, thus not able to answer yet, it's 
exceedingly complex and sometimes I feel, now encouraged in my feeling after 
you speak of your Minus theatre company as using a number of (playful) second 
languages, that you are stepping out of "our" systems. 

This idea, that we are scarcely bound and tethered by "our" dispositifs - 
especially when they are not a fundamentally ordered system – but that we c

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[k.woolford]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--

Dear Johannes, et. al, 

Thanks for your response. You’ve picked up on one of the issues I’ve been 
wrestling with the past few years as a creative practitioner (artist?) 
functioning within traditional research-led universities. The Moments in Place 
documentation you saw on Vimeo was created as a REF submission and attempts to 
demonstrate the links between the underlying Arts and Humanities Research and 
the Creative Practice.. In trying to address both, I don’t believe I’ve 
addressed either sufficiently, and am in the process of writing new 
documentation for both. 

The archaeological or heritage work we addressed through the Motion in Place 
Platform (MiPP) attempts to use debates surrounding embodiment and bodily 
practices to inform our understanding of past cultures. In short, we attempted 
to look at landscapes and archeological records not a sculptures or 
illustrative records, but to place embodied researchers in human-scale 
(re)constructions. We had no desire, or interest, to “virtualise” existing 
experiences or practices. Rather, we explored methods of (re)constructing 
places which no longer exist. We did this both through “virtual” 
(re)constructions using interactive technologies as well as through “physical” 
(re)constructions in collaboration with the experimental archaeologists at 
Butser Ancient Farm. I’ve adopted Stuart Dunn’s use of the term 
“(re)construction” to hilight the fact that we constructed several models from 
the archeological evidence using timber, thatching, projectors and inertial 
capture suits. If you’d like an overview of the work, may I recommend:

the JOCCH article at:  http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2532632 
The EVA article at: http://ewic.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/46121  

or these book chapters:

Woolford K, Dunn S., (2014) "Micro-Mobilities and Affordances of Past Places", 
Past Mobilities: Archaeological Approaches to Movement and Mobility, Ashgate 
Publishing: Farhnam, pp. 113-128.

Dunn, S, Woolford, K., (2013) “Reconfiguring experimental archaeology using 3D 
reconstruction”, Electronic Visualisation in Arts and Culture, Springer Verlag, 
pp 277-291.










It’s very interesting that your start your response with memories of a funeral. 
I hope you won’t think of me as being insensitive in making a comparison 
between your experience and what we’ve attempted to address through the MiPP 
projects. 




On 25 Jul 2014, at 23:24, Johannes Birringer  
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> dear all
> 
> [Kirk schreibt]
> 
>>> it’s interesting to look at it from the perspective of Simon’s question, 
>>> “does virtual embodiment depend on, augment or replace bodily practices?”. 
>>> Of course we can claim this piece augments current bodily practices by 
>>> allowing offsets between the performance and perception thereof. However, 
>>> more happens through pieces such as this. I used different techniques to 
>>> render the performers as semi-tangible, semi-present or even semi-embodied, 
>>> because I wanted to evoke notions of ghosts and hauntings. These performers 
>>> aren’t in the place at the time they are observed, but they were. The 
>>> experience of the live performance was very different from the performance 
>>> of the mediated or “virtual” performance. As you can see from the 
>>> documentation, when we captured a “live” performance in a busy shopping 
>>> street on a Saturday in Brighton, there was a lot of unintentional 
>>> interaction from shoppers. When you go back to (re)create the performance 
>>> at the same site, it’s never the same. Either shoppers walk straight at you 
>>> making it difficult to observe the performance, or you’re in a quiet, empty 
>>> space where the movements of the dancer makes less sense. The mediated 
>>> performance is re-created or created anew each time it’s observed.>>
> 
> 
> I'd like to thank Sally Jane, Wesley and Kirk, for inviting us to visit 
> Brighton (via vimeo and play.google.com/store/apps). Also, Kirk reopened a 
> question posed at the beginning of the month by Sue and Simon (see in quote) 
> – “does virtual embodiment depend on, augment or replace bodily practices?”.
> 
> I wondered whether others went to have a look/listen?  
> 
> These work examples are really helpful, and inspiring thought (Wireless 
> Fidelity / Moments in Place), and I am grappling to find a good response, as 
> they deserve so. 
> 
> Having just come home from the funeral that I had mentioned, my mind is 
> adrift. The funeral was a funeral, and I have not attended many recently, not 
> in the ancestral village, and I was not entirely prepared for the affect it 
> had on me, in the presence of so many people from the village, as we attended 
> the church service, then walked up the hill to the cemetery, then followed 
> the precise ritual of attending to the last farewell to the deceased member 
> of family and community, each act

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[sally jane norman]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks Wes,

Personally I find your "small gesture" resonant in a number of ways, but
this is (also) largely a question of sensibilities. The sensible,
perceptible, crafting of otherwise hidden data to bring it into my
sensorium feels eminently in line with this "virtual embodiment" theme that
is so subject to individual interpretations, thus so provocative as a point
of dialogue. In Simon Taylor's words, to seek "a taste of the different
leaks through the interface" is perhaps a valid goal - principles of
embodiment in figural painting (especially with an artist like Bacon!)
indeed remain as problematic as in more recent expressive media. I find I
have to keep honing awareness of this wider media legacy to try and gauge
the specificities of emerging means.

And the embodiment of walking, instantiated through Wes's and Kirk's
pieces, is one I particularly enjoy.  Having a song in my head or through
my headset, or an image in my mind's eye that's not in the street, or
that's on a hand-held, these are multiple layerings of experiences
identifiable as more or less virtual and always already necessarily
embodied. Again I'm overstating the all too obvious that therefore
sometimes needs to be overstated. For want of something better to say. Play
it again, Sam.

best
sj








On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 12:05 PM, Wesley Goatley 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Johannes and all,
>
> I am always happy for the work to be questioned, I find the most exciting
> new perspectives can be often be synthesised from the process.
>
> Wireless-Fidelity is really grappling with a popular relational distance
> to network technology, which I'm referring to experimentally with a version
> of the term 'Virtualising'.  Here I'm trying to push at the complex forces
> that surround the mainstream relationship to/attitudes towards both the
> internet and the power structures underlying it.  I find 'virtualising' a
> useful term here in the context made in my previous post, as those popular
> sources have had a huge impact on many subsequent representations of
> technology and communication in popular culture (specifically the
> internet).  All tended towards a portrayal of 'the network' and the many
> forms it takes in these fictions as something beyond understanding or
> access to any but a mystical 'expert', sphinx-like in their guardianship of
> occult knowledge, beyond the ken of the passive masses.  These powerful and
> popular representations all established themselves just as the internet was
> becoming an everyday feature of home life for a huge amount of people, and
> I feel that these fictions have helped to allow the exploitation of privacy
> and personal data that the majority of internet users are subject to today.
>  Terms like 'virtual reality' and 'cyberspace' were suddenly the topic du
> jour of multiple hugely popular fictional realities (still built on today
> by endless online fanfics), no doubt fired on by the digital utopianism
> prevalent at the end of the last century.  Out of view, misunderstood,
> imagined as a non-real space with non-real consequences...these are all
> common to those 'virtual reality' fictions before broadband and smartphones
> changed the playing field, and drawing attention to this illustrated
> relationship to technology/power (that certainly has a huge historical
> foundation existing long before the invention of the computer) with use of
> the term 'virtual' is a useful way of setting a broader context for the
> discussions the work is trying to open up.  The perception of the network
> as a technology that's only noticed when it malfunctions or fails; of
> Facebook and Google etc as 'free' (the great quote being that when
> something online is free, you're not the customer, you're the product); of
> 'the cloud' as being ethereal, rather than manifest as hugely consumptive
> data centers surrounded by armed guards; of the internet existing outside
> of factional politics (a privileged and erroneous perspective difficult to
> hold outside of the west) - these popular ideas all create distance between
> the user and the technology around us.
>
> Foregrounding the corporate bodies in the network is one small gesture in
> trying to broaden the perception of the network as being fundamentally
> politically and ideologically operated (this can easily be taken literally
> through examining ownership of the submarine data cables
> http://submarine-cable-map-2013.telegeography.com/).  The most cursory
> background exploration of an internet service provider will start throwing
> up info on what sites they choose to block, who owns them, who they sell
> user data to etc. - this is all generally listed on their wikipedia page.
>  These elements are open to change and shift with other political and
> technological forces, so Wireless-Fidelity hopes to create a tool with
> lasting use by inviting the l

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Wesley Goatley]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Johannes and all,

I am always happy for the work to be questioned, I find the most exciting
new perspectives can be often be synthesised from the process.

Wireless-Fidelity is really grappling with a popular relational distance to
network technology, which I'm referring to experimentally with a version of
the term 'Virtualising'.  Here I'm trying to push at the complex forces
that surround the mainstream relationship to/attitudes towards both the
internet and the power structures underlying it.  I find 'virtualising' a
useful term here in the context made in my previous post, as those popular
sources have had a huge impact on many subsequent representations of
technology and communication in popular culture (specifically the
internet).  All tended towards a portrayal of 'the network' and the many
forms it takes in these fictions as something beyond understanding or
access to any but a mystical 'expert', sphinx-like in their guardianship of
occult knowledge, beyond the ken of the passive masses.  These powerful and
popular representations all established themselves just as the internet was
becoming an everyday feature of home life for a huge amount of people, and
I feel that these fictions have helped to allow the exploitation of privacy
and personal data that the majority of internet users are subject to today.
 Terms like 'virtual reality' and 'cyberspace' were suddenly the topic du
jour of multiple hugely popular fictional realities (still built on today
by endless online fanfics), no doubt fired on by the digital utopianism
prevalent at the end of the last century.  Out of view, misunderstood,
imagined as a non-real space with non-real consequences...these are all
common to those 'virtual reality' fictions before broadband and smartphones
changed the playing field, and drawing attention to this illustrated
relationship to technology/power (that certainly has a huge historical
foundation existing long before the invention of the computer) with use of
the term 'virtual' is a useful way of setting a broader context for the
discussions the work is trying to open up.  The perception of the network
as a technology that's only noticed when it malfunctions or fails; of
Facebook and Google etc as 'free' (the great quote being that when
something online is free, you're not the customer, you're the product); of
'the cloud' as being ethereal, rather than manifest as hugely consumptive
data centers surrounded by armed guards; of the internet existing outside
of factional politics (a privileged and erroneous perspective difficult to
hold outside of the west) - these popular ideas all create distance between
the user and the technology around us.

Foregrounding the corporate bodies in the network is one small gesture in
trying to broaden the perception of the network as being fundamentally
politically and ideologically operated (this can easily be taken literally
through examining ownership of the submarine data cables
http://submarine-cable-map-2013.telegeography.com/).  The most cursory
background exploration of an internet service provider will start throwing
up info on what sites they choose to block, who owns them, who they sell
user data to etc. - this is all generally listed on their wikipedia page.
 These elements are open to change and shift with other political and
technological forces, so Wireless-Fidelity hopes to create a tool with
lasting use by inviting the listener to an explicit awareness of the
density and presence of corporate bodies, opening the door to further
exploration and discussion with this knowledge.

We have no biological sensory receptors for this data present in the
network signal without technological mediation - the sonification deployed
here uses a varied textural palette to involve the listener's body through
sound in the perception of the data rather than viewed through a removed
screen as this dataset is commonly perceived.  The low bass drone in
headphones resonates particularly dominantly, reflecting BTs long-standing
market share - there is no volume control for the listener other than to
move closer or further away to the signal, elements lost in the limited
involvement the video alone can create.

I'm currently building multiple copies of the device to be loaned out to
gallery visitors during the upcoming Brighton Digital Festival - allowing
them to experience a new sensory experience of well-trodden streets.  The
installation the devices will be based in will specifically explore the
ramifications of the data that the device highlights, and I'm eager to
incorporate these ideas into a wider realm of discussion.

Wesley

P.S. Thank you for sharing the ritual with us in this way Johannes - I felt
that you extended the collectivity all the way here.


On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 11:24 PM, Johannes Birringer <
johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> dear all
>

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Johannes Birringer]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
dear all

[Kirk schreibt]

>>it’s interesting to look at it from the perspective of Simon’s question, 
>>“does virtual embodiment depend on, augment or replace bodily practices?”. Of 
>>course we can claim this piece augments current bodily practices by allowing 
>>offsets between the performance and perception thereof. However, more happens 
>>through pieces such as this. I used different techniques to render the 
>>performers as semi-tangible, semi-present or even semi-embodied, because I 
>>wanted to evoke notions of ghosts and hauntings. These performers aren’t in 
>>the place at the time they are observed, but they were. The experience of the 
>>live performance was very different from the performance of the mediated or 
>>“virtual” performance. As you can see from the documentation, when we 
>>captured a “live” performance in a busy shopping street on a Saturday in 
>>Brighton, there was a lot of unintentional interaction from shoppers. When 
>>you go back to (re)create the performance at the same site, it’s never the 
>>same. Either shoppers walk straight at you making it difficult to observe the 
>>performance, or you’re in a quiet, empty space where the movements of the 
>>dancer makes less sense. The mediated performance is re-created or created 
>>anew each time it’s observed.>>


I'd like to thank Sally Jane, Wesley and Kirk, for inviting us to visit 
Brighton (via vimeo and play.google.com/store/apps). Also, Kirk reopened a 
question posed at the beginning of the month by Sue and Simon (see in quote) – 
“does virtual embodiment depend on, augment or replace bodily practices?”.

I wondered whether others went to have a look/listen?  

These work examples are really helpful, and inspiring thought (Wireless 
Fidelity / Moments in Place), and I am grappling to find a good response, as 
they deserve so. 

Having just come home from the funeral that I had mentioned, my mind is adrift. 
The funeral was a funeral, and I have not attended many recently, not in the 
ancestral village, and I was not entirely prepared for the affect it had on me, 
in the presence of so many people from the village, as we attended the church 
service, then walked up the hill to the cemetery, then followed the precise 
ritual of attending to the last farewell to the deceased member of family and 
community, each action seemed scripted and yet natural, inevitable and 
communal, clear, somber and quiet, in place or in a distinct relationship to 
this location, the occasion of gathering, and the "place binding" (here i quote 
Kirk's reference to Tim Ingold whose writing on being ensounded and moving in 
sound i always admired (e.g. "Against Soundscape/Autumn Leaves"). The last 
ceremony was in silence, no sound heard except the rustling of leaves and the 
wind of an on-coming storm that did not arrive, the clouds drifting away slowly 
as we gathered later on some empty plots inside the cemetery, then folks walked 
slowly over to other older graves of departed ones, some recent, some longer 
ago, and then near the exist, slowly in low voice we shook hands and greeted 
one another, i knew some but most were unfamiliar to me, they also groped for 
my name and then they remembered, not always me, but my father or mother or 
brother, then we chatted, and slowly made our way out of the heterotopic, as 
the sky had cleared and became all blue again, evening setting in. The village 
was at peace, and we could feel it. I was grateful to those moments, 
unfathomable as they may be, undeserved as they may be; but so they should be, 
one should be able to bury one's loved ones in peace and in the present real.  

Then I wondered whether a place can be virtualized or whether  (I pick up Sally 
Jane) "an opaque ownership/ hidden ideologies of physical network structure .. 
can be artistically foregrounded, as in [Wes's]...use of sound"  or, as Wesley 
himself suggests, "de-virtualized"?  Can one really, as Wesley writes, 
>

I admit that after listening [https://vimeo.com/94572853] and watching 
[http://vimeo.com/80370446]  I have doubts, but I also thank, as I said 
earlier, the artists for sharing their work. I would want to invite others too, 
here, to respond to the question of augmentation. As to my response, I did not 
quite find it quite possible to walk with Wesley (via vimeo) and listen to Low 
Bass drones,  Granular Pianos, Female Vocal Samples, High Frequency Distortion 
Drones, Piano Loops, and Shoreline Recording of waves, and then imagine a, or 
any possible, relationship to BT's or Sky's market share. I looked at the 
streets, houses, and listened to the sound, but could not discern a "substance 
of data" or physical connection to anything, please help me. How would the 
walker extrapolate marketshares from ocean waves? And what good would it do?

In the case of 'Moments in Place,'  I was intrigued by the issue of site 
specificity and performances in an urban space c

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[k.woolford]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--

Hello all, 

Please accept my apologies for not being able to join this discussion from the 
beginning of the month. I’ve only been able to follow this week, spurned on by 
Sally Jane, very graciously forwarding what she’s written about my recent work. 
The piece she mentions is called “Moments in Place”. Information about the 
project, documentation, and links to the “Augmented Reality” app are available 
here: 

http://www.bhaptic.net/moments/

http://vimeo.com/80370446

The project grew out of the Motions in Place Platform (MiPP) research exploring 
relationships between movement and place. We’ve written a number of articles 
and book chapters exploring Tim Ingold’s wayfaring where human existence is not 
fundamentally place-bound, but "place-binding", Juhani Pallasmaa's links 
between bodies and their “domicile in space”, and Gibson’s affordances where 
bodies and environments form inseparable pairs. The Moments in Place 
performances are an attempt to leave a performance in a place and allow 
audiences to come-and-go around them. My intention was to alert the audience to 
the fact that they were “embodied” in this location and the location the was 
effecting(affecting) them as much as it had guided the original performer. As 
with most site-specific work, more people have now viewed the documentation 
than experienced the piece in-situ, so don’t know how successful we can call 
the project. 

However, it’s interesting to look at it from the perspective of Simon’s 
question, “does virtual embodiment depend on, augment or replace bodily 
practices?”. Of course we can claim this piece augments current bodily 
practices by allowing offsets between the performance and perception thereof. 
However, more happens through pieces such as this. I used different techniques 
to render the performers as semi-tangible, semi-present or even semi-embodied, 
because I wanted to evoke notions of ghosts and hauntings. These performers 
aren’t in the place at the time they are observed, but they were. The 
experience of the live performance was very different from the performance of 
the mediated or “virtual” performance. As you can see from the documentation, 
when we captured a “live” performance in a busy shopping street on a Saturday 
in Brighton, there was a lot of unintentional interaction from shoppers. When 
you go back to (re)create the performance at the same site, it’s never the 
same. Either shoppers walk straight at you making it difficult to observe the 
performance, or you’re in a quiet, empty space where the movements of the 
dancer makes less sense. The mediated performance is re-created or created anew 
each time it’s observed. 

The piece definitely augments traditional bodily practises, but it depends on 
them as well. It doesn’t replace them.  

best regards, 
-k







On 22 Jul 2014, at 09:06, sally jane norman  
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Johannes, all
> 
> We were using the notion of tessellation in the computer graphics sense, to 
> see how we might implement and shape mixed reality boundaries to convey 
> compelling corporeal experience. The example/ experiment we were engaged in 
> was work on Blast Theory's "Desert Rain" piece, which actually started out 
> using a physical water curtain as a boundary for an actor / spectator/ 
> "spectactor" to proceed from one type of space to another. It both symbolised 
> and instantiated a kind of switching mechanism between two distinct spaces 
> that were part of the installation/ performance set-up. Ultimately the water 
> curtain/ screen (on which there were projections) was replaced by a more 
> standard projection surface (i.e. we got rid of the "wetware", which was 
> pretty cumbersome!), but for exploring boundaries per se, and approaches to 
> proxemics - encroachment, traversal, reach etc - it was experimentally 
> productive. 
> 
> Perhaps a comparable more recent experiment might be Kirk Woolford's creation 
> for a Brighton "White Nights" festival a couple of years back. Kirk motion 
> captured dancers executing brief movement sequences in specific urban 
> Brighton locations featuring salient landmarks (e.g. graffiti-cum-mural 
> images), then developed an i-phone app to use real-time, in situ mapping of 
> the landmarks to convoke the motion captured dancer onto the screen of the 
> handheld device. There's something uncanny and magically intimate about 
> calling up these ghostly figures onto one's screen, whilst thoroughly 
> physically stationed in bustling streets. They generate another quality of 
> space. Insofar as tessellation (though I'm not particularly hung up on that 
> word, or any others for that matter - they're pointers for things I'm trying 
> always inadequately to express) might designate wa
> 
> 
> 
> used to describe the organization of information needed to render to give the 
> appearance of the surfaces of reali

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[sally jane norman]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks Wes for picking up on the prompt!  I think your reflection on opaque
ownership/ hidden ideologies of physical network structure that can be
artistically foregrounded, as in your use of sound, offers the beginnings
of an answer to Johannes's question re "virtual embodiment (as) a parochial
media arts concern or academic research area".  We're all caught up in
"anthropophagic" dependence on the technozoosemiotic (Louis Bec) systems
we've devised as our extensions, and creative work revealing the extent of
this entanglement strikes me as being more necessary than ever. Like
Harwood's Coal-fired computers. I don't see this as cozily separate terrain
to the horror of drones in war zones, but as integral to much-needed
reflection on our new "nature" (can I call it that?). Eaten away with worry
about the machinations on which we and others depend, including to express
our concerns to fora like this one.

To return to earlier comments, replacing a rain curtain by a conventional
projection surface is perhaps prosaic but that somehow misses the point/s:
1) developing an installation piece that can't be shown anywhere is a
problem (revealed by sophisticated infrastructure issues during the early
years of VR, where "reference" works could be experienced in half a dozen
sites in the world at best...), 2) the luxury of exploring the real rain
curtain prompted different ways of creatively thinking about that surface,
and 3) our goal wasn't realism - while there's a case to be made for
site-specific work, we sought rather to study real-world affordances like
water, to see how we might "translate" them into and symbolise them by
another medium. An artistic project, in short.

sorry for brevity, am enjoying the exchanges but still caught up in too
much parallel stuff to respond more decently...

best
sj




On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 9:39 AM, Wesley Goatley 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi all,
>
> I've been following the fascinating discussion this month with much
> interest - as Sally Jane pointed out it is quite relevant to my recent
> work.  The piece she mentioned is called Wireless-Fidelity (and can be seen
> in action here: https://vimeo.com/94572853), and along with what has
> already been mentioned it also attempts to de-virtualise (to clarify, used
> here in the sense of bringing the substance of data into the physical -
> embedded in popular culture heavily by Lawnmower Man/Matrix/90s hacker
> films etc.) the opaque ownership/hidden ideologies of the physical network
> infrastructure, and through sound create a distinct bodily/sensorial
> relationship to it.  These forces of corporate influence embedded in the
> network are in themselves virtualised to increase their opacity, the
> ramifications buried in on-screen user agreements affecting our off-screen
> rights.
>
> Wesley
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 9:22 AM, sally jane norman <
> normansallyj...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> sorry, didn't mean to push send yet - winding up below
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 9:06 AM, sally jane norman <
>> normansallyj...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Johannes, all
>>>
>>> We were using the notion of tessellation in the computer graphics sense,
>>> to see how we might implement and shape mixed reality boundaries to convey
>>> compelling corporeal experience. The example/ experiment we were engaged in
>>> was work on Blast Theory's "Desert Rain" piece, which actually started out
>>> using a physical water curtain as a boundary for an actor / spectator/
>>> "spectactor" to proceed from one type of space to another. It both
>>> symbolised and instantiated a kind of switching mechanism between two
>>> distinct spaces that were part of the installation/ performance set-up.
>>> Ultimately the water curtain/ screen (on which there were projections) was
>>> replaced by a more standard projection surface (i.e. we got rid of the
>>> "wetware", which was pretty cumbersome!), but for exploring boundaries per
>>> se, and approaches to proxemics - encroachment, traversal, reach etc - it
>>> was experimentally productive.
>>>
>>> A comparable recent experiment might be Kirk Woolford's creation for a
>>> Brighton "White Nights" festival a couple of years back. Kirk motion
>>> captured dancers executing brief movement sequences in urban Brighton
>>> locations featuring salient landmarks (e.g. graffiti-cum-mural images),
>>> then created an i-phone app to use real-time, in situ mapping of the
>>> landmarks to convoke the motion captured dancer onto the screen of the
>>> handheld device. There's something uncanny and magically intimate about
>>> calling up these ghostly figures onto one's screen, whilst physically
>>> stationed in bustling streets. They generate another quality of space.
>>> Insofar as tessellation (though I'm not particularly hung up on that word,
>>> or any

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Wesley Goatley]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi all,

I've been following the fascinating discussion this month with much
interest - as Sally Jane pointed out it is quite relevant to my recent
work.  The piece she mentioned is called Wireless-Fidelity (and can be seen
in action here: https://vimeo.com/94572853), and along with what has
already been mentioned it also attempts to de-virtualise (to clarify, used
here in the sense of bringing the substance of data into the physical -
embedded in popular culture heavily by Lawnmower Man/Matrix/90s hacker
films etc.) the opaque ownership/hidden ideologies of the physical network
infrastructure, and through sound create a distinct bodily/sensorial
relationship to it.  These forces of corporate influence embedded in the
network are in themselves virtualised to increase their opacity, the
ramifications buried in on-screen user agreements affecting our off-screen
rights.

Wesley


On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 9:22 AM, sally jane norman <
normansallyj...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> sorry, didn't mean to push send yet - winding up below
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 9:06 AM, sally jane norman <
> normansallyj...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Johannes, all
>>
>> We were using the notion of tessellation in the computer graphics sense,
>> to see how we might implement and shape mixed reality boundaries to convey
>> compelling corporeal experience. The example/ experiment we were engaged in
>> was work on Blast Theory's "Desert Rain" piece, which actually started out
>> using a physical water curtain as a boundary for an actor / spectator/
>> "spectactor" to proceed from one type of space to another. It both
>> symbolised and instantiated a kind of switching mechanism between two
>> distinct spaces that were part of the installation/ performance set-up.
>> Ultimately the water curtain/ screen (on which there were projections) was
>> replaced by a more standard projection surface (i.e. we got rid of the
>> "wetware", which was pretty cumbersome!), but for exploring boundaries per
>> se, and approaches to proxemics - encroachment, traversal, reach etc - it
>> was experimentally productive.
>>
>> A comparable recent experiment might be Kirk Woolford's creation for a
>> Brighton "White Nights" festival a couple of years back. Kirk motion
>> captured dancers executing brief movement sequences in urban Brighton
>> locations featuring salient landmarks (e.g. graffiti-cum-mural images),
>> then created an i-phone app to use real-time, in situ mapping of the
>> landmarks to convoke the motion captured dancer onto the screen of the
>> handheld device. There's something uncanny and magically intimate about
>> calling up these ghostly figures onto one's screen, whilst physically
>> stationed in bustling streets. They generate another quality of space.
>> Insofar as tessellation (though I'm not particularly hung up on that word,
>> or any others for that matter - they're pointers for things I'm trying
>> always inadequately to express) might designate ways of rendering novel
>> experience by combining different, usually non-miscible kinds of space,
>> then perhaps this is what we were hinting at with the earlier text and work
>> on boundaries. Heterotopias defined as ways of juxtaposing  supposedly
>> incompatible sites, and thereby eliciting novel affordances/ experiences,
>> also offer a productive image for what I'm trying to get at.
>>
>
> Similar work is being done in sound, with its propensity for
> juxtapositions of distinctive if not "incompatible" spaces. A project by
> Wes Goatley, Sussex post-grad who might be following empyre (please jump in
> Wes) exemplifies this: Wes devised a way to map ISP bandwidth allocations
> of a number of key providers to generate sound in the headset worn by
> someone "walking in the city" (pace de Certeau), such that the sonic realm
> evolved (pleasurably - no mean feat!) with the bleed of one bandwidth
> segment into another, providing a layer of quasi-realism (i.e. genuine
> market segment information), albeit manipulated in order to be thus
> "sounded out". A track for one's tracks...
>
> on that note, I'd better push send for real this time
> all best
> sj
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 10:00 PM, Johannes Birringer <
>> johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>> dear all
>>>
>>> John asked about the scope of interactive systems, as we generally refer
>>> to such when we build them for a performance or an installation, and yes to
>>> that extent
>>> the scope is limited to artistic /social interactional ventures of the
>>> kind that some of us have discussed here or that Simon just reported on
>>> earlier (ADT's 'Multiverse'), or the workshops that Tamara had mentioned,
>>> or the
>>> MotionComposer workshop I had written about yesterday.
>>>
>>>
>>> >>I do feel, though, words like 'interaction

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Johannes Birringer]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
dear all,  Hellen, Sally Jane

thanks for these responses --  and I hope others will join in and partake ---
probably I need to say here, Hellen, that of course I have the utmost respect 
for your work
and long time pioneering performances across spaces and networked places, and 
what you
call your "embodied ethnography" and your experiences/perceptions/listenings to 
the many
systems you performed in ever since, what, the late 80s and early 90s..?  
Surely someone
like yourself who has worked with motion sensing and capture and biosensor 
systems would
be well attentive and knowing of nuances and differences, and perhaps in such 
cases of
long term practice the notion of an embodied knowledge of "other spaces" is 
well earned.

You also mentioned the poetry of/in such performance experiences, and of course 
you
spoke of the kinesthetic or synasthetic affects, the physics, the somatic 
"knowing" you learnt...
so let me take back the word snake oil, I think that was meant in regard to the 
illusion effect,
the belief in what Foucault (in that lecture on "Of Other Space, Heterotopias," 
in 1967) refered
to as "sanctified space," the assumptions (sadly in slapstick though most of us 
are no Buster Keatons)
that our extensions generate, and can mark what is substituted, that (as Sally 
Jane implies in her
Brighton example) they produce lovely ghosts:

>>
ghostly figures onto one's screen, whilst physically
stationed in bustling streets. They generate another quality of space.
Insofar as tessellation (though I'm not particularly hung up on that word,
or any others for that matter - they're pointers for things I'm trying
always inadequately to express) might designate ways of rendering novel
experience by combining different, usually non-miscible kinds of space,
then perhaps this is what we were hinting at with the earlier text and work
on boundaries. Heterotopias defined as ways of juxtaposing supposedly
incompatible sites, and thereby eliciting novel affordances/ experiences,
>> [Sally Jane]

May I ask what this other quality of space is (the virtual)? compellingly 
switched? (the rain curtain
replaced by screen in "Desert Rain", how odd and disappointing). And is not 
Foucault's lecture
charmingly inconclusive and romantic?  The airplane, the ship, our heterotopia 
(dystopia?)?

I should not have spoken so lightly of the cemetery, in light of the world we 
live in, not would I
ever want to attend a funeral as an ethnographer. I will attend, and meet 
relatives i have not seen
in many years, some of them I don't even know. 

But Hellen last week mention the "cultural", perhaps, using the term 
swallowing, implied even
cultural anthropopagy -- and this of course interests me...:

>>for i can taste the nuances of its difference perceptually  -  
>>choreographically, politically, culturally,  
this  is an expansive  field of interaction .. >> [Hellen]

Foucault lectures that "from that start of the nineteenth century that 
cemeteries began to be located at the outside border of cities. In correlation 
with the individualization of death and the bourgeois appropriation of the 
cemetery, there arises an obsession with death as an 'illness.' The dead, it is 
supposed, bring illnesses to the living, and it is the presence and proximity 
of the dead right beside the houses, next to the church, almost in the middle 
of the street, it is this proximity that propagates death itself."

If that is a cultural critique, I guess Foucault misses some facts though I 
have seen cemeteries in Texas that are outside the town boundaries and 
seemingly forgotten; but  in my ancestral village the cemetery remains central, 
on a hill, 
in walking distance from the church, the graves tenderly cared for by the 
relatives and families, like a garden, the ritual occasions of saying
farewell an established cultural tradition (nothing too heterotopic) integrated 
into the rhythms of life and necessarily so. As in Mexican culture, the dead are
not "incompatible" (Foucault) with the living, not relegated to dark hiding 
places.

In terms of a colonial history, or recent eras of decolonization, I wonder what 
ethnographies of technovirtual systems might tell us.

regards

Johannes Birringer



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Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[sally jane norman]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--sorry, didn't mean to push send yet - winding up below


On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 9:06 AM, sally jane norman <
normansallyj...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Hi Johannes, all
>
> We were using the notion of tessellation in the computer graphics sense,
> to see how we might implement and shape mixed reality boundaries to convey
> compelling corporeal experience. The example/ experiment we were engaged in
> was work on Blast Theory's "Desert Rain" piece, which actually started out
> using a physical water curtain as a boundary for an actor / spectator/
> "spectactor" to proceed from one type of space to another. It both
> symbolised and instantiated a kind of switching mechanism between two
> distinct spaces that were part of the installation/ performance set-up.
> Ultimately the water curtain/ screen (on which there were projections) was
> replaced by a more standard projection surface (i.e. we got rid of the
> "wetware", which was pretty cumbersome!), but for exploring boundaries per
> se, and approaches to proxemics - encroachment, traversal, reach etc - it
> was experimentally productive.
>
> A comparable recent experiment might be Kirk Woolford's creation for a
> Brighton "White Nights" festival a couple of years back. Kirk motion
> captured dancers executing brief movement sequences in urban Brighton
> locations featuring salient landmarks (e.g. graffiti-cum-mural images),
> then created an i-phone app to use real-time, in situ mapping of the
> landmarks to convoke the motion captured dancer onto the screen of the
> handheld device. There's something uncanny and magically intimate about
> calling up these ghostly figures onto one's screen, whilst physically
> stationed in bustling streets. They generate another quality of space.
> Insofar as tessellation (though I'm not particularly hung up on that word,
> or any others for that matter - they're pointers for things I'm trying
> always inadequately to express) might designate ways of rendering novel
> experience by combining different, usually non-miscible kinds of space,
> then perhaps this is what we were hinting at with the earlier text and work
> on boundaries. Heterotopias defined as ways of juxtaposing  supposedly
> incompatible sites, and thereby eliciting novel affordances/ experiences,
> also offer a productive image for what I'm trying to get at.
>

Similar work is being done in sound, with its propensity for juxtapositions
of distinctive if not "incompatible" spaces. A project by Wes Goatley,
Sussex post-grad who might be following empyre (please jump in Wes)
exemplifies this: Wes devised a way to map ISP bandwidth allocations of a
number of key providers to generate sound in the headset worn by someone
"walking in the city" (pace de Certeau), such that the sonic realm evolved
(pleasurably - no mean feat!) with the bleed of one bandwidth segment into
another, providing a layer of quasi-realism (i.e. genuine market segment
information), albeit manipulated in order to be thus "sounded out". A track
for one's tracks...

on that note, I'd better push send for real this time
all best
sj



>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 10:00 PM, Johannes Birringer <
> johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> dear all
>>
>> John asked about the scope of interactive systems, as we generally refer
>> to such when we build them for a performance or an installation, and yes to
>> that extent
>> the scope is limited to artistic /social interactional ventures of the
>> kind that some of us have discussed here or that Simon just reported on
>> earlier (ADT's 'Multiverse'), or the workshops that Tamara had mentioned,
>> or the
>> MotionComposer workshop I had written about yesterday.
>>
>>
>> >>I do feel, though, words like 'interaction' and 'virtual' hardly have
>> any  intelligible relation to the nature of any shared reality, given their
>> social
>> usage within the techno-sphere, even in the art/new media scene. [John]>>
>>
>> Not sure I understand the way you are going, John, as obviously the
>> workshop with an interactive system (generating / affording manipulation by
>> human gesture in a room) that I refered to, held at La
>> Encendida in Madrid last Monday through Wednesday (
>> www.lacasaencendida.es/) did have an intelligible relation to a small
>> shared reality, and even though I may have reservations, it did afford
>> the kind of kinetic empathy that Simon felt was lacking for the
>> spectators of a dance concert (with 3D glasses handed out) in Australia;
>> perhaps I should subject the affordances to a closer scrutiny
>> and think about why the "virtual" is compromised differently for people
>> (with different dis/abilities) involved. for us there, at that place,
>> not "everything was affected by interaction with everything else."
>>
>> Now I read Sally Jane, and she comes back to the discussion we had in the
>> first week about as

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[sally jane norman]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Johannes, all

We were using the notion of tessellation in the computer graphics sense, to
see how we might implement and shape mixed reality boundaries to convey
compelling corporeal experience. The example/ experiment we were engaged in
was work on Blast Theory's "Desert Rain" piece, which actually started out
using a physical water curtain as a boundary for an actor / spectator/
"spectactor" to proceed from one type of space to another. It both
symbolised and instantiated a kind of switching mechanism between two
distinct spaces that were part of the installation/ performance set-up.
Ultimately the water curtain/ screen (on which there were projections) was
replaced by a more standard projection surface (i.e. we got rid of the
"wetware", which was pretty cumbersome!), but for exploring boundaries per
se, and approaches to proxemics - encroachment, traversal, reach etc - it
was experimentally productive.

Perhaps a comparable more recent experiment might be Kirk Woolford's
creation for a Brighton "White Nights" festival a couple of years back.
Kirk motion captured dancers executing brief movement sequences in specific
urban Brighton locations featuring salient landmarks (e.g.
graffiti-cum-mural images), then developed an i-phone app to use real-time,
in situ mapping of the landmarks to convoke the motion captured dancer onto
the screen of the handheld device. There's something uncanny and magically
intimate about calling up these ghostly figures onto one's screen, whilst
thoroughly physically stationed in bustling streets. They generate another
quality of space. Insofar as tessellation (though I'm not particularly hung
up on that word, or any others for that matter - they're pointers for
things I'm trying always inadequately to express) might designate wa



used to describe the organization of information needed to render
 to give
the appearance of the surfaces of realistic three-dimensional objects.


On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 10:00 PM, Johannes Birringer <
johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> dear all
>
> John asked about the scope of interactive systems, as we generally refer
> to such when we build them for a performance or an installation, and yes to
> that extent
> the scope is limited to artistic /social interactional ventures of the
> kind that some of us have discussed here or that Simon just reported on
> earlier (ADT's 'Multiverse'), or the workshops that Tamara had mentioned,
> or the
> MotionComposer workshop I had written about yesterday.
>
>
> >>I do feel, though, words like 'interaction' and 'virtual' hardly have
> any  intelligible relation to the nature of any shared reality, given their
> social
> usage within the techno-sphere, even in the art/new media scene. [John]>>
>
> Not sure I understand the way you are going, John, as obviously the
> workshop with an interactive system (generating / affording manipulation by
> human gesture in a room) that I refered to, held at La
> Encendida in Madrid last Monday through Wednesday (www.lacasaencendida.es/)
> did have an intelligible relation to a small shared reality, and even
> though I may have reservations, it did afford
> the kind of kinetic empathy that Simon felt was lacking for the spectators
> of a dance concert (with 3D glasses handed out) in Australia; perhaps I
> should subject the affordances to a closer scrutiny
> and think about why the "virtual" is compromised differently for people
> (with different dis/abilities) involved. for us there, at that place,
> not "everything was affected by interaction with everything else."
>
> Now I read Sally Jane, and she comes back to the discussion we had in the
> first week about assemblages and dispositifs, and I had tried to be clear
> why I used the terms with caution, but also stated that I do not
> necessarily believe that the system is us, or, worse (picking up on
> current debates on big data, algorithmic machines, and amongst
> neuroscientist on the neural dispositif and absconds gestural
> responsiblity) that the dispositifs operate by their own account without
> that our actions or self insertions (say, playing with MotionComposer, or
> watching Australian Dance Theatre's "Multiverse") matter much or make a
> difference -- and the term you used, Sally Jane,
> namely agency, needs as much unpacking, perhaps, as the notion of a
> heterotopic virtual embodiment.  Unless of course we agree, first of all,
> that gestures are human made (or animal made) and involve some sort
> of social, political or psychological awareness of why one engages a
> dispositif that is not us but may invite us (as - in the arts - it is
> programmed, such as MotionComposer, by a collaborative effort between
> engineers,
> composers, and choreographers who had a plan of why they constructed the
> limited-scope interact

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Hellen Sky]

--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

Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Johannes Birringer]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
dear all

John asked about the scope of interactive systems, as we generally refer to 
such when we build them for a performance or an installation, and yes to that 
extent
the scope is limited to artistic /social interactional ventures of the kind 
that some of us have discussed here or that Simon just reported on earlier 
(ADT's 'Multiverse'), or the workshops that Tamara had mentioned, or the
MotionComposer workshop I had written about yesterday.


>>I do feel, though, words like 'interaction' and 'virtual' hardly have any  
>>intelligible relation to the nature of any shared reality, given their social 
usage within the techno-sphere, even in the art/new media scene. [John]>>

Not sure I understand the way you are going, John, as obviously the workshop 
with an interactive system (generating / affording manipulation by human 
gesture in a room) that I refered to, held at La 
Encendida in Madrid last Monday through Wednesday (www.lacasaencendida.es/) did 
have an intelligible relation to a small shared reality, and even though I may 
have reservations, it did afford
the kind of kinetic empathy that Simon felt was lacking for the spectators of a 
dance concert (with 3D glasses handed out) in Australia; perhaps I should 
subject the affordances to a closer scrutiny
and think about why the "virtual" is compromised differently for people (with 
different dis/abilities) involved. for us there, at that place, not 
"everything was affected by interaction with everything else."

Now I read Sally Jane, and she comes back to the discussion we had in the first 
week about assemblages and dispositifs, and I had tried to be clear why I used 
the terms with caution, but also stated that I do not
necessarily believe that the system is us, or, worse (picking up on current 
debates on big data, algorithmic machines, and amongst neuroscientist on the 
neural dispositif and absconds gestural responsiblity) that the dispositifs 
operate by their own account without that our actions or self insertions (say, 
playing with MotionComposer, or watching Australian Dance Theatre's 
"Multiverse") matter much or make a difference -- and the term you used, Sally 
Jane, 
namely agency, needs as much unpacking, perhaps, as the notion of a heterotopic 
virtual embodiment.  Unless of course we agree, first of all, that gestures are 
human made (or animal made) and involve some sort
of social, political or psychological awareness of why one engages a dispositif 
that is not us but may invite us (as - in the arts - it is programmed, such as 
MotionComposer, by a collaborative effort between engineers,
composers, and choreographers who had a plan of why they constructed the 
limited-scope interactional environment, for particular purpose). 

Sally Jane, you mention "tessellated mixed reality" environments ("akin to 
Foucault's heterotopia") - please could you give an example?  And Karen Barad's 
intra-actions (she is a physicist? and what on earth is "posthumanist 
performativity," what gestures do we get here and by whom?, what are "“quantum 
entanglements and hauntological relations" if remember some of Barad's 
publications correctly ?) , how are they different  from interactions?

As to heterotopias, I think cemeteries are included by Foucault, no?  I am gong 
to a funeral on Friday, in the ancestral village in Germany, so shall look out 
for the space and how it is changed, and who attends and how our behaviors and 
alignments are legible. 


respectfully

Johannes Birringer
‎





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Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[John Hopkins]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--


that's not what quantum mechanics says.


Yes, of course, that's right Alan, QM doesn't really 'say' anything in textual 
English except in excruciatingly poor translation from the 'actual' mathematical 
model. I only use QM as a short-hand for a world-view that is acceptable in the 
West but is not so bound by conventional Newtonian models for the cosmos.


I do feel, though, words like 'interaction' and 'virtual' hardly have any 
intelligible relation to the nature of any shared reality, given their social 
usage within the techno-sphere, even in the art/new media scene. It'd be nice to 
simply side-step them by using a more 'long-hand' description that at least 
tries to parse the writer's experience (you've done that numerous times over the 
last couple decades!)...


jh
--
++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++
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Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Alan Sondheim]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--that's not what quantum mechanics says.


On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 6:31 PM, John Hopkins 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> What is the scope or meaning of 'interaction' when Quantum suggests that
> any 'change' anywhere affects all 'things' everywhere simultaneously?
>
> jh
> --
> ++
> Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
> grounded on a granite batholith
> twitter: @neoscenes
> http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
> ++
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>



-- 
*=*
*directory http://www.alansondheim.org  tel
347-383-8552*
*music/sound http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/
 *

*email sondheim ut panix.com , sondheim ut gmail.com
=*
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Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Simon Biggs]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--What's are 'things' when everything is affected by interaction with everything 
else? Quantum Physics renders meaning, and things (and therefore relations), 
fugitive.

best

Simon


On 21 Jul 2014, at 08:01, John Hopkins  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> What is the scope or meaning of 'interaction' when Quantum suggests that any 
> 'change' anywhere affects all 'things' everywhere simultaneously?
> 
> jh
> -- 
> ++
> Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
> grounded on a granite batholith
> twitter: @neoscenes
> http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
> ++
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 


Simon Biggs
si...@littlepig.org.uk  |  @_simonbiggs_ 
http://www.littlepig.org.uk  |  http://amazon.com/author/simonbiggs

simon.bi...@unisa.edu.au  |  Professor of Art, University of South Australia
http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/staff/homepage.asp?name=simon.biggs

s.bi...@ed.ac.uk  |  Honorary Professor, Edinburgh College of Art, University 
of Edinburgh
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/school-of-art/staff/staff?person_id=182&cw_xml=profile.php

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Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[John Hopkins]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
What is the scope or meaning of 'interaction' when Quantum suggests that any 
'change' anywhere affects all 'things' everywhere simultaneously?


jh
--
++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++
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Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Johannes Birringer]

--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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