The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

People, Land, Arts, Culture and Engagement: Taking Stock of the Place Initiative

This report serves as a point of entry into creative placemaking as defined and supported by the Tucson Pima Arts Council's PLACE Initiative. To assess how and to what degree the PLACE projects were helping to transform communities, TPAC was asked by the Kresge Foundation to undertake a comprehensive evaluation. This involved discussion with stakeholders about support mechanisms, professional development, investment, and impact of the PLACE Initiative in Tucson, Arizona, and the Southwest regionally and the gathering of qualitative and quantitative data to develop indicators and method for evaluating the social impact of the arts in TPAC's grantmaking. The report documents one year of observations and research by the PLACE research team, outside researchers and reviewers, local and regional working groups, TPAC staff, and TPAC constituency. It considers data from the first four years of PLACE Initiative funding, including learning exchanges, focus groups, individual interviews, grantmaking, and all reporting. It is also informed by evaluation and assessment that occurred in the development of the PLACE Initiative, in particular, Maribel Alvarez's Two-Way Mirror: Ethnography as a Way to Assess Civic Impact of Arts-Based Engagement in Tucson, Arizona (2009), and Mark Stern and Susan Seifert's Documenting Civic Engagement: A Plan for the Tucson Pima Arts Council (2009). Both of these publications were supported by Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts, that promotes arts and culture as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change. Both publications describe how TPAC approaches evaluation strategies associated with social impact of the arts in Tucson and Pima County. This report outlines the local context and historical antecedents of the PLACE Initiative in the region with an emphasis on the concept of "belonging" as a primary characteristic of PLACE projects and policy. It describes PLACE projects as well as the role of TPAC in creating and facilitating the Initiative. Based on the collective understanding of the research team, impacts of the PLACE Initiative are organized into three main realms -- institutions, artists, and communities. These realms are further addressed in case studies from select grantees, whose narratives offer rich, detailed perspectives about PLACE projects in context, with all their successes, rewards, and challenges for artists, communities, and institutions. Lastly, the report offers preliminary research findings on PLACE by TPAC in collaboration with Dr. James Roebuck, codirector of the University of Arizona's ERAD (Evaluation Research and Development) Program

Towards multisensory storytelling with taste and flavor

Film makers, producers, and theaters have continuously looked at ways to embody and/or integrate multiple sensory cues in the experiences they deliver. Here, we present a reflection on past attempts, lessons learnt, and future directions for the community around multisensory TV, film, and multimedia as a historical, though renewed, space of content creation. In particular, we present an overview of what we call "tasty film", that is, film involving taste, flavor, and more broadly food and drink inputs, to influence the audience experience. We suggest that such elements should be considered beyond "add-ons" in film experiences. We advocate for experimentation with new kinds of storytelling taking inspiration from multisensory design research and work on sensory substitution. We position this article as a starting point for anyone interested in multisensory film involving taste, flavor, and foods

Dance Theater—The Physical Art of Perception

This research analyzes the inner energy of human perception and the invisible effect and influence between perception and physical dance theatre. Not only the insight and interpretation of the relationship between the psychological and physical area, but also the analysis of aesthetics, thinking, and concept from a perceptual process to physical language in different works of physical dance theatre. In this way we come to understand how artists create works as a perceptual process, and how audiences perceive expression in terms of artists’ intention and intuition. Through physical movement in the theater and the language on the stage, people perceive creative thought as a reflection of the historical or current state of a society and changeable world. My thesis is a study of physical language in dance theatre with both psychological and physical analysis. Therefore, in the form of physical dance theatre, we feel the spirit inside their movement language, much like the conversation of a human self through the perception of a physical, theatrical, spiritual, psychological, and unknown world

Somaesthetics and Dance

Dance is proposed as the most representative of somaesthetic arts in Thinking Through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics and other writings of Richard Shusterman. Shuster- man offers a useful, but incomplete approach to somaesthetics of dance. In the examples provided, dance appears as subordinate to another art form (theater or photography) or as a means to achieving bodily excellence. Missing, for example, are accounts of the role of dance as an independent art form, how somaesthetics would address differences in varying approaches to dance, and attention to the viewer’s somaesthetic dance experience. Three strategies for developing new directions for dance somaesthetics are offered here: identify a fuller range of applications of somaesthetics to dance as an independent art form (e.g. Martha Graham); develop somaesthetics for a wider range of theatre dance (e.g. ballet, modern and experimental dance); and relate somaesthetics to more general features of dance (content, form, expression, style, kinesthetics) necessary for understanding the roles of the choreographer/dancer and the viewer

A Slice of the Big Apple: An Exploration of the Impact of Travel on High School Students’ Choreographic Process

The purpose of this study was to create, implement, and assess the results of a dance curriculum based on a long-distance travel experience as inspiration for choreography. The research spanned one semester. Participants included twenty high school dance students and nine audience members. In the study, the researcher attempted to answer the following essential questions: Q1 How can a high school dance course enhance the overall experience and understanding of traveling? Q2 In what ways can travel impact a student’s choreographic process? Q3 What aspects of traveling are most helpful for high school students when exploring their ability to choreograph? Q4 What impact does travel as inspiration for choreography have on the audience members at a dance performance? This study was designed to identify any immediate academic benefits of traveling for high school dance students. Areas of student growth that were measured included proficiency in sketching, reflective writing, photography and videography as ways to document life’s experiences. The researcher worked with twenty high school dance students to discover whether a deeper understanding of the choreographic process can be achieved through participation in a long-distance travel experience. The researcher was also interested in the impact the choreography would have on nine audience members that attended the final performance. This study is not irrefutable, and there are still questions related to the topics that could to be explored. Because the researcher was also the participants’ dance teacher, there existed a potential bias when reviewing and analyzing the data. Further research should be completed by a researcher who is not the dance teacher leading the class and working directly with the students. Additionally, a larger sample of students with a wider range of ages and skills, and a balance between the genders would be necessary to find whether a similar outcome would be achieved. More audience members could be included as well, to better validate the responses described by those involved in the current study. The researcher found that travel can indeed be an enriching and educational experience. Benefits to dance students included increased desire to experience the world through travel by observing, documenting, and analyzing their travel experience. They were able to transpose their travel experience into the art of dance by learning about the choreographic process