Moveable worlds/digital scenographies

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ Intellect Ltd 2010.The mixed reality choreographic installation UKIYO explored in this article reflects an interest in scenographic practices that connect physical space to virtual worlds and explore how performers can move between material and immaterial spaces. The spatial design for UKIYO is inspired by Japanese hanamichi and western fashion runways, emphasizing the research production company's commitment to various creative crossovers between movement languages, innovative wearable design for interactive performance, acoustic and electronic sound processing and digital image objects that have a plastic as well as an immaterial/virtual dimension. The work integrates various forms of making art in order to visualize things that are not in themselves visual, or which connect visual and kinaesthetic/tactile/auditory experiences. The ‘Moveable Worlds’ in this essay are also reflections of the narrative spaces, subtexts and auditory relationships in the mutating matrix of an installation-space inviting the audience to move around and follow its sensorial experiences, drawn near to the bodies of the dancers.Brunel University, the British Council, and the Japan Foundation

Somatechnics and Difference

This essay examines embodiment and technology with a special focus on dis/abilities in live performance during the current inter-pandemic era. After several workshops developed with performers and mixed ability artists during 2021, questions are raised about inclusion: how we consider impairment or how disabilities are reconfigured in our understanding. The somatechnics explored here are initially related to Seo Ji Won’s exuberant and excessive motion installation, but also to the practices of other choreographers and designers who acknowledge different abilities and challenges to perception that are notnecessarily all based in a technological understanding of movement. Although it can incorporate digital projections and prostheses, such an understanding emerges from anatomical and somatic experience, and also from an extended notion of social choreography. Este ensayo examina la encarnación y la tecnología con un enfoque especial en las discapacidades en la actuación en vivo durante la era interpandémica actual. Después de varios talleres desarrollados con performers y artistas de habilidades mixtas durante 2021, surgen interrogantes sobre la inclusión: cómo consideramos la discapacidad o cómo se reconfiguran las discapacidades en nuestro entendimiento. Las somatécnicas exploradas aquí están inicialmente relacionadas con la instalación de movimiento exhuberante y excesivo de Seo Ji Won, pero también con las prácticas de otros coreógrafos y diseñadores que reconocen diferentes habilidades y desafíos a la percepción que no necesariamente se basan en una comprensión tecnológica del movimiento. Si bien puede incorporar proyecciones digitales y prótesis, tal comprensión surge de la experiencia anatómica y somática, y también de una noción ampliada de coreografía social

Puntos de Fuga (Vanishing Points): Performance Writing for the Digital Theater

Examining the contemporary challenges of "writing" or composing for the digital stage and new forms of real-time programmable or augment­ed multimedia theater, the authors delve into some theoretical concerns that are characteristic of such compositional practices—discussing no­tions of interactivity, wearable space, participatory design, postdramatic textuality and choreography, bilinguality and translation, and political content—before using their new play, Puntos de Fuga (Vanishing Points), as a case study. The essay contextualizes the production aesthetic used for Puntos de Fuga, referring amongst others to the Wooster Group's "dancing with technology," and proceeds to delineate the performer techniques and rehearsal methods used in composing an integrated dig­ital performance and multimediated mise en scene closely and passion­ately dedicated to the poetic testimony of harsh political/economic real­ities at the US-Mexican border

Kimospheres and immersive dance

Abstract:After an introduction to the European METABOY research project and its focus on digital and immersive techniques,  Johannes Birringer introduces concepts of the material affects of choreosonic wearables, discussing the design of wearables used in immersive performative environments which themselves are conceived as formative, not built or constructed in a stable form. Basing its investigation of such interactive environments for wearable performance in recent productions of the DAP-Lab, the essay explores the impact of audiophonic wearables on movement choreography and role-play within dance installations, as well as delving into more speculative developments of how bodies and wearables come to affect, and be affected by, kinetic and sonic real-time interactional or participatory structures – here called “kimospheres.”Keywords: Dance. Architecture. Kinetic atmosphere. Immersion. Interactive. Wearables. KIMOSPHERES E DANÇA IMERSIVAResumo:Após uma introdução ao projeto de pesquisa europeu METABODY e seu foco em técnicas digitais e imersivas, Johannes Birringer apresenta conceitos sobre os efeitos materiais dos vestíveis coreosônicos, discutindo o design de vestíveis usados em ambientes performativos imersivos que são concebidos como formativos, não construídos de forma estável. Com base em sua investigação de tais ambientes interativos para performance com vestíveis em produções recentes do DAP-Lab, o artigo explora o impacto de vestíveis audiofônicos na coreografia de movimento e interpretação de papéis dentro de instalações de dança, além de aprofundar em desenvolvimentos mais especulativos de como os corpos e os vestíveis afetam e são afetados por estruturas interativas ou participativas cinéticas e sônicas em tempo real- aqui chamadas “kimospheres”.Palavras-chave: Dança. Arquitetura. Atmosfera cinética. Imersão. Interativo. Vestíveis

Alucinação transensorial

Após uma breve reflexão sobre teorias do digital e não-digital, este ensaio se preocupa com questões da percepção comum e dos sentidos não usuais, enfatizando a kinaesthetic, noções transensoriais de ex-stasis e o afeto material do ambiente. O autor discute exemplos retirados de estudos atmosféricos, de objetos arquitetônicos e coreográficos, assim como do design de vestimentas usadas em ambientes sensoriais performáticos que foram concebidos como formativos, não construídos em formas estáveis. Além disso, baseando suas investigações em ambientes elementais e coreografias aurais de produções recentes do DAP-Lab, esse ensaio explora os impactos das vestimentas que afetam, e são afetadas por, as interfaces de realidade aumentada e virtualidade aumentada em atmosferas cinéticas – aqui chamadas “kimospheres” – no sentido em que o compositor Xenakis havia imaginado arquiteturas multimídia reverberantes e intensidades espaciais para serem instrumentos vivos, não objetos estáticos ou envelopes

Structural relaxation of nanocrystalline PdAu alloy: Probing the spectrum of potential barriers

A commonality between nanocrystalline metals and metallic glasses is their dependence of structure and properties upon preparation history and postprocessing. Depending on preparation conditions, stored excess enthalpy and volume—relative to the crystalline ground state—can vary significantly. Annealing of material states of elevated enthalpy or volume induces structural relaxation and concomitant depletion of excess energy and volume. We analyzed the kinetics of volume relaxation in nanocrystalline PdAu alloys by partitioning the overall process into a set of independent and parallel reactions for arbitrary time-temperature protocols. The obtained spectra of kinetic parameters imply a complex relaxation behavior that violates time-temperature superposition and time aging-time superposition. The analysis will enable to reconstruct the effective energy landscape underlying the relaxation dynamics