Creative identity theft: issues for artists in collaborative online environments

This paper discusses the qualities of online activity in relation to what is 'new' in 'new media', and examines both the continued use of the technologies by artists to simply redress long standing disputes with the distribution models and editorial practices of 'old media' and the tensions created by encounters with the characteristics of the Internet as a new space for art. It then seeks to identify the features of new technologies that distinguish them from 'old media', principally the opportunities for interaction in real time, for collaboration, of skill sharing, of a wider audience that encounters work for reasons other than the contemplation of artistic work and the nature of proprietary technologies in themselves. These latter have rarely been developed specifically for artists, and often reflect the values and aims of the companies that generate them, presenting ethical and creative problems for artists who use them. The paper draws on research at the Visualisation Research Unit (VRU) at the School of Art, Birmingham City University, and its collaboration with Eastside Projects, a new gallery located in Birmingham, on the Arts Council funded project 'EP:VV' (Eastside Projects: Virtual & Visualized)

The Life of a Dance: Double Take, Part II

The documentation of dance regularly asserts a false concept. This is that dances can be fixed, like a text, script, painting or even a musical score. Dance academics and organizations like ballet companies and the trusts that claim to protect and preserve the heritage of specific choreographers protect this idea. Focused far more on outputs than production, they decontextualize dance by ignoring its context: the working process. Notwithstanding the problematics of this assumption about the archival form of such material, that the tokens of the types that Wollheim (1968) posits as necessary are simply too flexible to be captured as definitive, this in itself presents a creative opportunity. This paper posits this working process as played out in performance as well as the confines of rehearsal, and gives as a practical example the performance of a work by the same dancers across a thirty-year timeframe, presented alongside the original video material. For dancers and choreographers there is a more subtle process of evolution that occurs with the regular performance of a dance: the dance changes itself to suit its purposes, and this often renders the meaningfulness of documentation an academic (or more lately legal) exercise. Evidence for this can be found not only in the experience of dancers, but in the actions of choreographers dealing with their own works, even when they are considered classics. Dances, it seems, simply wear out unless they are subject to regular revision and a definitive version cannot be said to exist. This is not to say an account of a dance is impossible, but to suggest there are conditional features that need taking account of, and to question the artistic validity of ossified reproduction

The Sporton Professorial Inaugural

Some 30 years ago, choreographer Gregory Sporton and dancer Sandra Norman collaborated on a stylish duet ‘Double Take’, subsequently performed around New Zealand for most of 1986. On the 26th of April 2017, the original dancers as they are now in their early fifties, rework the Double Take choreography alongside footage of their earlier performances for The Sporton Professional Inaugural Lecture. The performance took place in the Crit Pit of the Stockwell Street building, following a lecture on 'The Body and The Intellectual' from Professor Gregory Sporton

Reviews

Life and Fate, adapted for the stage and directed by Lev Dodin, Maly Drama Theatre Company, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 12 May 2018 Life is a Dream, by Kim Brandstrup, Rambert Dance Company, Sadler’'s Wells Theatre, London, 26 May 2018 New Work/New Music, The Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House, Linbury Theatre, 8 February 201

Creative identity theft: issues for artists in collaborative online environments

This paper discusses the qualities of online activity in relation to what is 'new' in 'new media', and examines both the continued use of the technologies by artists to simply redress long standing disputes with the distribution models and editorial practices of 'old media' and the tensions created by encounters with the characteristics of the Internet as a new space for art. It then seeks to identify the features of new technologies that distinguish them from 'old media', principally the opportunities for interaction in real time, for collaboration, of skill sharing, of a wider audience that encounters work for reasons other than the contemplation of artistic work and the nature of proprietary technologies in themselves. These latter have rarely been developed specifically for artists, and often reflect the values and aims of the companies that generate them, presenting ethical and creative problems for artists who use them. The paper draws on research at the Visualisation Research Unit (VRU) at the School of Art, Birmingham City University, and its collaboration with Eastside Projects, a new gallery located in Birmingham, on the Arts Council funded project 'EP:VV' (Eastside Projects: Virtual & Visualized)

Ballet and the Soviet body

The early failure of the 'dram-balet' form as a vehicle for Soviet ballet is often observed as a failure of its stories to deliver the message of the new society being born around it.This essay discussed how this may not be a sufficient explanation of both the survival of ballet in Soviet times and its eventual emergence as a cultural symbol of the USSR. The misdirected efforts into didactic storytelling worked precisely against its utility to Soviet cultural bureaucrats who were looking for work that could support the aims of the Revolution in its practical manifestations. Once the ballet masters of the Bolshoi gave up their pretensions to narrative (the infamous 'dram-balet' of the 1920s), a different accommodation with the regime was found through equating the physical and technical work of ballet with that of a society focussed on taking itself out of centuries of backwardness. Ballet dancers could thus become the exemplars of Soviet citizens, hard working, technical specialists in culture, consistent with the ambitions of a meritocracy

Reviews: Bolshoi 'Bright Stream', ENB 'Giselle', Review of 'Agency: A Partial History of Live Art'.

Reviews for Scene (7.1/7.2) of 'Bright Stream' (Bolshoi Ballet), 'Giselle', (English National Ballet) and 'Agency: A Partial History of Live Art', Schmidt, T. (ed), Bristol, Intellect Books, 2019

The “e” Prefix: e-Science, e-Art & the New Creativity

What does it mean to put an “e” ahead of a concept? This essay discusses the purpose of doing such a thing, arguing there is a distinct method in the apparent randomness of labelling something “e” this or that. Far from simply denoting that it might be done with computers (and, indeed, what isn't today), Sporton argues that beyond the effect of explaining this is something to do with technology, there is an emergent “e-culture” that reunites the arts and sciences after two hundred years of separate development within the academy. An “e-Culture” emerges that reflects the values, opportunities and restrictions of Internet as a research environment. The potential of that environment requires a mindset focussed on collaboration to achieve anything of creative significance

Reviews: ENO's Luisa Miller/ Pure Dance, Natalia Osipova

Reivews of ENO's Luisa Miller and Pure Dance, a programme by Natalia Osipova at Sadlers Wells