Shifting Interfaces: art research at the intersections of live performance and technology

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/809 on 08.20.2017 by CS (TIS)This collection of published works is an outcome of my practice-led inter-disciplinary collaborative artistic research into deepening understanding of creative process in the field of contemporary dance. It comprises thirty written works published from 1999 to 2007 in various formats and platforms. This collection is framed by a methodological discussion that provides insight into how this research has intersected over time with diverse fields of practice including contemporary dance, digital and new media arts and non-art domains such as cognitive and social science. Fields are understood in the context of this research to be largely constituted out of the expert practices of individual collaborators. This research starts from an interest in the Impact of new media technologies on dance making/ choreography. The collection of works show evidence, established in the first two publications, of an evolving engagement with two concepts related to this interest: (1) the 'algorithm' as a process-level connection or bridge between dance composition and computation; (2) the empirical study of movement embedded as a 'knowledge base' in the practices of both computer animation and dance and thus forming a special correspondence between them. This collection provides evidence of this research through a period of community-building amongst artists using new media technologies in performance, and culminates in the identification of an emerging 'community of practice' coming together around the formation of a unique body of knowledge pertaining to dance. The late 1990s New Media Art movement provided a supportive context for Important peer-to-peer encounters with creators and users of software tools and platforms in the context of inter-disciplinary art-making. A growing interest in software programming as a creative practice opened up fresh perspectives on possible connections with dance making. It became clear that software's utility alone, including artistic uses of software, was a limited conception. This was the background thinking that informed the first major shift in the research towards the design of software that might augment the creative process of expert choreographers and dancers. This shift from software use to its design, framed by a focus on the development of tools to support dance creation, also provided strong rationale to deepen the research into dance making processes. In the second major phase of the research presented here, scientific study is brought collaboratively to bear on questions related to choreographic practice. This lead to a better understanding of ways in which dancers and choreographers, as 'thinking bodies', interact with their design tools and each other in the context of creation work. In addition to this collection, outcomes of this research are traceable to other published papers and art works it has given rise to. Less easily measureable, but just as valuable, are the sustained relations between individuals and groups behind the 'community of practice' now recognised for its development of unique formats for bringing choreographic ideas and processes into contact, now and in the future, with both general audiences and other specialist practices

Motion Bank : Phase One

&nbsp;Motion Bank Phase One (2010-2013) was a four-year international and interdisciplinary research project of The Forsythe Company providing a broad context for research into choreographic practice. The main focus was on the creation of on-line digital scores in collaboration with guest choreographers, to be made publicly available via this website. For Phase One, the guest choreographers were Deborah Hay, Jonathan Burrows &amp; Matteo Fargion, Bebe Miller and Thomas Hauert. Teams from the Motion Bank Score Partners worked with these artists to make their diverse choreographic approaches accessible in new ways through the digital medium with the results published here: http://scores.motionbank.org/. Alongside this core research, Motion Bank Education Partners and an International Education Workgroup researched ways to integrate the new on-line digital scores and related choreographic resources produced by other artists into their academic programs. Accompanying the Motion Bank education research was an interdisciplinary initiative titled Dance Engaging Science aiming to stimulate new forms of collaborative research involving dance practice. Motion Bank public events offered at The Frankfurt Lab included performances and talks with the guest choreographers as well as a series of Motion Bank Workshops with internationally recognized practitioners from different fields. An extensive series of reports and documentation on all Motion Bank activities and results are available on-line at http://motionbank.org. Motion Bank Score Partners:- Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design and Department of Dance at The Ohio State University- Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD- Hochschule Darmstadt - University of applied sciences- Hochschule f&uuml;r Gestaltung (HFG) Offenbach.Motion Bank Education Partners:- Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts- Palucca Hochschule f&uuml;r Tanz Dresden<br /

A conversation about choreographic thinking tools

This article aims to draw the reader into an interdisciplinary conversation between the co-authors about the use of imagery in dance creation placed under very different disciplinary lenses. The conversation has two points of departure. First, for nearly a decade the choreographer Wayne McGregor has engaged in an interdisciplinary collaborative research with cognitive scientists with the aim to develop new understandings of the choreographic process. A large percentage of this research has focused on imagery in creativity and has resulted in the development of the Choreographic Thinking Tools, currently in use by McGregor and his dance company. One third of this article is dedicated to a description of these developments combined with figures that illustrate the scientific theory lying behind them. The second point of departure and second third of this article brings these ideas into conjunction with somatic practices, as reflected in the writing of an expert practitioner invited to introduce somatics to McGregor\u27s dance company in the framework of the Choreographic Thinking Tools. The final section that concludes the article reintroduces scientific theory with the goal to articulate some of the contrasts and overlaps between the different approaches represented in this conversatio