DeLahunta, Scott

This chapter appears in a collection of essays and interviews edited by conceptual artist and musician Paul D. Miller. The chapter is the first to explicitly trace connections between computers and dance back to the 1960s when early computer artists, often mathematicians and computer scientists by training, were experimenting with ways the computer could support creative processes. The chapter focuses on the work of a select number of individuals, for example A. Michael Noll and John Lansdown, whose seminal contributions provided a historical backdrop to the Software for Dancers (SFD) initiative in 2001. With funding from Arts Council England, SFD was a six-month research project involved a handful of leading UK choreographers coming together with digital artists and designers “to develop concepts for a software rehearsal tool(s) for choreographers and those practitioners for whom the body in motion is a primary material.” Several current practice-based interdisciplinary projects funded by AHRC, EU and other sources and many articles and conference papers can be traced directly back this early research project, which this chapter provides a specific history for. The anthology itself has had very wide distribution and visibility as it features thirty-six essays, interviews, and artist statements on the impact of “remix” o creative practice of writers, musicians and artists and includes contributions from many well-known practitioners including Pierre Boulez, Pauline Oliver, Brian Eno, Steve Reich, Cory Doctorow as well as scholars/ writers such as Erik Davis, Catherine Corman, Manuel DeLanda, Frances Dyson, Jonathan Lethem, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Bruce Sterling. [author's note

Coventry University Pure Portal

Permuting connections: software for dancers DeLahunta, S.  Published version deposited in CURVE January 2013  Original citation & hyperlink:  DeLahunta, S. (2008) 'Permuting Connections: Software for Dancers'  In Paul D. Miller (Aka DJ Spooky)(Ed). Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (pp: 265-272). Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: MIT Press. http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sound-unbound    Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.         CURVE is the Institutional Repository for Coventry University http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open  No. 11 ‘Permuting Connections: Software for Dancers’ in Sound Unbound - an anthology on Sound Art, Digital Media and new Compositional Strategy. ed. P. D. Miller. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2008, pp. 265-272.    In March 2002, I was invited by Paul D. Miller (aka Dj Spooky) to write a chapter for his planned anthology on ‘Sound Art, Digital Media and new Compositional Strategy’. He had seen a presentation I gave that involved some of the human figure animation work of Michael Girard’s [see Critical Appraisal footnote 12] and was interested to see me include some of the “movement and flocking” material I showed in my lecture with a “little historical overview”.1 To construct the historical background I thought best for Girard’s work, I reused some of the material from the ‘Periodic Convergences: Dance and Computers’ [No. 8] at the start.  The book was initially being published by Routledge, but something disrupted that plan and it took six years before eventually being published by MIT with the support of Doug Sery, well-known acquisitions editor for new media related topics at MIT Press. The list of other authors in the publication include: Manuel DeLanda, Cory Doctorow, Frances Dyson, Brian Eno, Moby, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Pauline Oliveros and Bruce Sterling.                                                  1 Email to the author, 18 Mar 2002. 157 159160161162163164165166

Permuting Connections: Software for Dancers

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