Frames of Reference: Thoughts on Dance, Technology and Telematics

Art making is a very personal process. Contemporary dancing and dance-making are highly visceral, tactile, social practices that, while rooted in the communal, also reflect the unique point of view of the dance-maker. A collaborative process, the resultant works are not only built by the shaping of bodies in time and space, but also by the dancers' facility in utilizing the subtle tools provided by refined bodily knowledge. As choreographers and educators, we not only teach dancers how to use their bodies in healthy and efficient ways, we attempt to cultivate the accessibility of their inner lives for their development as interpretive artists.

What also get refined in this process are the dancers' more delicate intuitions and sense perceptions. Through repetition in rehearsal, the dancer learns how to feel the presence of others behind and around her and she senses their moods and energies. She not only learns the steps but also the familiar smell of her partner as he passes by. She memorizes the places on the floor where sweat pools during the slower sections, and learns how to negotiate the slippery floor, as well as the slippery arm during the next move. The feeling of that slippery arm becomes one of the many threads of experience woven into the choreography.

The way each dancer perceives the presence of others in three- dimensional space is a critical component in realizing a dance work. The communication between bodies is as important to the work as the movements executed. And within an improvisational setting, this communication becomes even more important. If dances were written texts, these perceptions would appear between the lines.

So much meaning is made between the lines. As dancers, it is here that we make sense of things both literally and figuratively. It is through the extension of the many facets of our consciousness into the spaces between us that we connect and find the possibility for heightened experiences of communication, union, and transcendence. Through this almost sacred process, the conducting and shaping of bodily knowledge into the organization of movement and metaphor, the choreographer offers the potential for communication and transcendence to others.

I have always found it interesting that as we train and work to fully occupy our densely physical bodies, we are often unwittingly refining these subtle, extra-bodily ways of knowing. We learn the body and "not the body" simultaneously. We learn to read, respond to and create from the spaces between. This makes sense to us. So one might ask why some dancers are compelled to bring these developed visceral and perceptual ways of knowing into technological environments? While at first these environments might appear to be foreign ground in which to place dance, there are ways in which it makes sense aesthetically, physically, emotionally, and intellectually.

My first experiences working with interactive technology were in the interactive environment of the Intelligent Stage at Arizona State University's Institute for Studies in the Arts. I was an Artist in Residence there for two years and during the second year of the residency, I created a work in collaboration with Video Artist Douglas Rosenberg and Composer John Mitchell. While I had been a dancer and choreographer for many years, moving in the Intelligent Stage provided the opportunity to experience physicality in a very different way.

"The Intelligent Stage" is named as such because it is able to respond to the movements of dancers or musicians. It is not really the stage itself that is "intelligent" (there are no sensors in or on the floor), but rather the space above it. Affixed over the space are video cameras. These cameras, which are connected to an array of computers, act as eyes with which the computers see the space. Through the placement of sensors within the representational map of the space, the computers are then programmed to respond in a variety of ways. These sensors don't exist as objects in the space or beams of light that one breaks. They are essentially pre-designated locations in an invisible or virtual three-dimensional map seen through video cameras, interpreted by computers and known to the dancers. There are endless ways in which triggers can respond. For example, in relation to sound, the dancers can control not only when music starts, but also pitch, tempo, duration and cycling of material. Dancers can trigger lighting changes, video clips, still images, etc.

The physical experience of moving within the movement sensing system is subtle yet remarkable. The sensation of gesture instantaneously affecting sound, light and projections creates a heightened sense of presence, of being in the body in an enlivened state, a hyper-presence if you will. The space takes on a quality of consciousness as the dancer extends his/her volition into it and that volition is expressed through the designated responses. It was the simulation of conscious space that was the most impressive aspect of my experiences there. By conscious space I mean a heightened level of awareness, as if the space itself was responding to the movement occurring within it, creating continuity between inner and outer experience, and bringing into question notions of self, intention and causality. Moving within interactive environments allows the dancer to consciously work with what is between the lines and to feel the aliveness of space in a profoundly different way.

The advent of digital technology has facilitated giving form to new ways of experiencing causality and relationship. For me, experimentation as a part of the ADAPT collaboration (Association for Dance and Performance Telematics) has also provided new ways of experiencing space, time, and relationships. ADAPT was founded in December 2000 as an interdisciplinary collaboration between artists, technologists, and scholars from five educational institutions in the United States. ADAPT is dedicated to research and critical dialogue on performance and media in telematic space using advanced network technologies, such as those developed under the Internet2 initiatives. "Telematics" refers to the practice of real time video-collaboration/teleconferencing between remote locations via the Internet. At the time of the association's founding, the participating artists/institutions were: Johannes Birringer - Ohio State University, John Mitchell - Arizona State University, Lisa Naugle - University of California at Irvine, and Douglas Rosenberg - University of Wisconsin, Madison, and myself at the University of Utah.

While dance is the genre that brought the collaborators together (we all are employed in dance department), dance proved to be far less important to the earlier experimentations than were issues of lighting, shooting, and framing. And although there are artists who have been using the Internet as a performance venue for a number of years, the ADAPT explorations were my first opportunity to experience and grapple with the Internet's aesthetic, technical, and collaborative challenges. I have found the process very exciting.

It was interesting to monitor what I saw as an evolution in the understanding of the parameters in which we were working. Since we saw each others' work either on the screen or projected onto a flat surface, it was initially critical to address the frame in order to bring the viewer to the image and the image to the viewer. It was important at first to work from the perspective of film rather choreography or dance. Strategies of the camera were key to an image's visibility and aesthetic properties. Wide, medium or tight shots, cameras that were active (hand-held) or stable (tri-pod), and images were mixed locally at each site or mixed between sites; all became crucial mediators of the activities within the frame.

In this situation, unlike in the Intelligent Stage, the notion of interactivity not only implied causality, but also spontaneous interaction of images and sound with their fluid and relative meanings. Since we often didn't know what elements were arising from where, particularly in relation to sound, we were brought into a state of hyper-presence, similar yet different from the hyper-presence of the interactive environment of the Intelligent Stage. All of our senses were stimulated to be open to the "now" of the experience, and not only were we doing so as movers relating to other dancers at a distance, but we were also relating to other images, gestures and actions within the frame. For example, in one session we worked with the idea of binding. Each site interpreted this in a very different way. One site contributed an image of someone's head being wrapped in gauze, another showed a dancer working with large swaths of cloth and another offered images of two dancers engaged in a struggle. Each site would respond to the other either through the framing of the material or in movement. These images were also mixed to create a variety of montages and then streamed out again to be viewed at each location.

As a result of the on-line collaborations I grew to see telematic space as a metaphoric space in which we would meet through imagery and sound, leaving room for each other to generate material as well as respond to what was being generated elsewhere. It was through the myriad varieties of blending and mixing that the potential for meaning emerged.

As images rose and fell, as sound and voices were heard and then lost, all happening in the present across great distances, one experienced a very gentle flow of interconnectedness, of shared experience and shared awareness. For me, these are the aspects of the work that are most compelling. It is this collaboration of ideas and images, all converging in the ever-present "now," that resembles aspects of the interconnectedness of live dance. Through these explorations we developed an ability to "feel" the contact between us, and this contact began to make "sense" to the body and the perceptions. It was in the space between our divergent locations, time zones, and points of view that one could experience those connections. And while the distances between bodies were far greater than in a traditional duet or trio, the senses were no less engaged.

The development of digital technology has facilitated the emergence of new forms and venues for art making. And while one can trace the interweaving genealogy of these forms, I believe that recent developments in digital technology and advanced networking are facilitating giving form to states of awareness that were previously not possible. As dancers/movers within these environments, rather than experiencing alienation, we are brought into keener relationships with our own highly developed embodied senses. Digital technology makes tangible aspects of our senses and perceptions that have previously been quietly understood by dancers and dance-makers.