Thanks to Valerie and Janice for kicking things off with such exciting
questions. I will start with a brief statement about my experimental
choreography and will keep things fairly brief in hopes of encouraging the
large –empyre- readership to chime in and participate in discussion.
This past October I premiered my latest work, “Noisense,” in collaboration
with musicians and technologists David Coll and Rama Gottfried. I
choreographed an ensemble cast of 8 undergraduate performers (actors,
clowns, dancers, performance artists) to produce an emergent dance that
engages technology. Working within a university setting and striving for
pedagogical as well as aesthetic depth, I charged our students with the task
of thinking “technology” in the broadest sense. Ultimately, our performance
includes chalk, a 16mm projector, clothing, large panels of fabric, copper
sheets connected to transducers, moving carts, digital projectors, digital
video, industrial fans, contact microphones, and iPhones used as wearable
accelerometers, among other things.
Choreographies that rely on digital media can grow out of technological
experiments over a prolonged period; rehearsals are controlled, specific,
and strategic studies of motion and digitality. Projects can include focus
on interaction, presence, and performer participation with information
systems.
The performances, however, are generally staged in a more traditional
theatrical apparatus that situates the audience as static onlooker. Noisense
was designed to exhibit a deeply interactive process. While performers
physically interact with audience members, the wearable sensors themselves
stay with the performers who have learned how to use them. The audience
watches interactions between performer and technology to experience second
hand the performer’s experience. Ultimately, the viewer does not
participate.
Where we discussed materiality last week, I am curious how the materiality
of sensors extends to environments beyond the devices themselves. In
performance, this includes the audience. What performers gain from a
rehearsal process is a more intimate relationship to the intricacies of
wearables and how they can produce different movements in the dancing body.
Where this is physically and experientially legible to the performer, it is
often less clear to an onlooker. Of course I could ask an audience member to
pick up a sensor and play. This would be an interesting performance of
emergence and interaction. Here, we encounter two different instantiations
of interactions with the same wearable.
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 8:03 PM, Renate Ferro r...@cornell.edu wrote:
We got off to a rather late start this month on -empyre's discussion
Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures
but we are introducing Week's 2 guests tonight. An invitation to last
week's guests Valerie and Janis to join in our discussion this week if
their schedules permit. A warm welcome to Ashley Ferro-Murray who has been
a guest on empyre previously during our discussion on
Critical Movement Practice a couple of years ago. Sabine is a new
subscriber to empyre and we are looking forward to her participation.
Looking forward to both Ashley and Sabine joining to extend our discussion
throughout the week.
Thanks. Renate Ferro
Introducing:
*Ashley Ferro-Murray* (US) is a choreographer who uses process-based and
improvisatory movement structures to interrogate emergent technology in
performance and installation. Past works include wearable sensors, digital
animation software, 16mm film technology, and various mechanical apparati.
Without assuming the political potential of technology or the interactive
capabilities of digital media in performance, Ferro-Murray takes both a
historical and experimental approach to building choreographies that
encourage active viewing environments in which media is installed to
instigate subversive energy. Both her artistic and scholarly work revolves
around the histories of and future possibilities for experimental dance,
installation art, and tactical media. Ferro-Murray is a PHD candidate in the
Graduate Program in Performance Studies with a designated emphasis in new
media at the University of California, Berkeley.
*Sabine Seymour* (US) May 9th, 15th -17th
Dr. Sabine Seymour focuses on fashionable technology and the intertwining
of aesthetics and function in design and technology. She is described as
being an innovator, visionary, and trend spotter in her work as researcher,
conceptual designer, economist, professor, and entrepreneur. She is the
Chief Creative Officer of her company Moondial, which develops fashionable
wearables and consults on fashionable technology to companies worldwide.
Moondial’s work is based on the convergence of fashion, design, science and
wearable wireless technologies.
Dr. Seymour is Assistant Professor of Fashionable Technology and the
director of Fashionable Technology Lab at Parsons The
