He is the executive director of Dance-tech Interactive and creator/producer dance-tech.net, a social networking site, dance-techTV, a collaborative internet video channel, and of dance-tech@, a series of online video interviews exploring innovation and interdisciplinary investigations on the performance of movement. He has also developed several projects on collaborative journalism and produces the on-live video series: Choreography or ELSE and Techne.
With a hybrid background in dance, new media technologies and cognitive science, he continues to investigate the intersection of the performance of motion with new media technologies, real-time composition (improvisation and interactive technology), embodied cognition while experimenting with on-line platforms for the development of sustainable models of knowledge production-distribution among trans-local communities and contexts.
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Bertha Bermúdez Pascual is a former dancer in some of Europe’s leading dance companies, Frankfurt ballet, Compañia Nacional de Danza in Madrid, as well as Emio Greco | PC, then having turned towards work in dance documentation. Bertha Bermudez is since 2007 part of the research group Art Practice and Development, headed by Marijke Hoogenboom where she focuses on the theme Dance Transmission as a source for dance documentation and since 2009 coordinator of the Accademia Mobile section of research and education within ICKamsterdam-Emio Greco | PC. Besides this Bermudez is developing projects on the relationships between dance nad cinema within the foundation Las Negras Productions. From September 2010, Bermudez has initiated a PhD in Digital Media at University Nouva of Lisbon Portugal.
Abstract:
Since 2005, I have been fascinated by the processes involved within dance transmission. This fascination has been productive, generating questions and coordinating research projects[1] around dance its nature and notational characteristics. All based on mainly one study case the work of dance company Emio Greco | PC specially the workshop Double Skin/Double Mind.
What is it that we do in our attempts at capturing the essence of dance? What is the role of orality within this process? and in which way can new media enhance the experiential nature of this art form when thinking on modes of documenting and notating?
Departing from the perspective of the individual, the subject-artists and its own reflexive praxis, I will explain the methods and ideas used within my research to collect, analyze and re-create embodied experience through the use of new media and technology. For this I will focus on the specific case of the interactive installation Ds/Dm and research project (Capturing) Intention to present processes of choice making and development of objects that both document and provide space for experiential knowledge to be embodied and transmitted under new formats of communication.
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Kristin Carlson is a Canadian-Based Researcher and Choreographer. She is currently pursuing an MSc in Computer-Aided Choreographic Process at the School for Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, studying with Thecla Schiphorst (a LifeForms software collaborator). Kristin is interested in methodologies for researching creative actions throughout choreographic process as well as how technology can be used to facilitate research. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign and has choreographed and performed in Illinois, New York, Austria, New Zealand and Canada.
Abstract:
My current research explores the cognitive processes behind creative decision-making in choreography. I am interested in using a practice-based approach through the development of an experimental design that uses technology as a research tool to facilitate investigations. Preliminary case studies show that the use of a computational tool can provide the means for observing heightened cognitive components in choreographic process. Identifiable components include habits (from training, physiology and aesthetic preferences), artistic influences, environmental affordances and immediate sensations and emotions. By drawing attention to the habit component and focusing on how cognition is distributed between elements of habits we can take a deeper look at how we work creatively to expand our understanding of choreography for both researchers and practitioners. The studies are run by asking choreographers to physically explore movement suggestions provided by the computational tool in order to create a short solo work over multiple rehearsals. Through this process, the researcher uses a combination of Participant Observation and Phenomenological interview methods to explore how the choreographer made movement and compositional decisions. This understanding helps to expand the knowledge we hold about our craft and our own actions, supporting the transference of this knowledge through the development of new tools and pedagogies.
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Riikka Theresa Innanen is a Finnish dancer and choreographer graduated from School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in 1997 after, which she has been working in collaboration with Zodiak – Center for New Dance, Finnish National Museum Kiasma, Research Center for Reality (Fin) and Daghdha Dance Company (Ire). Besides her artistic work she has been working with organizing events such as Side Step-festival (Zodiak, Helsinki, 2001- 2009) and teaching (most extensively at Amsterdam Theatre School and School for Movement Research Outokumpu, Finland). As a choreographer she has been mainly focusing in finding strategies to choreograph, which as a system with and ability learn and grow and there fore create conditions for creativity to emerge, deeply influenced by biosciences, ecology, philosophy and mathematics.
Recently she has been working on her group choreography NUMBER. The work, which begun at Daghdha Dance Company in Limerick, Ireland in 2009, was developed in collaboration with the Irish mathematician Alexis Clancy, and is an on-going choreographic research using algorithms, counting and moving. Other resent choreographic works include ANIMA (2010), an eco-choreography sourcing from biosciences, Jaana Parviainen’s research on “Negative Knowledge” and Gregory Baetson’s work on System Theory.
Abstract:
In her talk about her collaboration with the Irish mathematician Alexis Clancy and the methods and aesthetics in her choreographic work based on linear algorithmic expression on a non-linear, human surface.
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Stamatia Portanova is Lecturer in Media Studies at the Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research focuses on digital culture and aesthetics, particularly in relation to movement and dance. She has been exploring this field for the past 10 years, and has published articles and papers in several books, and in journals such as Space and Culture, Angelaki and Fibreculture. She is also a member of the Sense Lab, ‘a laboratory for thought in motion’, directed by Dr Erin Manning and based at the University of Concordia (Quèbec, Canada).
Following on my research and interest in Forsythe’s (and other choreographers’) experiments with technology, I would like to propose a philosophical reflection on movement and technology, and on the transformations of dance in the digital realm. This intervention will aim at delineating a series of possible conceptual connections between dancing bodies and technologies for dance; more precisely, it will be about the abstract relations that can be thought to exist between particular choreographic ideas/techniques (as ways to think movement) and particular technologies (as ways to think the whole world). The digital, in this sense, will be considered as an abstract idea (or an idea ‘without the body’, as Forsythe likes to describe choreography itself), before being described as a technical application.
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Pablo Ventura founded in 1986 the Ventura Dance Company in London for which he will create numerous dance works in London, Madrid and Zurich. Other works have included choreographies for contemporary operas, film and video-dance. Since 1997 Pablo Ventura has been working with computer software for choreography. Seven full evening dance and media productions using the possibilities of modern technology come about in collaboration with video artists, software designers, robot artists and electronic music composers. In 2006 is commissioned a work for a robot as the only actor in a performance installation: “Kubic’s Cube” is developed in an artistic residence in Tesla-Berlin and presented at the Berlin’s Transmediale 2006. In 2007 Pablo Ventura was selected for the Artist’s In Labs program at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Zurich. During this time he developed a “Choreographic Machine”: a custom written software that automatically creates autonomous computer choreography. Since 2009 he has been invited with Kubic’s Cube to participate in the “Swiss Artists in Labs” exhibitions in ISEA 2009 in Singapore, Gogbot Festival in Enshede and tournees with his Dance-Media performance and Installation <<2047>>.
Abstract:
The “Choreographic Machine” is basically a custom written software that automatically creates autonomous computer choreography and which I developed after many years of creating choreographies with the aid of the software Life Forms. The “Choreographic Machine” was the result of finding out how to use Life Forms to generate rhizomatic movement sequences using chance. I also used Life Forms to work out patterns and rhythms of movements based on mathematical formulas and algorithms using Pi, DNA, Pascal’s, Fibonacci, Lsystem. Until the “Choreographic Machine” I would feed by hand all this data to the Life Forms software.
The end result of this process was the devising of a choreographic machine which would autonomously generate this data for Life Forms. It consists of a programmed set of rules based on different algorithms and using Processing software, to deliver the outcome to the Life Forms software which then generates positions of the LF avatar based on these rules. In order words, we enabled the software Processing to throw the dice for Life Forms to generate dance sequences. In so doing we disregarded the choreographer or the dancer in the process of devising the movement patterns with their bodies. The sequences generated by Life Forms software are then passed on to the dancers. In some stages of our last dance-media productions, the computer was put aside so to speak in order to apply certain rules directly to choreograph sequences with the dancers by using scores based on these same rules.
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Daniel Turing works and lives in Hamburg. Too technical to be an artist but too experimental to be a programmer, Daniel is lead by his interest to overcome the limiting current modalities of human-computer interaction, enabling people to tap into more of the expressive potential inherent in the digital in more intuitive and playful ways. He graduated in Media Arts and Design at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in 2004 after studying with Jill Scott, Ralf Homann and others and since tries to bridge the divide by setting up installations or performances, often involving camera/projector setups and handcrafted video analysis/synthesis software. With these, he aims to enchant people as much as allow them a glimpse into how computers
work – the output close to the recognition algorithms, a visualization of what the machine sees.
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Amin Weber studied Visual Communications in Offenbach, Germany and graduated 2004 in “Experimental Spatial Concepts and Electronic Media”. He works as an Media Artist and Interactions- and Motion-Designer in Frankfurt and Offenbach. Since October 2010 he is participating in the Motion Bank project of the Forsythe Company in the score team with Florian Jenett for the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach.
Abstract:
Amin Weber will present some early developments from Motion Bank — a new four year research project of The Forsythe Company which will focus on the creation of on-line digital scores in collaboration with guest choreographers. He will show the current progress on the first score creation project which is Deborah Hay’s choreography of “As Holy sites go” based on “No time to Fly”. He will outline the tasks which have to be taken to transfer Deborah Hay’s work into a visual concept and approaches to capture and process the performances. Information about Motion Bank is available at: http://www.theforsythecompany.com/ > motion bank
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