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POST CHOREOGRAPHIC

Although the notion of 'choreography' has not disappeared in the context of contemporary 21st Century performance and virtual art, it has certainly undergone a re-evaluation in terms of how bodily movement/physical intelligence produces data or how performers or immersants engage with an interface environment which is programmable and networked, and how environments instruct moving behaviors.

In examinations of augmented environments (and how these systems perform), a few propositions were made by Birringer and other members of the Interaktionslabor and DAP-Lab since 2006 to paraphrase the notion of the 'post choreographic' --not a new notion in itself -- to emphasize evolving systems behaviors, including physical performer articulations in constant exchange with algorithms and responsive or (semi)autonomous, intelligent audio-visual environments, sensorial flows and hypersensual spaces.

The particular challenges to thinking about 'composition' arise from the real-time synthesis of interface designs-in-motion, based not on choreography but on programming and physical adaptation, which generate “virtual movement” through the digital body-environment interaction.

A lively debate arose in February-March, first on the dance-tech list and then on Birringer's blogsite, and back to the dance-tech list. New and provocative discussions have opened up over the past weeks, and it's difficult to keep translating between list and net.

But very valuable insights are being produced, as we all grapple with the "languages" of our practices/theories, and these insights are [and need to be] saved and archived. We invite more responses from the community here to extend the discourses.

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Permalink Reply by Lazarus on May 27, 2008 at 4:14pm

Hallo Loopos, I'm sorry but I need time to translate your questions and to think about it.
But I think it is important to differ maybe between participatory performer and the audience. But may be not.
You are interessed in interactivity and intersubjectivity. In my analytic approach - I'm not. subjective anatomy is acting only by myself but I can communicate about it with others in that/weil it is cultural appointed (by school, fotos, atlanten, pain description, medicine, physiology) but this is in a (quasi-)poetic language, an adjudgement of aesthetic quality not in a medical sense.
So, I'm interessed in a discription/analytic of body-movement/live-performance not graphic-installation. But the aesthetic quality which go out of body-anatomy/physiology is certainly also a possibility to analyse others.
Maybe, that's my answer now.

What do you means with
"i guess, no one spoke of improvisation or choreography"?
The Performer in the in the 60s?

Regards and thanks for discussion.

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Permalink Reply by Loopos on May 29, 2008 at 7:03pm

hallo

thanks for this, yes, i would also have thought that it is not so easy to compare/link performer of performance, and audience watching the performance. I didn't know what you meant by analysis instrument for a viewer (of anatomy /anatomy-based movement description), and i guess i'd had to come to your workshop to find out.

If you are not working within interactive , real time frameworks as described in the earlier posts here, then you are going back to a notion of perceivable/describable/analyzable choreography and a separation of the real time. hmm, i wonder whether there is a real time for the onlooker, in the sense in which the discussion here seemed to want to move beyond the choreographic and the capture systems. Your personally and fluidly experienced subjective movement - it is not visible then?

My joke about happenings was meant to refer to Kaprow and the unstructuring structures of events or happenings that, I guess, were never intended to be rehearsed and reproduced, and thus their event-ness in real time again differentiates them from the precision vocabulary of Forsythe, let's say, and his dancers trained in a particular "improvisation technology" (would you say within particular physiological/anatomical use of body, joints, arms, legs, rotations, reversion, etc, pulsive, architectonic, linear? what vis the vocabularyt you use.....?) that, i think, operates on the opposite end of what, say happened, in Cage's "Variations" and in some of the happenings at 9 Evenings (1966).

with regards
Loopos

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Permalink Reply by Lazarus on May 30, 2008 at 4:36pm

hallo,
thanks for your answer but I need time for my answer.

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Permalink Reply by Johannes Birringer on May 31, 2008 at 1:44pm

hi all.

these last commentaries are interesting to ponder, both regarding the space/time for interactive real time composition/performance -- what in our group we call "design in motion" which means designing through performance and not so much devising f o r performance...... each temporal event may modify the software settings used, the hardware in operation on a given day of performance, and the visual outputs running on the Isadora patches -- as well as regarding the functional organisms/body systems/body-anatomy & physiology that seem addresssed here by Heide's workshop on subjective anatomies.

Matt asks: >>significantly, the movement forms to mention are explicitly designed for realtime improvisation/composition. they have their own structural aesthetic, some components 'fit-together' others do not. in one sense the forms are meta-choreography (although i am not wanting to advance such a term).

i would be interested to read a more detailed explanation as to 'how' technology facilitates the 'post choreographic'.>>>

How does technology facilitate the post choreographic?

In the abovementioned sense, first of all, the technological system is now entwined with the organism (of the performer in the real space-time), and is also a machining organism, quite well and poetically spoken to in Jeannette's Ginslov's numerous posts and in what Jaime del Val calls the 'meta-formative.'

The real-time performance (if there are human organisms coupled with hardware [sensors, wearables, camera tracking systems , etc)] and software [patches running on computers analysing incoming data and controlling feedbacks and continuous modulations of output materials such a video, digital animation, light, sound etc.] thus happens within a data flow environment.
This is the first important issue, i think: the post choreographic emerges in data flow environments (and these are facilitated by technologies and transductions).

And yes, it is very true to say that gestures, behaviors and movement in such fluid and networked environment (often there is also a telematic dimension or there is real space - virtual space syncopation which allows thinking through such space-time as a distributed space) evolve to be adopted explicitly for realtime improvisation/composition, generating their own aesthetic or their particular "techniques" of real time performance within the data flow environment.

The proposition was to no longer conceptually treat the real time environment as an equivalent structure for choreographic ecriture or capture (emphasizing repeatability and particular reductions or choreographic signatures or, in Forsythe's terms, 'improvisation technologies' based on precise rules and formations/deployment of anatomies, energies, flexibility, extensibility, foldings, appearances/disappearances, mathematical procedures, etc) but to imagine real time adoptional performance -- improvisation along a scenic structure for interaction -- as, primarily' a synaesthetic event, a generative happening and a formation where the performer may not be in control and yet explores an intersubjective or multisubjective experience, playing with the kybernetic machine as the machine plays with them, within the digital environment, within the fantasized environment, with others there [performers, audience], with the sensorial and tactile instruments, both visible and invisible, the linings between body and technologies.

Its the linings that interest us, as the new might emerge, and sometimes the familiar looking unfamiliar as the interfacial is not necessarily spectactular or virtuosic, nor even interesting at times [but can be], the unstructured happening within the performatic space, the stumbling, the malfunctioning partnering, the exuberant contingent, the unsuspected breathlessness or discoordination (in pathological sense -- the rubber hand example they use in psychology tests) when your organs or limbs seem not there or digitally dilated.....

I think it was portuguese artist Miguel Pereira who recently spoke of his interest in "technique" as a construction you use to question technique (and implicitly question the virtuosic body of dance often deployed in the choreographic). I would suggest much careful and slow description is going to be needed to parse the interfacial, to look at the performance through difference (different anatomical architectures, as Stelarc calls them), through irreducibles of real time kinaesthetic and kinaesonic experience not derived from a choreographic method.

And as Jaime pointed out, in this entwinement of the interfacial/real time composing performance, "technologies of the self! are questioned as well, the idea of a subject is shifted, possibilities for enaction are not created by the choreographer/dancer subject, but by the integrated system described above;

in choreographic terms, say you watch Forsythe's "Improvisation Technologies" CD and the examples demonstrated there, you note that the space is an empty studio space, with a dancer body moving through it or centering it. the dancer is always the centre, moving in the various directions (of Laban-geometric space)...

in post choreographic space-time, the dancer is never in the centre and there is no studio space or stage, in the conventional sense.

Projection technologies (if we think of immersive space or 2d/3D virtual spaces) also need to be studied more carefully and described for our work. Obviously, real time performance systems require projective architecture.

Sound technologies (for immersive experience or spatialized sonics) also need to be described on connection with the linings mentioned above.

regards
Johannes

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Permalink Reply by Johannes Birringer on May 31, 2008 at 2:18pm

hallo Heide

this just arrived from Dresden (blueLab), do you know this?

Neubau Nacht

hmmm, watching it, one could wonder a lot about what the choreographic or post choreographic in such a spectacle is...... and whether it actually makes even sense to evoke the terms...

regards
Johannes

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Permalink Reply by Lazarus on June 4, 2008 at 6:45pm

Dear Johannes,
you and I know blueLab and the Dancer Ka Dietze and Valentina Cabro. This performance is "traditionell" or not? Maybe the end is more when the performers disappeare in the stage-design.

You spoke "improvisation along a scenic structure for interaction" ...
That's for you working in a "post-choreografic"-sense?

If you speak "designing through performance and not so much devising f o r performance"
Do you think only about the dancing and not about the audience. Correct?

You write: "in post choreographic space-time, the dancer is never in the centre [?of the scene/stage] and there is no studio space or stage, in the conventional sense."
But was is the performer than? The initiator of visual-motion, of the 3-D-Graphics? But than, for what you need the performer, the dancer, the human of the "stage"=the place which audience see?

Isn't post-choreographic in this comprehension not only an installation, and with dancers a "Performance Installation" (Jo Fabian). Than you are in the space of "Museum" and not of "theater". (?)

Lieber Johannes, maybe I have misunderstood you. But you know, that are aspects of my questions.

If I spoke about Anatomy, than I spoke with a term of human anatomy.
And Choreographie (or Post-Choreographie) is bound to the human - not in general, but in my public-thinking here. So I distinguish Choreography to "Regie" (stage direction).

Maybe you means with the term of Choreography also the correlation with a narrativ sense? But I think, that isn't your the point.

Best Heide

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Permalink Reply by Lazarus on June 6, 2008 at 3:00pm

Hi, I try an answer now. I hope it is successfully.

You write: "hmm, i wonder whether there is a real time for the onlooker, in the sense in which the discussion here seemed to want to move beyond the choreographic and the capture systems. (... google...: hmm, ich frage mich, ob es sich um ein Echtzeit-für den Betrachter, in dem Sinne, in dem die Diskussion hier schien zu wollen, über das hinauszugehen, die choreographische und der Capture-Systeme.)

HL: For the public is all „choreography“ regardless of it “watch“ an „performance“, happening, improvisation, fixed movement... Or not?
Not. Because he know whether he can see the same piece in all the time or not. That’s common sense.
And we had before said that a princip of choreography is the fixation of movement – in a closed system. (Correct?)
And we have a lot of definitions how you can read in corpusweb...

“post-“ is the end of planned movement before
but post-choreography isn’t the same of improvisation.
Or not?
What is the difference?

Maybe: In an improvisation you have an arrangement, you know the rules of the game, you know the (individual) spectrum of movement and stage design and the technical program but a lot of “dance” of “performance” is a result of affects, of spontaneous vagaries by communication.

The “Plan” of performance functions other.
Than if you are very aware about this/your performance you works not “in trance”,
you works aware in an open System with all possibilities.
An german autor called that “structural improvisation”.
Your knowlegde about a lot must be big, you have aware to create and always to remember and to decide what you do and not only to react or to replay. That is “normal” by dancing in einem apparativen/technical context with regulation in real-time (with digital programs).
[A lot of mind in this discussion was written 2006 in danc-tech-List with the subject: "Sensordance/ improvised / computational / conceptual"]

But maybe too is “Improvisation” the Verb of (the Konzept/Methode/”Technologie” of) “Post-Choreografic”. (?)

“Your personally and fluidly experienced subjective movement - it is not visible then?
Ihr persönlich und flüssig erfahrenen subjektiven Bewegung - ist es dann nicht sichtbar? t. by google)“

HL: How you do mean that? In mind of my (my workshop) or of the onlooker?
subjective movement is allways visible but the interpretation, the adscription, the explanation in words of attributes is “subjectiv”, is flavour, is only a meaning of the base from an aesthetical reasoning.

“and thus their event-ness in real time again differentiates them from the precision vocabulary of Forsythe, let's say, and his dancers trained in a particular "improvisation technology"
...would you say within particular physiological/anatomical use of body, joints, arms, legs, rotations, reversion, etc, pulsive, architectonic, linear? what vis the vocabularyt you use.....?)
(...google...damit ihre Event-ness in Echtzeit .....?)“

HL: Forsythe benutzt Laban, nicht alle Möglichkeiten der “Anatomie und Physiologie”, Forsythe needs Laban, not all possibiliy of Anatomy like pulse, breathing or other physiological points. He built like an architect. His students biults/ choreographs also with his program and transform to entertainers like in a Musical.

Subjectiv anatomy needs the human “programm” in an self-understanding with self-observation and self- explanation and self-description on base of anatomy and physiology, but not in an individual modus but rather in the modus of “wha

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Permalink Reply by mpgough on June 6, 2008 at 3:05pm

i find it interesting that your position reflects my original critique of the 'post choreographic'. i will follow up with a longer reply after the weekend.

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Permalink Reply by Lazarus on June 6, 2008 at 3:17pm

...
Subjectiv anatomy needs the human “programm” in an self-understanding with self-observation and self- explanation and self-description on base of anatomy and physiology, but not in an individual modus but rather in the modus of “what we have read”, “what we have learned” – in an anatomical/physiological poesy (“Organ”, “Location”, “Function”, “Pathology”, “symbolic of this” (like poetic semantic of Organs) not in a scientifical system like Laban or Forsythe.

With them you have also a modus to describe what you see and what you don’t see(the “choreography”) or what you (the dancer) doing or not doing – or . And you have a modus to “analyze” the scientifical systems of movement-analysis.

But of course, you can also use the traditionell modi like Laban-notation or Benesh or ... or Jeschke. Jeschkes system is new and different to the others because her system operates with kategories of the topograhy makro-anatomy and biology of sports (in my words, not in the words of jeschke) and is good to draw comparisons between different pieces at a glance. It’s open and concret and for the context of theater you can add it for instance wiht the modell of Marcia Siegel.

“...that, i think, operates on the opposite end of what, say happened, in Cage's "Variations" and in some of the happenings at 9 Evenings (1966).
das, glaube ich, betreibt auf der gegenüberliegenden Ende dessen, was, sagen passiert ist, auf Cages "Variations" und in einigen der Happenings in 9 Evenings (1966) t. by google)…“
HL: Can you remember this in other words. I’m not sure whether understood you.

Have a good day. Regards, HL
PS: Maybe we debate the same how in the Panel: "Dance Technology; what is it?"?

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Permalink Reply by Lazarus on June 6, 2008 at 4:38pm

Ich sprach über 2 Aspekte von "(Post-)Choreographie:
- den technischen --> (a)technisch=apparativ/ (b) technisch=per Training (c)Wissen+dessen Praxis (?Analyse?)
- den technologischen --> die Konzeption/ Planung/ Choreography
- a piece of den semiotisch-semantischen --> Geschmack/Interpretation/Eigenschaftswörter

Ich sprach nicht über den strukturellen/formalen-semantischen Aspekt,
dass im Begriff der "Choreografie", dem "(auf)Schreiben von Bewegung" maybe eingeschrieben ist eine "Bedeutung", "Sinn", "Politics of body",
demzufolge "Post-Choreography" eine Symbolisierung von Bewegung verneint.
Wenn ja: was für einen Unterschied gäbe es zu
- Sport et al. // - Entertainment // - "Virtuosität" // - ???

Wenn ja, wäre wahrscheinlich die Kritik of Virtuosität seit der Romantik/Nationalismus/1800 obsolet
und die Frage: "The question raised ... 2004 was not only “How can we politicize the debate?”, but rather, what attitude we should have regarding this audience that is no longer interested in high or low culture, new or old media, and whether the language is legitimized as artistic or not."
(2007/ http://hdl.handle.net/10002/411)

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Permalink Reply by Lazarus on June 11, 2008 at 4:32am

Dear Loopos,
You can understand my kauderwelsch?
Maybe I wrote in a long text, what you wrote in short sentences.

You wrote:
“then you are going back to a notion of perceivable/describable/analyzable
choreography and a separation of the real time.”

HL: Yes, because I think “analyse” and a thinking about the makes of dance needs words these are generated before or after the dancing.

I think, if you dance, you cann’t dance “unstructured”.
But our thinking about dance-structure of improvisation that emerge in the communication with digital programms and/or other (human)partners is an other thinking than in “choreographies”. So we change “choreography” with “compositon”
(in my opinion: yes, like Cage, maybe in the text: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/source-text/42/
or in self-action like an (auto)Performer (or a “TänzerRegisseur”/ “TänzerChoreograf”/ “autor” and the dancer in one person)

But I cann’t see, that Cage with his “flipping coins to determine each element and consisted of thirty-five «remarks» outlining the structure, components, and methodology" (in Variations") is other than Forsythes “impovisation technologies” or others “methodes” or techniques of dance like dance-gymnastique, Ballet or so.
What important is in my opinion, is the thinking
in principles of dance and
in variable (fragmented) elements
which may become composed variable (spontaneous, random).

Rudolf Frieling (ca. 2003) finished his text http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/overview_of_media_art/performa... with the words:
“However the body is seen, interpreted, mediatized or deconstructed, it remains at the center of identificatory processes. It is, in other words, in all cases the «given.».”
This is a basis for the dancing that for me makes the innovation of “Post-choreography”, of dancing with “technics”/ “technique” / “technology” / diverent and news “impovisations technologies”.
best regards, HL
(I hope my public thinking isn't too long here.)

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Permalink Reply by Johannes Birringer on September 12, 2008 at 8:44am

hallo Heide

you say: "But our thinking about dance-structure of improvisation that emerge in the communication with digital programms and/or other (human)partners is an other thinking than in “choreographies”. So we change “choreography” with “compositon”?

hmm. I am not sure that the change of terms (the post choreographic in terms of the "compositional") is ultimately successful, although, yes, i have prefered to speak of composition when we work with "scores" and with "arenas" (in my last piece, which was created with musicians and a composer conducting these musicians, while the digital images of the performing bodies were all created in real-time processing, i used the term arenas for the different patches programmed on the computer for the projections of dance image to / with / aside from the musical sequencing) - and as you very succinctly point out, yes, this c ompositing is done with the principle of variability (not random, not chance, quite in the sense you imply in reference to Cage).

Do what extent this is captured in the work of Forsythe (Improvisation Technologies, which is a technique system, wouldn't you agree, not a work of course) or Jo Fabian or others?

it would be interesting to ask whether the post choreographic indeed must aty all rely on the "given" (your last sentence, Heide). Maybe i misunderstand you. What is the basis for you? the "body" at the "center of the identicatory process"?

hmmm, regarding the decentering of this given, see the interesting new issue of Bains numériques no.2 (2008), the journal issued by the Centre des arts Enghien-Les-Bains. The title of this issue is "corps numériques en scène" -- and these corps numériques (digital bodies, digital objects) are a different "given", are they? In a linguistic sense, of course, if one were noe to speak of new performance writing, or scenographies, then the original sense of the word choreography (the writing of dance) still holds much philosophical ground.

I think my postings here were not intended as a manifesto or as a statement about the end of choreography at all.

I realize we work with choreographic methods all the time, if we create theatre or dance or music theatre, or dance on camera/screen, and what interests us of course is also what lies between the choreographies (those moments or actions we control or think to control), between perceptions of movement, and "after" the choreographies. Working more extensively with augmented realities and working from software or through software alters some of ther assumptions about the choreographic process and the spatialities (scène) and temporalities involved. Working without a stage also changes i think how "choreographies" are perceivable/perceived, and here i think of work of kondition pluriel or of Myriam Gourfink might be interesting to look at.

In your own writing (and I see that the new Yearbook no. 18 of the German Association of Dance Research is out now, and your essay on Fabian and computational space is included), you have addressed the dramaturgy of participatory computational theatre (dance), right? perhaps you can let us read the essay here?

with regards, Johannes