Re: VSS.01 Performance System

From: Johannes Birringer (birringer.1@osu.edu)
Date: 06/14/02


hello all,


in the recent thread, I responded very briefly to a discussion we've had
about/with Barriedale Operahouse.  I then described a "performance
system" which we exhibited to the public last week. My comment that <<we
didn't have 'technology' there somewhere hidden in the no-man's land">>
was entirely ironic, and I don't think I was dwelling on visibility of
our laptop performers at all, just noting it, since they were part of
the work. 

Nor was I at at all suggesting that I am interested in using
<<'technology for technology's sake'>>. Quite on the contrary, if we
must talk about red herrings, I think it's a herring to try to separate
our real-time instruments from the aesthetics or the creative process
and the synaesthetic experience our audience has or the meanings they
will find resonant in the performance (of the system).

It's good if we are open to all possibilities, here in our discourse and
in our communities, and not just the somatic ones or the movement
possibilities, but also all the others that have to do with why we
perform.  And here I may add - that it indeed amazes me that we come
back so often, in this list, to thinking of computers or softwares as
distractions from choreography, or as (perhaps, it it implied)
insufficiently or unsuccessfully or unbrilliantly incorporated in the
works or the communicative lives. How so? Why so, and what are the
criteria? 

Okay, so let's stop worrying about visibility. I never was worried. On
the other hand, nor do I worry about incorporating the media; all the
work I have done has always been hybrid, and hybrid are our processes,
and our performance methods. Sarah, I don't think I was talking about
"displaying technologies"  - I don't know what that is. 

Thinking of this hybrid work, I'll end here adapting a sentence from
filmmaker Trinh:

<<To cut across boundaries is to live aloud the malaise  of categories
and labels. It is to resist simplistic attempts at classifying, to
resist the comfort of belonging to a cultural or aesthetic genre, and of
producing classifiable works.>> (When the Moon Waxes Red)

greetings
Johannes Birringer
AlienNation Co.
http://www.aliennationcompany.com
http://dance.ohio-state.edu/Dance_and_Technology/



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