The following message was posted to: dance-tech > There are several reasons why the dance technology field might 'lag' > behind advances in other technological fields. To name a few: > + funding > + organisational size > + the skill set of those involved > + the size of market/community of interested parties To address Matt's specific point about tools and standards: a common software-based "lingua franca" was one of the aims behind Michael Klien's ChoreoGraph project, but despite our efforts over a period of about three years to get that off the ground, it wasn't possible to get financial support for a project with no specific commercial application (specifically because we *wanted* a free, open platform as a design aim). In the end, the software and choreographic expertise was rolled into bespoke solutions for projects at Vienna Volksoper and Ballett Frankfurt. However, having said this, I'm not sure I perceive such a technological "lag", over and above the traits I'd associate with a field where practical application is more important than dogma, or than technology for its own sake. > Could we create a standardised procedural/oo dance instruction > language? Is this an aim of the e-Merge project? No. The aim of the e-Merge project is to use software to facilitate and amplify the process of creating choreography using formal rules, pattern-matching and inference. I see the software component of e-Merge as providing incomplete arcs of a circular feedback system which generates choreographic rules from the results of previous choreographic rules; the rest of the arc is provided by the choreographer, possibly in the good old-fashioned learn-some-steps manner. The rules embodied in e-Merge need not encapsulate any choreographic knowledge at all, so long as they close the loop in an interesting, generative manner. There are parallels with Klien's DUPLEX for Ballett Frankfurt, where the software was programmed with complex rules of association in order to assemble choreographic blocks, without actually encapsulating the choreography within the blocks. And, again, the dancers also applied choreographic rules which were independent of those held on computer. (And Klien's earlier work PROXSIMA'S DRIFT was also rule-based, but with no computers; the rules were memorised by the dancers.) As something of an aside, the QUARTET project by Margie Medlin has, perhaps as a technological stepping stone rather than design aim, a mediating software system for controlling a virtual dance figure; the input is gestural control and audio analysis, but there is something of an intermediate specification for the way in which the virtual dancer's body can be directed; and the project also incorporates camera control and a notion of "film language." > I really like the ideas outlined in the e-Merge project, but I get a > bit twitchy when we expect systems to defy their programming and do > things without needing to be asked. How does a program shed its > programming? That's the whole point of e-Merge: behaviour emerges which is not manifest in the rules. Or do you mean something else? Nothing "defies its programming" here. > Emergent theory in computing is really huge > and difficult; the modelling of truly emergent systems requires a lot > of software and parallel hardware even if the simulated system seems > relatively simple. I don't think that's so; for example, Conway's Life is extremely simple and its resource requirements are very modest, and yet it clearly manifests emergent properties. (I'm distinguishing between "emergent" and "chaotic.") Or do you mean something specific by "modelling" or "truly emergent"? -- nick rothwell -- composition, systems, performance -- http://www.cassiel.com ---------------------------------------- The Dance-Tech mailing list has recently moved to a new address. To post a message, send email to dance-tech@dancetechnology.org. To unsubscribe, send email to lists@dancetechnology.org, with the words "unsubscribe dance-tech" in the message body. ----------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 05/08/04