Re: [-empyre-] body as code net worked performance

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@unsw.edu.au>]

In the final scene
> of that work, the avatar no longer takes on human form but is visible as
> collection of geometric shapes  altered dynamically( and in real time) by
> the movement of the performer.

> The possibilities of relenquishing any direct representation of the body,
in
> 3DVR environments  while understanding the potential for creating
presence,
> interaction between shared realtime body data generating performers and
the
> interaction between other sets of codes,  artificial  intelligence  within
> that world is something of a paradigm  shift  for live  performing arts.

yes im wondering how mainstream dance audiences react to this!! most dance i
see uses technology and  media  as backdrop rather than as the integral
medium of the work itself.  i havent had the pleasure of ever attending one
of your performances.. but  im wondering if  you only use motion captured
data, or  you combine other datasets or sensor or triggered code  with the
dancers body to produce visual /audio effects.. ? almost in a " the fly"
like monstrous hybridisation?

its sort of interresting that direct represenation of the body remains a
contested issue.. for instance i am quiet happy to see the body in wire
frame as its seems quiet normal to me as i work with 3d, but when that sort
of effect was used in the matrix it was highly exoticised and eroticised,
(Like in the penetrating the body and pulling the bullet out scene// ).  or
im also comfortable to visualise  the body as a gemome sequence in CAGT
code.. or nice protien threads..which some would see as blashphemous
repudiation of the essence and soul of humanity..   but im a technophile..

what about teh technophobes..  im wondering if  there is a moral delima for
an audience in all of this.. that it is  somehow wrong to reduce  ( and
reduce does have the  negative inference that we are loseing something
vital ) - or prehaps  recode - the body into another more abstract state..

also can the audience in any way influence the dancers body or is that a bit
"stellarc" :)

melinda



> at this point in time we are researching these relationships.  the
> technological frontiers being addressed through intelligent and
responsive
> programming,  but ultimately with  knowledge that the audience  live in
situ
> in physical space to  screens in view of live generating motion capture
> performer will draw new sensibilities to concepts of choreography, and
> movement of media between these  spaces.
>
> we are interested to here of people thought on body as code, knowing that
> daily online communications are building up digital representations of the
> user through collection of their online identities accumulated while they
do
> their banking, search the web etc.