[-empyre-] relational objects

[Norah Zuniga Shaw]

This is a fantastic discussion this month. Thank you to all the
contributors. I'm thinking about two things that may be relevant.

First, in relation to the idea of a trace, in our work we've been interested
in the idea of a generative trace (meaning that the trace generates
creativity more than preserves a past present). Davin and others speak of
the idea of an original and of the "gap of difference between the event and
the representation." Perhaps the decoupling of trace and original is of use
here. This also decouples the idea of a trace from the idea of document.
Even more traditional dance scholars who work on reconstruction of
historically important pieces have begun to question the existence of "an
original." What is the essence (yikes, not a great work) or better said,
what within a moment, a dance, an experience can be traced and represented
and created a new with change being a central value, not stasis?

Others note a desire for a "moment without feedback, without a document,
without a traceable trace." I understand and would say that this constitutes
the majority of my experience as a dancer. For those of us in dance, this
moment with out a traceable trace is the norm and while there is beauty in
it, it also holds our field in perpetual obscurity. But, in our field, the
endless, perhaps even Sissyphean effort to recreate past moments, while
important, has limited the scope of our inquiry. What has been liberating
for us in our work on Synchronous Objects has been the decoupling of the
ideas of trace and document. What if we do not try to recreate the
experience of the live performance but instead trace the principles, events,
ideas, and possibilities inside the event and re-present these principles
with the intent not of documenting but of sharing (creating relationships)?
This also relates to the issue of "the object" that is flying around a bit
this month and last. We in western cultures tend to think primarily of
objects as commodities but they are of course also generators of
relationships. Perhaps some of this is useful.

Secondly, I'd love to hear from this month's contributors and others on the
list about relationships between participatory art and participatory
pedagogy and perhaps even some of the rhetoric around cyberlearning these
days. I'm finding really productive connections between my research in this
area and my teaching and I'd love to hear from others about this as well.

Thanks
Norah




-- 
Norah Zuniga Shaw
Director for Dance and Technology
Department of Dance and
The Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design
The Ohio State University
T: 614.247.7379 Dance
T: 614.292.5996 ACCAD
http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu