[-empyre-] Week 2 on empyre: Welcome to Sabine Seymour and Ashley Ferro-Murray

[Ashley Ferro-Murray]

Thanks to Valerie and Janice for kicking things off with such exciting
questions. I will start with a brief statement about my experimental
choreography and will keep things fairly brief in hopes of encouraging the
large –empyre- readership to chime in and participate in discussion.

This past October I premiered my latest work, “Noisense,” in collaboration
with musicians and technologists David Coll and Rama Gottfried. I
choreographed an ensemble cast of 8 undergraduate performers (actors,
clowns, dancers, performance artists) to produce an emergent dance that
engages technology. Working within a university setting and striving for
pedagogical as well as aesthetic depth, I charged our students with the task
of thinking “technology” in the broadest sense. Ultimately, our performance
includes chalk, a 16mm projector, clothing, large panels of fabric, copper
sheets connected to transducers, moving carts, digital projectors, digital
video, industrial fans, contact microphones, and iPhones used as wearable
accelerometers, among other things.

Choreographies that rely on digital media can grow out of technological
experiments over a prolonged period; rehearsals are controlled, specific,
and strategic studies of motion and digitality. Projects can include focus
on interaction, presence, and performer participation with information
systems.

The performances, however, are generally staged in a more traditional
theatrical apparatus that situates the audience as static onlooker. Noisense
was designed to exhibit a deeply interactive process. While performers
physically interact with audience members, the wearable sensors themselves
stay with the performers who have learned how to use them. The audience
watches interactions between performer and technology to experience second
hand the performer’s experience. Ultimately, the viewer does not
participate.

Where we discussed materiality last week, I am curious how the materiality
of sensors extends to environments beyond the devices themselves. In
performance, this includes the audience. What performers gain from a
rehearsal process is a more intimate relationship to the intricacies of
wearables and how they can produce different movements in the dancing body.
Where this is physically and experientially legible to the performer, it is
often less clear to an onlooker. Of course I could ask an audience member to
pick up a sensor and play. This would be an interesting performance of
emergence and interaction. Here, we encounter two different instantiations
of interactions with the same wearable.

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 8:03 PM, Renate Ferro <rtf9 at cornell.edu> wrote:

> We got off to a rather late start this month on -empyre's discussion
> Wearable Technologies:  Cross-disciplinary Ventures
> but we are introducing Week's 2 guests tonight.  An invitation to last
> week's guests Valerie and Janis to join in our discussion this week if
> their schedules permit. A warm welcome to Ashley Ferro-Murray who has been
> a guest on empyre previously during our discussion on
> Critical Movement Practice a couple of years ago.  Sabine is a new
> subscriber to empyre and we are looking forward to her participation.
> Looking forward to both Ashley and Sabine joining to extend our discussion
> throughout the week.
>
> Thanks.  Renate Ferro
>
> Introducing:
>
> *Ashley Ferro-Murray* (US) is a choreographer who uses process-based and
> improvisatory movement structures to interrogate emergent technology in
> performance and installation. Past works include wearable sensors, digital
> animation software, 16mm film technology, and various mechanical apparati.
> Without assuming the political potential of technology or the interactive
> capabilities of digital media in performance, Ferro-Murray takes both a
> historical and experimental approach to building choreographies that
> encourage active viewing environments in which media is installed to
> instigate subversive energy. Both her artistic and scholarly work revolves
> around the histories of and future possibilities for experimental dance,
> installation art, and tactical media. Ferro-Murray is a PHD candidate in the
> Graduate Program in Performance Studies with a designated emphasis in new
> media at the University of California, Berkeley.
>
>
>
> *Sabine Seymour* (US)  May  9th, 15th -17th
>
> Dr. Sabine Seymour focuses on fashionable technology and the intertwining
> of aesthetics and function in design and technology. She is described as
> being an innovator, visionary, and trend spotter in her work as researcher,
> conceptual designer, economist, professor, and entrepreneur. She is the
> Chief Creative Officer of her company Moondial, which develops fashionable
> wearables and consults on fashionable technology to companies worldwide.
> Moondial’s work is based on the convergence of fashion, design, science and
> wearable & wireless technologies.
>
> Dr. Seymour is Assistant Professor of Fashionable Technology and the
> director of Fashionable Technology Lab at Parsons The New School for Design
> in New York and lectures worldwide at numerous institutions. Additionally
> Dr. Seymour serves as a jury member for many internationally renowned
> institutions and conferences. She recently was the design co-chair for the
> ISWC2009 and a jury-member for the Prix Ars Electronica 2009. She frequently
> presents and exhibits for instance at Ars Electronica Festival, Cooper
> Hewitt National Design Museum, and Smart Textiles. She has received numerous
> grants and awards and was awarded the Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart
> Design Fellowship in 2010. Dr. Seymour is an editorial review board member
> for the International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction and is
> widely published. Her recent books ‘Fashionable Technology – The
> Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science, and Technology’ and ‘Functional
> Aesthetics – Visions in Fashionable Technology’ have received excellent
> reviews.
>
> She received a PhD and MSc in Social and Economic Sciences from the
> University of Economics in Vienna and Columbia University in New York and an
> MPS in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU’S Tisch School of the Arts in
> New York.
>
> --
>
> Renate Ferro
> Visiting Assistant Professor of Art
> Cornell University
> Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420
> Ithaca, NY  14853
> Email:   <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
> URL:  http://www.renateferro.net
>       http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
> Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net
>
> Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre
>
> Art Editor, diacritics
> http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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>



-- 
Ashley Ferro-Murray
PhD Student
Dept. Theater, Dance & Performance Studies
University of California, Berkeley
ferromurray.net
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