[-empyre-] Wearable Technologies, or dances with sound

[Johannes Birringer]

hi all:

the comments on spectacle (in the larger cultural or political sense) are surely interesting, as the "everyday" has not yet been addressed here yet,
.......i think some of recent examples in our conversation were from stage/theatrical performance and fashion shows, and the exhibition/art contexts.... although Janis raised larger questions (see below).

But might it be fruitful to think a bit more about the theatrical (I wand to use an example from music) in regard to the "wearable in wearable technology" (Susan)?
- and the conflicts or obstacle-challenges that might arise when performance (theatrical or musical) is both supported and augmented by wearable technologies
and at the same time hindered and obstructed?  

I watched a young musician/performer today present a 30 minute piece in a performance space that was empty except for an array of eight loudspeakers; audience was invited to move around freely,
and on occasion light spots came on, in different places of the space, to light an area. The performer wore a black tight leotard, and she had various sensors equipped into the dress / onto the body (two long 
strips on each thigh, and one pressure sensor for her hand (taped on the inside palm), one pressure sensor on tight pointe shoe,  and a microphone close to her mouth (right side of her cheek). The transmitter was Eowave Eobody (sending signals to Ableton Live),  and across her chest she also wore a Wii remote sensor attached sideways. The sensor data were Midi signals, and her touch (on hands and thighs, and with her pointe shoe) controlled the samples she had made of her singing (a capella voice), while she also sang live and recorded / processed her voice alongside the manipulation of her sampled sound.  

The performance, I would say, was completely unspectacular, her movement/choreography was possibly butoh inspired (she mentioned this also in a conversation) and quite minimal, seeming to come from inner motivations that were softly restrained, meditative, almost not communicable; her main medium was the voice, and the harmonics of the vocal layers, in my mind, evoked a distant landscape or memories of a quiet, deserted landscape that had now become a kind of "choral" texture.  She performed almost statically, in one spot, and then would move quietly to another spot, the audience following or turning. On two occasions she invited audience members to touch her (her Wii). This was mostly a sonic performance, I would argue, and yet the creation of the piece was built on the conjuncture of live voice and gesture,  the gesture generating the processed/real time sound, echoes and layers of the voice (electronically amplified and diffused through the speaker array.).  The gesture was voice too, through the play on the "wearables."  I enjoyed observing it a lot. 

Yet, my question would be, following also what the performer told the audience in a brief statement when she described the difficulties in "controlling" the samples, what we have learnt from gesture controlled music performance and how sensors function as instruments, and how the "equipment" here sits uneasily with the performer who is reduced in movement possibilities and expression, constrained by the limited subtlety of the functionality as well as the relatively awkwardly re-purposed use of the Wii (game controller) here attached/worn on the body but only activatable through button touch (much like the pressure sensor)... and useless as a virtuoso instrument (and I am thinking of music here,  and also of the dancer-body as a virtuoso instrument). I am not interested in making a case for virtuosity, although (historically) the rejection of that aesthetic, say, by the Judson dancers back in the 60s, was only short-lived and probably a contradiction in terms anyway, as dancers on stage tend to perform mundane movement with their own virtuosity, and a similar sense of expertise that we all have when we wear certain outfits and certain accoutrements that can function as instruments, in whatever specific contexts (sports, work, leisure, martial arts, courtship rituals and other social rituals, etc).  

What puzzled me (and puzzles me after years of working on interactive choreographies leaving us often exhausted and discouraged) is that one would bother using wearable technologies in theatrical performance when the artistic/aesthetic outcomes (if they involve controlling images and sounds) can be more easily achieved otherwise, unless of course one wants to perform under the chosen restraints and focus on a changed vocabulary - there is no doubt in my mind that her "equipment" shaped her expression and movement, and the audience probably cannot but focus on her "use", her play, of the sensors worn on her body. 

I could go on here and discuss what troubles me about performed real-time interactivity, but I'd rather bring up Janis's questions again:

>What do fashionable wearables communicate and
what is the context of use?
>  How do they amplify one’s fantasy? 
>Do they reveal new forms of social interaction?

I'd be interested in hearing from others.  As for sensors in dance performance (or wearables as they are now called, but were not before), they proved "fashionable" at one point, but i think they have run their course and will soon be 
relegated. They don't further any complex choreographic composition, they hinder.  As to fantasies, yes, they generated a few pretensions (about gesture controlled environments and navigational immersivity in virtual worlds), also now relegated to the mythologies that always come along with new technologies.   The use of gesture, or its social role, however, is an important subject that I hope we come back to.

with regards
Johannes Birringer
Dap-Lab




Susan wrote:
>>
I am interested in questions about how wearable technologies interface with their cultural contexts.  In that regard,
Sarah's questions about performability and spectacle are interesting.  Don't wearables (in the traditional form of performing dress)
always invoke spectacle, to a greater or lesser degree?  (Of course, the idea of spectacle itself could be queried, are
we just talking about Debord here? Or spectacle in a less or differently politicized sense?)  In public, we are all performers,
as Baudelaire knew (the flaneur was also a dandy).  And performances encourage counter-performances, so audiences may either participate or retreat.
And performances have both insides (the phenomenology of wearing something) and outsides.
How do wearable technologies fit into that history of everyday performativity that fashion itself has written?
In regards to materiality, Valerie made a good point about situating the technology in wearable technology (I'm also concerned
with situating the wearable in wearable technology)....>>