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

[ghh at thing.net]

Hi All,
I do a lot of interactive installation and performances. I'm developing
one at the moment called "Boxing Rants" For this performance I am doing
shadow boxing. When I throw a left a video file is triggered. When I throw
a right, the file is turned off. I'm using the Kinect camera as a
controller.  I've done boxing training and part of the training is to
throw a precise punch at exactly the same spot. In this way I can train
myself to trigger the video rants. The performance is a physical/emotional
expression. Shadow boxing raises the warrior archetype and the physical
act tends to raise testosterone in men. Writing the program I adjust the
code to read my body, I also adjust my movements to trigger files. It's a
learning process. I tend to also throw in random events and triggers
within any system. This make it more realistic. One of the problems I see
with a lot of "digital" art is too much focus on the technology. Making a
computer do something is enough for a lot of artists. I think the position
of the artists is to recognize the 21st century mediascape and networked
world, analyze, critique and present a point of view outside all the
commercial cheerleading for technology and the "look what I can do!" art
that characterizes much new media. This piece I'm working on has a
video-performance component that is the boxing rant videos, there is a
physical component, that is the shadow boxing, and there's a virtual body
component because of the Kinect camera and projected wire-frame puppet of
my body into the virtual space. The discourse is the limits of the body.
This is the metaphor of boxing training. I am also 60 years old. The other
context is the fight against aging and weakness. In anycase there is a
specific reason to use interactivity for this performance. The variables
in where I throw the punches changes the way the rants are triggered and
how long the play. THe videos are in a 9 square cuboid grid with a virtual
puppet. The puppet shows the actions that trigger the events. The
performance on a simple level is about controlling the interface and
controlling my body through training. It's also about performance
catharsis.
GH Hovagimyan
http://nujus.net/gh
http://nujus.net/~nublog/?p=214

> 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)....>>
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