[-empyre-] empyre: Resistance is futile, ISEA, Sydney 2013 - week 3

Fri Jul 19 19:51:16 EST 2013

HI Simon

Yes indeed, technological development may have extended our agency in our private space - for instance dance performance, but has at the same time opened access to a remote agency - The exploration of the differences is interesting - through the addition of bio-sensors to a dancers vocabulary, they may, through biological changes on their body, use transformations of that bodies state which are unseen by others, enact a work of performance. That work of performance may immerse, engulf, an audience if performed in the round with projected images in 3D and multichannel surround sound. 

This is of course a public space, and yet the dancers inner working (brain waves, muscle actions, heart rate, skin conductance etc) are a private state - both being therefore enacted simultaneously. 

I have been working on a framework to consider these ideas and will share here the second section on Agency and Control

II. Agency and Control contains four subdimensions: 

1) locus of agency or control; 2) scale or level of influence; 3) immediacy; and 4) planning.

locus of agency or control; 
- Locus of agency or control. Both agency and control can be individual, shared or joint, or more broadly distributed. Conception, design, and performance can (rarely) be the sole function of a single artist (though even in this case uptake and reception will be spread). More commonly, in collaborative creation the various roles can be divided across distinct specialists, or alternatively various functions can be collaboratively fulfilled in more improvisatory and overlapping manner by many artists working closely and interactively together.

scale or level of influence;
- Scale refers to the scale or level at which the agents (human or technological, individual or collective) influence the performance processes and outcomes. The forms of control exercised by agents can, at different times and in different contexts, be precise determinations or realizations of each moment of the work, or higher-level settings of the orientation, shape, and mood which leave details to be filled in and completed in action.

immediacy;
- Immediacy relates to the coarseness of control, and can be evaluated for momentary nuance of control and influence over the production of real-time content during performance. Like the sense of presence or immersion with regard to embodied experience, immediacy of control can vary substantially across the distinctive timescales of a single work.

planning;
- Planning. A work may be planned, to greater or lesser degrees of precision in various respects, more or less in advance. The temporal structure of the work, the aesthetic content, the form and dramaturgy of the work can be more or less predetermined, and correspondingly more or less constructed on the fly.

thoughts?

Cheers, Garth

On Jul 19, 2013, at 10:54 AM, BIGGS Simon <s.biggs at ed.ac.uk> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi Garth, Mez, Deborah, et al
> 
> The issue of motion tracking is connected to that of developments in surveillance technologies, such as face recognition and behaviour tracking. Some of us (as artists, hackers, researchers) are using these technologies to open up questions around identity and our inter-connectedness. But we should remember that various government, research and corporate agencies are exploring these systems with more negative intent. So, if I may, I'd like to re-phrase your questions, as follows:
> 
> How have notions of agency changed in mediated public and private spaces?
> 
> How have notions of embodiment changed, expanded or transformed, in mediated public and private spaces?
> 
> I'd also like to ask, subsequently, what are the affects upon self and collective in this context?
> 
> best
> 
> Simon
> 
> 
> On 16 Jul 2013, at 23:18, Garth Paine <garth at activatedspace.com<mailto:garth at activatedspace.com>> wrote:
> 
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> HI Mez
> 
> Yes indeed, a long time already with a good deal of very engaging history, a canon of work and several paradigm shifts - i guess Paradigms take a long time to develop as Terry was ruminating on last week.  But is there actually an end point?   I wonder if the questions this decade actually mean the same thing they were understood to mean last?   For instance in that time, much higher grade motion tracking, and or much more ubiquitous motion tracking (Kinect) have become widely available.  I and many others are using wireless bio-sensing on dancers in realtime.... etc  These may only appear to be technical developments, but in fact they also represent a movement of ideas (for instance, that we can track the body in space in realtime, or understand something about the organisation of limbs in space or to each other...) beyond the university/industry lab into the everyday practice of a wide range of artists, which in term ramps up the investigation exponentially - now much of those outcomes will be under-developed and perhaps naive, both others will be surprising, inspiring and pique the interest of all from Professors to undergraduate students to communities of hackers... at that point emergent applications come to light and the paradigm broadens and shifts.  Then, when we ask the same simple question(s), ie.
>        • How have notions of Agency changed in mediated performance?
> • How have notions of embodiment changed, expanded or transformed, in mediated performance?
> 
> We possibly get much different answers
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Garth Paine
> garth at activatedspace.com<mailto:garth at activatedspace.com>
> 
> 
> 
> On Jul 16, 2013, at 8:27 PM, mez breeze <netwurker at gmail.com<mailto:netwurker at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 8:18 PM, Garth Paine <garth at activatedspace.com<mailto:garth at activatedspace.com>> wrote:
> We were interesting in drawing the maturity of practice in the room to consider questions of sustainability of that practice in an evolving landscape. Thinking about interaction in performance, questioning the way in which interactive performance systems, change, iterate, subjugate, extend the body. Contemplating where the body begins/ends and the mind, system, otherness fades in….  the seam…
> 
> 
> Hi Garth, All.
> 
> Talking of interactive systems that stretch and [potentially] make elastic definitions involving consciousness, autonomy, agency and otherness, I've just been reminded of one of my early unpolished AI Stories through a call-out via Christy Dena for Aussie SciFi/Robot Writers. "The (MALFI) Trials" was written in 1996 and incorporated elements from text-abbreviation-"speak" (back then it was via email list/irc conventions rather than mobile) and faux scientific journal emulation. There's a badly formatted first draft available here if you're curious: http://bit.ly/8JkwKE. The final draft (sans typos/errors but keeping elements of the original formatting) was published via "Interaction: Artistic Practice in the Network", an Eyebeam Book, in 2001. Just makes you realise that these issues have been kicking around [and around again] on these types of online forums [+ elsewhere, obviously] for an elongated time.
> 
> Chunks,
> @mezbreezedesign + @netwurker
> 
> --
> | facebook.com/MezBreezeDesign<http://www.facebook.com/MezBreezeDesign>
> | twitter.com/MezBreezeDesign<http://twitter.com/MezBreezeDesign>
> | en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mez_Breeze<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mez_Breeze>
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au<mailto:empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au<mailto:empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> 
> Simon Biggs
> simon at littlepig.org.uk<mailto:simon at littlepig.org.uk>
> http://www.littlepig.org.uk @SimonBiggsUK http://amazon.com/author/simonbiggs
> 
> s.biggs at ed.ac.uk<mailto:s.biggs at ed.ac.uk> Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/school-of-art/staff/staff?person_id=182&cw_xml=profile.php
> http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/simon-biggs%285dfcaf34-56b1-4452-9100-aaab96935e31%29.html
> 
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/  http://www.elmcip.net/  http://www.movingtargets.org.uk/  http://designinaction.com/
> MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices  http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees?id=656&cw_xml=details.php
> 
> 
> -- 
> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20130719/b9df44dc/attachment.htm>