[-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

Tue Jul 22 09:08:46 EST 2014

hi Johannes  welcome back.   

such a lot to compare between the different examples your draw together  below  of the sonification   of gestures within a wide range of different kinds of  systems .. used  by very different  ' performers' with less or more  ' experience' of their movements being the input that generates the orchestration of the potential of the software and the data coming into it an interaction that results in the production of  wide range of sound generative possibilities.    .    

 so 

what does it mean for me-   the  subject -  attentive to what is happening  physically ..  sonically  - ie  highly aware of the nuances of what the difference of the energy  i transfer into the suite of   bio data   sensors can  do  in ' orchestrating' a huge range of nuanced sound mean by swallowing the system?  of course  i did not really eat it,   but in the same way that a point shoe can feel like an extension to your foot and the extra possibility of spin speed etc .   for me it means that i have  digested what it feels like what the sounds taste like,  the flavours, their colours ,, the depth,  the pitch ,  etc...   i  am not being literal ..  I hardly ever am ---- these  sounds  are not triggered  ( so many military words )   they  flow,  and this is where the fold between the sound the movement my attentive ness to minutia  the system dissolve     

there is something about becoming so  highly aware of what subtle combinations resulting from the physics of ones gestures  are doing ,  that this  '  knowledge ' which i say  becomes embodied  knowledge  which i also define as a new kind of  performers virtuosity .. that garth  has  described as rich kinesthetic or movement awareness -    you are listening to  this transference of one - effort - energy- physics, maths, perception becoming some thing else.  this is a kind of alchemy .. its not snake oil...   i am not sure that its is metaphysics either .. but as some one who has been moving around  a while .. in different kinds of ' systems'  it is possible for me to feel the difference between them as they have evolved over time - -this kind of self study ,     an observable and interpretive narrative of my behaviour  my agency  my embodiment in in these systems over time  ..  is what i meant     - embodied ethnography ..  (  i am remember  what it was like to move in the Very Nervous System,  some  some time ago).  in the bio sensors systems.  with garth . i would  suggest that it is coming closer to me..    this is also what john sutton  part of the SEAM - WISP workshops  (that garth was originally referring to and the frame works used in them )  was also addressing in  his use of the word as he applied to how the three P words garth also mention. . porosity taking into account not just content but the culture  one has moved through .

>  their movement gestures "made" the music we heard. (The software did)   .. t

the software is like a swing .   all of  the potential is inside its structure .  but it needs some one to get on it and make it swing before it swings. other wise its a sculpture in the park. so maybe they think they believed they made the music  well partially they did. 
and probably  they did not think they had swallowed the system  because they are not me,   as far as distribution goes . ..well  some where i have been part of making the packages of bits and bytes that have been dispersed over networks at various speeds to arrive some where and do some thing which poetically i feel is an extension of  what i was doing how engaged i was in the doing of it  to cause that particular package of data sets to  be generated and now some  analysis  might recognise those patters as belonging to me   certainly  the military are keeping an eye on things  and people by doing such things .. certainly that is what  catches some people out ..   

most respectfully  too   ..  johannes   good to have you back in the swing of things   h
On 20/07/2014, at 11:58 PM, Johannes Birringer wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> dear all
> 
> thanks to these discussions over the past week......
> I was in Madrid at the METABODY workshop, a European  collaborative performance project, and could not quite participate due to our work-
> schedule but read the postings by Sophia (I liked the term you used, "in-fleshment"), Samantha, John, Sue and then Garth, Tamara, and Hellen......
> 
> Garth -  your notion of porosity of content, I was not sure how to understand this. How is a soliloqy or monologue unfixed, and how would it
> change in an interactive performance?  and as to "interactive performance,"  how is "rich kinesthetic or movement awareness, often aligning or confronting the proprioceptive and motor systems of performers and audience members by way of unusual, collaborative, mediated, or hybrid movement forms"  interesting to you regarding to the question of content? 
> What rich  kinesthetic or movement awareness have you discerned in what I often (perhaps disappointedly) would consider "slapstick"? How do we really interpret what we see (just think of the less than really encouraging observations that Tamara describes after her workshops with the children holding their iPads (and their fixation on big screen  images:
>> children were captivated by their digital representation and enjoyed moving with their avatar, who on the large screen, was much larger than them ....>)
> 
> I would not mind debating the 'slapstick" audience action in many interactive installations (whatever the virtual embodiment factor is or might be):     I think we need to be more critical of the so-called fake embodiment our interface protocols induce (and John would probably agree here?). The same (sorry if I tread upon the somatics aspects here) holds true for performers performing "virtual embodiments."
> 
> To shift, ever slightly,  I wondered after last week's workshops directed in Madrid by Robert Wechsler (formerly director of Palindrome, now offering interactive workshops in sounding movement with his software "MotionComposer" to people with disabilities)  -  and perhaps this would be directed as a question to Hellen's "alchemy"  --- >>in performance  this agency brings with it  capacity to,  enliven performers presence,  minutia of attentiveness  to time passing  from  and through   transformed synaesthically engender new forms of virtuosity - I remember in previous post I think in the last two weeks  the word of alchemy....> --- I wondered whether we are fooling ourselves or whether there is something like the metaphysics Hellen points to?  I tried my best to be skeptical about metaphysics (or out of body experiences and religious rapture) n my last post of the first week, but sadly nobody responded, so I will ask  again:
> 
> Hellen - what do you mean when you write >-embodied (ethnography) in ' systems'  which have dissolved borders between my physical and virtual state of being - distributed over networks >    are  you distributed?  I have not been distrbuted , so I am curious?   
> 
> Porosity?  Jaime del Val, also at Madrid, tried very hard to make me think so too  (in his "Metaformance – Microsexes, Disalignments, Microdeviations" on the rooftop of his studio),  my body mingled with his, and my perception becoming destabilized and confused by amorphous bodylandscapes generated by the camera tracking his and my skin, well, it did not work for me, I knew my body and his camera and could see what the camera created.....
> 
> Thus, "virtual" is a convenient delusion or artistic polemic, no?  
> 
> For the people with physical or cognitive disabilities in Robert's workshop [http://www.motioncomposer.com/en/welcome/], however potent it was, I could not tell whether the participants actually believed (wished they surely did) their movement gestures "made" the music we heard. (The software did). And thus increasingly one could sense a feeling of snake oil magic, the participants may imagine to "compose" music but they surely do not "swallow the system" and it is not their/our system. Borders did not dissolve. 
> 
> Most likely I cannot speak for the participants, although I also tried the system (MotionComposer has 6 environments of different sounds that can be triggered) and failed to enjoy it; the participants with disabilities laughed and cheered it, so they must have felt their movements mattered ..... yet I was worried that it didn't  (and perhaps Sue has some experience on this?).
> 
> respectfully
> Johannes Birringer
> DAP-Lab
> 
> 
> 
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Hellen Sky 
digital choreographer, performer, director/teacher/writer/researcher 

Hellen Sky & Collaborators
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