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10
211
Researching performance,performing research:
dance, multimedia and learning
Synne Skjulstad, Andrew Morrison & Albertine Aaberge,Synne
Skjulstad, Andrew Morrison & Albertine Aaberge,Synne Skjulstad,
Andrew Morrison & Albertine Aaberge,Synne Skjulstad, Andrew
Morrison & Albertine Aaberge,InterMInterMInterMInterMeeeedia,
University of Oslodia, University of Oslodia, University of
Oslodia, University of Oslo
Figure 1: Willson Phiri & Stephanie Sund in a digitally
enhancedduet; video still from performance at Statens
balletthgskole,Oslo, December 2001.
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212 Researching ICTs in Context
A sense of contextA sense of contextA sense of contextA sense of
contextOne day at a time
It's the middle of the week, early in the afternoon and we are
about midwaythrough a collaborative educational and research
project called Ballectro.1
As the name suggests, the project is a hybrid of dance and
digital media.The slate grey autumn sky bounces up from the Oslo
fjord into the largecurved windows of one of the studios at Statens
balletthgskole.2 Six finalyear modern dance students are in a class
with their choreography teacherand are joined by three project
participants from InterMedia at the Univer-sity of Oslo. We are
workshopping material which may become a part of adance and
multimedia performance scheduled for the end of the semesterat both
our institutions. We are also collaborative learners in a project
in-vestigating dance and multimedia. Yet, as multimedia researchers
we arealso learning how to carry out research into digital media as
performance.
Improvisation is central to today's session as is often the case
in ourongoing collaboration both as performance and as research.
The chore-ographer has asked the students to select one figure each
from a largecluster of postcards and to use it as a springboard to
developing a solopiece. The pieces will then be combined in a
larger sequence which,later, might be included in the overall
performance. The students im-provise their solos and then, after a
break, they repeat and refine them,this time accompanied by music.
This music had been developed espe-cially for the project by a
different student who has volunteered his tal-ents to the project.
The students develop their movements, some ofthem very actively,
others through more intimate expressions. In thecorner, the digital
music maker lies fast asleep, stretched out betweenhis studies, a
part-time job and composing the music for the project.
The choreographer darts between the students, quietly moving
them intoslightly different positions, whispering suggestions to
two of them. Sheplaces each card on the floor at the front of the
studio, mimicking the spatialzones in which each of the students is
moving. The electronic music, still inan early version, creates the
sense of future performance, one to be remixed,and reperformed as
our collage-like approach becomes more coherent.
'Come over here and take part,' the choreographer says to the
twomultimedia developers sitting in the corner. 'Just dance,' she
encourageswith a smile. And slowly we begin to fumble around
between the styledimprovisation of the students. They seem quite
unperturbed by our
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Researching performance, performing research 213
wobbly steps. Later, as the media players in this unfolding
scene, wecomment to one another that this is what ethnographers do,
they becomepart of the fabric of the context they a researching, if
not its soloists!
Background to BallectroBackground to BallectroBackground to
BallectroBackground to BallectroCollaborative project design
In this chapter we present material from this collaborative
educationalproject involving improvisation, dance and multimedia.
This varied for thedifferent partners in the collaboration. In this
sense the chapter is about'learning performance'. We therefore also
explicitly used the project as aresearch agenda generating process.
Recent research into the potential in-tersections of dance and
digital media has often carried out through col-laborative
processes and workshops. For example, Birringer (1996) detailsthe
heuristics of one such workshop as being ' offered to provide a
labo-ratory for the organic intergration of performance and digital
arts, and forthe development of new interdisciplinary methods of
composition.' As me-dia researchers and teachers in the field of
digital media, we discuss waysof conducting and understanding
research as and through performance.We suggest, by close reference
to the development and performance of amultimedia-enhanced dance
piece, that researching ICTs might be ex-panded to include notions
of performance.
We suggest that this is potentially fruitful at several levels.
First, that re-search into ICTs sees context as a significant
element in how research isperformed. Here, we refer specifically to
how to learn to build a new me-dia-enriched performance environment
in which the medium of expressionis primarily moving bodies and
moving media. Second, we suggest that re-search into ICTs might
benefit from considering aspects of performancestudies in studying
and interpreting digital media and their various repre-sentations
and uses. Third, through the inclusion of visual material, fromboth
the process of making the dance piece and from its performance,
weoffer a glimpse of how research into ICTs may to take up some of
thechallenges of applying of digital media in presenting
research.
A learning design
Ballectro was based on the collaborative development of a
student per-formance for a non-fee-paying audience. This context
gave us freedom
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214 Researching ICTs in Context
to workshop our way into making an actual performance as well as
tobe open to ways of researching an interdisciplinary interplay
betweenmedia and dance, between learning and performance, and
between re-search processes and products. This project design
allowed the students toparticipate at different levels of the
project as learners of dance, learners ofchoreography and, to a
limited extent, as learners of new media.3
We were also learners of project-based research involving new
part-ners. As researchers and designers of digital media, our main
objectivein the following collaboration process was to develop
closer under-standing of digital media and how dance could inform
both productionand the research into ICTs.
Ballectro was an experimental new media arts project, and by
definitionit involved a range of boundary crossings. In a
discussion of such emergentand experimental work, Stocker and Schpf
(1999: 14) comment that:
Even though the only aspect that the heterogenous, hybrid
configurationsof current works often have in common is their use of
the computer thatis, their technological or material medium an
essential, defining featureof this new art is impossible to
overlook: despite the experience that hasbeen gained and the
virtousity that has developed, media art is, above all,an
experiment one that often brings the creators and the proponents
ofthis new art into association with engineers and researchers.
Many interdisciplinary researchers find themselves crossing
fields,methods and theories. They need to also find ways to work
within theseintersections and find ways to communicate them as
research.
A publication designDance may be an important player in the
building of the interdisicpli-nary links between practice and
theory which are needed in the study ofICTs in culture and context.
For example, in referring to a dance anddigital media workshop,
Birringer (1996) comments that:
Performance dancing with and across patterns is an avenue to
con-test rigid or vapid formulations handed down to us since the
emergence ofthe strength of bodily intelligence unravels the grids
and pixellatedmonotonies of the computer's inscriptive power.
We take up this challenge by investigating this claim also with
refer-ence to the building of a Ballectro project research website
in which a
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Researching performance, performing research 215
range of media, including video, are used. In contrast, this
print andwritten text is one formalised means of reporting on a
multimedia per-formance project and its processes of production and
public mediation.However, as we argue, the web site provides a more
fully mediatedpossibility for understanding the project. This
context refers to the me-diation of the content of Ballectro, that
is as dance, as multimedia andas research. Yet, it also refers to a
way of communicating research cen-tred on a process-based
exploratory design.
As developers, teachers and researchers of new media ourselves,
wehave found it difficult to locate an elaborated learning and
researchcontext within which to place a project such as the one we
present here.Huge financial and technical resources have been
invested in ICTs, butperhaps a time is now arriving when we ought
to be more seriouslyconsidering how the environments, content and
contexts in which ourdigitally mediated communication occurs do
indeed intersect.
A multi-method approach
The Ballectro project employed a multi-method design in both
developmentand research. In the project we deliberately played with
digital tools andtechnologies in effect danced with them ourselves.
The final perform-ance piece was a collage of elements from a
variety of learning tasks, im-provisation sessions and more formal
plans. Heuristically, the project gen-erated problems which, in
turn, needed immediate and longer term researchframes, solutions
and explanations. Here the spiral model of software de-velopment
(e.g. Denning & Dargan 1996) and a reiterative and
reflexiveapproach as deployed in the many sub-fields of design
studies was impor-tant. In addition, production based research was
realised through a processof making. These various aspects were
extended from researching the proc-ess and performance to
communicating the project in digital arenas.
As with many classroom based research projects, Ballectro was
car-ried out within a broad, but non-deterministic, action research
frame-work. As a choreographer and media researchers, we were
instrumentalin introducing new elements within the dance curriculum
and at a newmedia and learning research centre. We were actively
involved in theproduction and the research process and had an
integrative role here.Further, the research was cyclical: it
involved an ongoing interplay oftheory and practice (Avison 1997:
198).
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216 Researching ICTs in Context
The experimental and process character of the Ballectro project
as alearning and performance activity, also extends to finding ways
to per-form research on and in digital communication.
We therefore discuss questions about the changing rhetorical
andmediational contexts of presenting, reporting and analysing
research.This points to the importance of understanding multimedia
project de-sign, the application of multi-method inquiry in
research processes anddesigns, as well as in the analysis and
presentation of research. In termsof performing research, together
these elements may be said to consi-tute a mutable research design.
This is design is flexible, relational, se-lective, contingent,
reflexive and hybrid.
Later in the chapter we will discuss such associations and their
valuein a collaborative design and performance. In the next section
we out-line some of the difficulties in researching a
multimedia-dance processand its performance as text.
Researching performanceResearching performanceResearching
performanceResearching performanceOn performance
While the performing arts have existed for centuries in theatre,
dance, andsong, it was in the 1970s that performance as a feature
of the avant gardebecome accepted as a medium of artistic
expression in its own right (Gold-berg 2001: 7). However, the term
performance has itself been hotly con-tested in the complex of
post-structualist approaches to media and the arts.Performance is a
cultural practice, a pratice of representation, and so in-evitably
enters the arena of ideology as it often did in the 1970s in the
formof happenings and agitprop pieces (Counsell and Wolf 2001: 31).
A per-formance act may question existing systems of thought,
actions, and be-liefs. It may be characterised as a one-time
happening realised through oneor several performers. Or,
increasingly, it has come to be seen as a moremutable
event-oriented expressive discourse. A performance is the
textconstructed by actors, dancers or narrators, yet its uptake
lies with theaudience or the computer user. Howell (1999: 146)
argues that:
As performers you are looking for an 'action language': one you
canspontaneously 'speak'So you need to think by performing, instead
oftrying to complete your thinking prior to the performance.
Performing
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Researching performance, performing research 217
is not a translation from another language. As in writing, where
the handthinks the sentences, your actions must think the
performance.
In recent years many researchers and educators have made claims
aboutthe need to develop multimodal, multiliteracies (e.g. Kress
1998, Kress1999, Tyner 1998). Yet, in their often wide-ranging
discussions of digitalliteracies, few such writers refer directly
to dance and the role of perform-ing arts more generally,
preferring to remain with broad issues of access,competence and
intertextuality. Further, in the now large literature on
'new'media, 'digital dance' has not featured prominently, in
comparison, for ex-ample, with hypernarrative or computer games.
Researchers of games and'interactivity' (e.g. Aarseth 2002) and
writers on the usability of websites(Nielsen & Tahir 2001) are
also investigating questions of performance inwhat Brenda Laurel
(1993) has called 'Computers as Theatre'. While con-cerns such as
the user's discourse (Liestl 2002 forthcoming) in games andthe
functionality of websites do indeed merit research, the performing
artsin digital environments are often overshadowed by more
commercially in-tended products. Further, electronic arts in
general have not featuredstrongly in the research discourses on
learning, ICTs and context.
In contrast, electronic performing arts are often conceptual and
of anembodied nature; they occur both a physical performance texts
bydancers, yet they are also constructed by audiences. These
performancepieces may occur only online, but they frequently exist
in real time, andin material spaces, such as installation pieces in
art galleries or asmixed media performance works in front of an
assembled audience.4
Dance may also be implicit in these works (e.g. Schiphorst
1996/1997,1997). Such mixed media performance art is often
difficult to catego-rise. Typically such experimental works play on
notions of hybridity,identity, human-machine relations and the
subjectivity of the viewer orinteractant (Jones & Stephenson
1999). These works tend to be reflex-ive in character. They draw
our attention to the ways in which digitalmedia may be used to
mediate performance, whether art, dance ordrama. In contrast to
computer games, which by definition must beplayed on screen, or
online, many performance pieces which use digitalmedia do so by
shifting between different types of screens, projectionsand media
types; together these are part of an emerging live event in
whichplot, movement, music, and scenography may all be in flux. The
intentionof the artist is thus often that of mediating this flux to
an audience.
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218 Researching ICTs in Context
The use of digital media in performance now also implies that
itselements and structures may also be not only machine mediated
butalso machine generated. Thus, since the mid-1990s, the contexts
of per-formance have increasingly included elements of digital
media in whichanimation, projection and random selection have
entered into the per-formative text. They have challenged our
notions of performance atboth the textual and the interpretive
level, and further in the intersec-tion, cross-over and
hybridisation of these levels. In the print collectionPerforming
the Body/Performing the Text, edited by Jones and Stephenson(1999),
a performance script by Coco Fusco and Nao Bustamante is
inter-leafed with more traditional expository academic discourse on
perform-ance and interpretation. When multimedia material is
included in both per-formance pieces and in research about them
relationships between text andinterpretation, 'actors' and
audiences may become more complex.
Changing research literacies
Research into the performing arts has a long history, one in
which criti-cal interpretation has been paramount. The processes of
dramatic pro-duction or musical composition, for example, have
gradually becomemore central to our teaching and researching the
performing arts. Thiscan be seen in a leading British project into
the role of practice in re-search. Hosted at the University of
Bristol (Department of Drama:Theatre, Film, Television) 'Practice
as Research in Performance (PARIP)'is a five year project which is
investigating the intersections between crea-tivity, performance
and the broading of research paradigms to include newmodes of
performance. Such information is to be found online. It points
tothe emergence of attempts to meet the challenges suggested by
both ex-periments with digital media and performance, and in
attempts to conveythis interplay between theory and practice via
digital media.5
For developers, teachers and researchers of digital media who
work withperformance arts, an initiative such as this one suggests
that there is grow-ing professional concern to establish ways of
better understanding rela-tionshsips between ICTs as compositional
and mediational tools and thecontexts in which they are made, used
and interpreted. However, in parts ofthe academy there is both a
lack of interest in these relationships as well as aresistance to
understand and to investigate them as arenas for serious re-search.
While there may be research on practitoner-researchers (e.g.
Jarvis
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Researching performance, performing research 219
1999) referring to relationships between work-based learning,
adult educa-tion and practice-based research in knowledge-making,
many universitiesare in the process of learning how to apply
digital media in online teachingprogrammes. Less prominent is a
concern with mediating research based onknowledge, experience and
insights from new media production and theevolving compositional
processes of multimedia research discourse.
This points back to the ealier reference to digital or
electronic literacies.In the context of such relationships between
production and analysis ofdigital media texts and contexts, these
electronic literacies are defined notso much by their realisation
via a generation of students who have grownup with digital media,
but as part of a potentially modulated research andpedagogical
expertise to which the academy ought to already be investing.
Many university websites still make limited use of a variety
digitalmedia and related research and pedagogical designs which
truly stretchnew media communicatively, that is in relation to both
content andtools. Further, few of the university websites which are
concerned withdance could be said to be media-rich. In this
respect, a recent sympo-sium hosted by PARIP (which we did not
attend) was held to realise itsgeneral aim of investigating
'creative-academic issues raised by practiceas research, where
performance is understood as theatre, dance, film,video and
television.' To this we would add digital and online media.
Thesymposium covered four main themes which we paraphrase here as
theyare similar to issues we address in relation to Ballectro. The
PARIP sym-posium discussed: what practice is as research; how
practice may be ques-tioned as research in 'live' and 'recording'
media; ways of documenting andre-presenting practice as research;
and, the ways in which academic con-texts of practice as research
affect how it is pursued and evaluated.6
On the research front, many of the online publications about
digitalmedia and dance tend to have been written from a dance,
rather than amedia, perspective (e.g. Wechsler, no date). While
this chapter ap-proaches the collaborative Ballectro project from
the point of vew ofdigital media, we believe that it is important
that performance anddance be more fullly included in the fast
growing field of digital mediastudies. We argue this because
performance arts and performance sudiescan contribute to the
methodologies for making and analysing digital me-dia. Thet may
also play a part in hwo we increasingly come to be users ofand
actant upon digital media texts, environments and
communication.
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220 Researching ICTs in Context
Performance-based research
Drawing on our theoretical and practical knowledge of digital
media, de-sign, learning and research, we suggest that we
conceptualise performingarts and research about them in digitally
mediated domains as perform-ance-based research. In such a research
approach, digital media may bepart of the design and shaping of the
of dramaturgy and scenography. Inthis chapter, we attempt to
support this claim by referring to Ballectro as apilot in which we
were able to experiment with the intersection betweenpractice,
production and performance, and ways of documenting, mediat-ing,
presenting and analysing them in and through digital media.
Manyprojects on ICTs appear to steer away from discussing the
changing rolesof production and practice in both learning and in
research. Both dance anddigital media offer possible ways to
understanding how to research and tocommunicate about performance
in ICTs, culture and communication.
In this book, we do this via print technology and a set of
establisheddiscursive conventions. However, as the appearance of
images andweblinks suggests, this chapter refers to another,
digitally mediated, com-munication platform, namely the Web. In our
presentation of this chapterat the accompanying SKIKT conference,7
we further draw on oral per-formance as well as the Web to suggest
ways in which communicating re-search might be conducted in
addition to written expository discourse. Forus this is not merely
a rhetorical game: it is part of performing and prac-ticing a wider
communicative context for ICT-related research. In generalterms,
this is a constitutive research discourse in which digital media
isboth object and subject, synthetic and analytic, medium and
message.
Finding our feetFinding our feetFinding our feetFinding our
feetA collaborative, interdisciplinary improvisation
In summer 2001, a cooperation between the SKIKT funded KTK
proj-ect called Assemblages, based at InterMedia at the University
of Osloand the Departement of Ballet and Dance (Statens
balletthgskole) atthe Oslo National College of the Arts was
initiated.8 From the start, aprocess-oriented and improvisational
approach characterised the col-laboration. What emerged was an
experimental multi-purpose projectwhich aimed to link dance,
digital media, education and research.9
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Researching performance, performing research 221
One of the objectives was to integrate digital media and dance,
cre-ating a hybrid performance. This piece would be shown in front
ofaudiences at our two institutions before the Christmas holiday.
We alsowanted to use ICTs in experimental teaching and learning as
an inquiryinto how ICTs could be used to generate institutional
change, and to re-search how ICTs could be informed by dance and
choreography. Thischapter is therefore one of a series of
publications generated from this proj-ect (see e.g. Morrison et al.
2001, the Ballectro project website 2002).
Choreography meets digital media design
Cartography. Mapping. Dancers working with computers know that
mappingis not the old explorers' dream of discovering a terra
incognito. We do not con-front a new territory, but dance through a
transformation of exisitng materialrealities and relations. Once
intitial squeamishness is overcome, dancers makethe best cyborgs.
Haven't we been shaping and distorting our bodies and abili-ties
with a variety of techniques for centuries. Dancers know that the
bordersof the body are mutable, porous. When dancers engage with
systems like mo-tion capture they crave close contact with the
abstracted digital data, not to an-nul it, but to share in
contrasting spaces and physicalities. (Susan Kozel 1997).
This quotation points to the importance of the choroegrapher,
Jane Hveding,with whom we worked on Ballectro. She works as a
dancer, a freelancechoreographer and dance teacher. She provided us
with an experimental,'free-form' approach to building a
collage-like choreographic process. Inaddition, she invited us into
this process and provided us with the security inwhich to improvise
as multimedia makers, teachers and researchers.
This offered us a context within which to investigate the
reciprocalrelationships between performance, movement, space and
expression indigital media and dance. Importantly, this learning
context was one inwhich we were not overshadowed by a dance
professional who insistedthat her views dominate. Nor did she see
the project in terms of moreestablished approaches to film/video
and dance. This provided us withan important 'space' in which to
start 'finding our feet' together.
Dancing on the academic table
Jane Hveding had been selected by Statens balletthgskole to
assist sixfinal year dance students in a course on choreography in
the fall of2001 leading up to the annual student performance. We
used parts of
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222 Researching ICTs in Context
the summer 2001 to meet with Jane and to discuss how such a
collabo-rative project might be shaped and carried out. As none of
us had yetmet the students, we used this time with her to
experiment with thefacilities in InterMedia's new building.
Figure 2: Jane Hveding in the video conference room
atInterMedia, summer2001 on the first day of our
collaboration;(left) infinite regression in projected image;
(right) the sameevent filmed from a different camera and projected
onto one ofthe other screens.
We began this by workshopping in the video conference room,
perhapsnot the first space to think of in terms of a dance and
digital media proj-ect. By introducing a choreographer to this
facility, we suddenly foundourselves in the middle of a 'stunt'
performance, where the video-conferencing system was transformed
into a surveillance camera arenafor projecting the moving images of
the choreographer who had begunto dance on the room's tables. Right
at the start, we could see, and wecould sense, that physical
movement and improvisation would be cen-tral to the project. Not
only would it be a way of trying out differentchoreographic
configurations, it would also be a way of thinking abouthow the
'apparatus' of digital media might itself be moved, shifted offthe
desktop and used reflexively to suggest ways of looking at
move-ment and the visual, as dance, as digital media and as
digital-dance.
The workshopping moved on to InterMedia's tv-studio buried in
thebasement of our new building. This was a studio still very much
need-ing to be used and promoted and, therefore, later we were able
to coman-deer it for weeks at a time. Initially, on our part as
multimedia designers
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Researching performance, performing research 223
and researchers, we saw this not as a tv-studio, but as an
experimentalmultimedia space. However, this was not how the studio
had been de-signed, nor was it how the technician responsible for
it viewed how thespace ought be used or managed. Over time, her
interests in the projectgrew and she made an invaluable
contribution to its technical success.However, at first she was
alarmed that we wanted to unscrew video pro-jectors, remove lights
and replace enormous, professional tv cameras withan improvisation
process including hand-held digital video cameras.
In this project we would repeatedly need to explain that we were
not in-terested, as it were, in pre-defined settings, either
spatially, technically, cho-reographically or educationally. We
would need to explain that we werelearning how to collaborate in an
interdisciplinary performance-based proj-ect. We would again and
again also need to explain that the nature of thisdevelopmental
production and performance research inquiry would need tobe
understood in terms somewhat different to many of the reports on
ICTand learning projects in which research designs are already
largely given.
Through a glass darkly
In one of the first shared sessions in the studio, which
included the cho-reographer, technician, and multimedia makers, we
experimented withequipment which was already available. Here we
were interested inseeing the space as other than a zone for
broadcasting.
A computer projector, a mobile fabric screen and different
lightswere combined in ways that pre-figured the collage-like
structure ofmuch of the project. What was also important at this
early stage, asStone (1995) suggests with digital media, was that
we improvised andplayed. In this studio we rarely sat down, other
than on the floor. In thissession we found an ordinary drinking
glass which somebody had leftin the room, and as a result, the blue
light from the projector (not yetconnected to a laptop) was beamed
through the end of this glass. In thisplay, we took turns in moving
between the projector and screen, andbehind the screen, some of the
effects of which can be seen in Figure 3below. We saw for oursleves
that we would need to think through thework with the students, and
for the final performance, in new ways fordance and for digital
media. We would need to rethink more establishedconventions of
video and film on and for dance, just as for digital me-dia we
would need to move beyond the confines of the desktop.
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224 Researching ICTs in Context
Figure 3: 'Through a glass darkly '. Andrew Morrison and
JaneHveding during the first session in the tv-studio at
InterMedia,summer 2001. The inverted camera was used together with
videofeedback in the later performances.
These examples are mentioned because they illustrate a bottom-up
wayof working which was essential for the project. The playful mood
inwhich this collaboration started was continued during the further
workwith the students and with making the performance piece
itself.
Reconfiguring learning contextsReconfiguring learning
contextsReconfiguring learning contextsReconfiguring learning
contextsCollaborative learning
To work on such a project of simultaneous teaching and learning,
weneeded to learn about dance and choreography. We also needed to
learnhow to incorporate the media in a performance context. In
broad terms,we had to learn by doing and this doing was to be done
via workshopdance and digital media sessions in which
improvisation, play, experi-mentation and rehearsal were
central.
In this respect, the project drew on the notions and actions
approachof the reflective practitioner (Schn 1983, 1987) and tried
not only toapply them to dance education (McFee 1994), but to the
composition ofa multimedia-dance project: as learning, as design
and as research.Where such an approach may be opposed to a
technical rationalism, itsees knowledge as inherent practice and
practice as a means of findingsolutions to problems, as well as
theorising them. Thus reflective prac-tice is a route to generating
knowledge, but one in which this is seen associally constructed. In
the case of the Ballectro project, this was an in-
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Researching performance, performing research 225
determinate, processural reflection-in-action, and one that
needed tolook outwards from known disciplinary borders in the
collaborativeshaping of a new hybrid performance and space. As Wei
and Kuzmanovic(2001) comment on the context of their collaborative
dance and mediawork, 'It is the rich confusion of our physical
world, together with the in-stability of the virtual one, that
allows hybrid public spaces to emerge.'
Meeting the dance students
At the start of the fall term in 2001, we met with the six
students at theStatens balletthgskole. The dance peice would need
to be ready by lateNovember. The students were already accomplished
dancers after twoyears of full-time study at their institution.
They were six very differentpeople, if of roughly the same age. The
group included three womenand three men. Two of the men, Koshiwayi
Sabuneti and Wilson Phiri,come from Zimbabwe. Two of the women are
also from outside Nor-way, Beta Kretovivov is from Iceland, Malin
Rengstedt is from Swe-den, while the third male dancer, Erlend
Samnen is from Norway as isthe third women, Stephanie Sund. English
and Norwegian were there-fore the working languages of this diverse
group.
These students had expressly asked for inputs on video and dance
andwere interested to learn more about how digital media might be
used indance, though they had themselves not moved much beyond web
browsingand SMS messaging. We introduced the students to the
project membersand to a new institutional and practice/performance
setting at the Univer-sity of Oslo. In addition, we developed a
tight schedule for collaborationwith them and their choreography
teacher. We soon learned that, giventheir other dance commitments,
there would be little time for training indigital media.
All-the-same, the students were to play an active part inmaking the
performances, and many of the ideas and movements in theworkshops
and the final performance also came from the students.
The negotiation between the various actors in the project six
dancestudents, a choreographer, two technical personnel, a
musician, and threemedia designers/researchers was complex. We were
involved in a 'de-veloping project' in which delicate negotiations
were repeatedly neededbetween persons, cultures and disciplines.
The altering of traditional rolessuch as choreographer, editor,
producer and designers and dancers led tointeresting discussions
among ourselves when we had to decide the credits
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226 Researching ICTs in Context
in the programme for the Christmas performances. The dancers had
madetheir own solos, the project leader was doing media design and
the engineerworked on the lighting, and the choreographer was just
as much a projectleader. The researchers were doing choreography.
As is the case in suchcollaborative projects, we often took on
slightly different roles and had tolearn to function within and
beyond our own fields of expertise. In hind-sight, though, one
could argue that a stricter, more linear way of workingmight have
been more effective in developing a finished 'multimedia'
pro-duction. Had the logistics of the project been more thoroughly
anticipatedand planned, our medley might also have been easier to
perform.
ICTs in the learning context of Ballectro meant that both
teach-ing, learning, making a performance and researching were
differentaspects of the same project. Interdisciplinary
collaborative projectswhich involve experimental new media have a
tendency to turn es-tablished roles of teachers and learners upside
down. In such an ex-perimental project, nobody is an expert, and
everybody has to learnfrom one another to be able to the work
collaboratively. In the Bal-lectro project, stepping out of one's
own professional roles was re-quired for creating a climate for
collaboration and workshopping.From the media side of the project,
it was necessary to learn aboutdance, choreography, and performance
to be able to think about themedia as an integrated part of the
performance. The choreographerand dancers had to learn about
digital media to be able to see possi-ble relationships between the
dance and the media.
Practice and performance spaces
The actual bodily movement of real people, and not only the
screen-baseddesign of digital media, was an important dimension in
the collaboration.On many occasions the choreographer answered our
questions by dancing,by moving, by using gesture and by drawing. We
gradually learned byher example, and by watching the students also
moving and learning how central thinking with the body is to
choreography, dance design andperformance. This was most important
in rethinking our own understand-ing and design of digital media in
the learning processes of the project andin the performance
context. As will be discussed later in the chapter, thisalso
further influenced our approaches to communicating research
online.
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Researching performance, performing research 227
The movement in an actual physical space (the large dance stage
atStatens balletthgskole, or the Intermedia tv studio with its
smaller 'stage'area) provided the research project with a means of
bringing design and re-search of ICTs into several interesting
spatial relationships and contexts. Thetwo performance spaces
differed in size and quality. As far as dance wasconcerned, the
larger professional stage at Statens balletthgskole was supe-rior,
but it needed to be booked and was in great demand. In contrast,
thecold concrete floor of the tv-studio, now called the studio, was
more of a pri-vate rehearsal space where it was possible to leave
equipment which had al-ready been set-up. At various points in the
project, the multimedia-relatedequipment had to be hauled between
this studio and the stage at Statens bal-letthgskole, and
re-purposed for that different context. So much for 'mobilemedia'
in all this shifting of equipment in a project about movement!
We have described and discussed some of the media related
compo-nents of Ballectro in an online paper (Morrison et al. 2001).
Here we re-fer to three examples only. At Statens balletthgskole,
we tried out in-teractive Flash animations with different movements
and shapes.10 Theanimations were projected at the back wall on the
stage, and the stu-dents were asked to select items from the
computer and to interprettheir movements and to improvise on the
basis of them. Further, theseselections were randomly generated by
the software. Some of the stu-dents felt that the movements in the
animations restricted them insteadof giving them material for new
movement. Given time constraints,these activities were not followed
up in the way originally planned: wetended to move along with the
dance at this point. However, some ofthese animations were used in
the final performances but as scenogra-phy to a choreography
inspired by the postcards exercise described atthe start of the
chapter.
We also introduced a projected live camera to the teaching. The
camerawas placed upside down at a certain angle to the back wall.
This created avisual feedback effect. The students needed to find
out how their movementscould work together with the video. They
quickly found ways of moving ones that were clearly also producing
and developing a strong aesthetic that they probably would not have
found out without the feedback. Exampleof this can be seen in
Figures 4 and 5 below in the form of Willson Phiri'sboxing-match
with his upside-down self, and Erlend Samnen's generationof his own
dance moves from seeing them multiplied in front of him.
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228 Researching ICTs in Context
As with the animated shapes in Flash, this video feedback was
de-veloped into a part of the final performances. So too was the
use of'spatial video' in the live filming and projection of
close-ups from groupand duet sequences. Auslander (1999) has
discussed 'liveness' in perform-ance and media. In the actual final
performances we wanted to maintain afeel of the importance of
improvisation and liveness, of its performativity.In The Analysis
of Performance Art, Howell (1999: 229) argues that:
A key question for performance artists must be, how do we keep
the im-provisation diverse, how do we ensure that even our most
spontanesousactions read ambiguously, so that our audience finds it
difficult to decidewhether it is watching something improvised or
something rehearsed.
Repeatedly, we found that the relationships between movement and
themedia were strongly interdependent, and there was a knack to
their co-composition.
Figure 4 & 5: (left)Willson Phiri boxing with himself at the
firstupside-down camera session at the Ballethgskole, fall
2001.(right) Erlend Samnen at the first upside down camera ses-sion
at the Ballethgskole, fall 2001. Notice the feedback effecton the
graphics from the camera display.
We also invited students to film with DV cameras while they
danced. Wewanted to try out how they would move with the cameras,
as dancers and notfrom the standpoint of more traditional video. We
were able to see how thisdance looked form the point of movement of
the dancers; this would be in-action, inside footage. We used this
event to suggest to the students that theyshould be thinking of how
to 'see through' other aspects of the use of digitalmedia in the
project. We also suggested that this would be a likely need
inunderstanding and practising the future interplay of dance and
technology.
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Researching performance, performing research 229
Figure 6: (left) Malin Rengsedt and Beta Kretovivov film aduet
between Stephanie Sund and Koshiwayi Sabuneti; BetaKretovivov films
a solo imporvisation by Erlend Samnen.
This inverting of camera and dancing with images of live images
pointto how important it is not to take technology and tools as a
given, but tosee them as felxibel and mallable, despite their
boundedness. Similarly,if interdiscilinary teaching and research
into ICTs is to succeed, it isimportant to let go of a certain
degree of certainty and to step forth withsome security given by a
collaborative partner.
Performance and contextPerformance and contextPerformance and
contextPerformance and contextOne 'performance', two contexts
As the project developed, we decided to use the studio at
InterMediaand the stage and rehearsal studios at Statens
balletthgskole as a per-formance spaces. This decision was made for
practical reasons: thedancers needed room in which to keep
developing their project and weneeded a stable testing ground in
which equipment did not have to beremoved from the practice space
immediately after the session.
This was possible at InterMedia, yet the studio venue there was
not de-signed as a dance space: it was smaller than the stage at
the dance school,and its hard floor was not kind on dancers' feet.
However, the studio pro-vided the project with its own space for
rehearsing, and for accentuating theplace of digital media and
research in the project. Further, this broughtdancers into a
research setting, and also allowed colleagues from the de-partment
to see our work in progress, as dance, as digital media and as
anexploratory research project. The decision to move between two
unalikespaces was also made because we intended that the work also
be performedin two different contexts, one connected with research
and the other dance.
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230 Researching ICTs in Context
Production with research
However, this shifting context in which the project was being
developed alsoadded extra levels to an already complex project
process. In the researchcontext around InterMedia, the project was
not easy to categorise and, with avery small budget, technical
needs had to be redefined. The project couldonly proceed on the
basis of many technical compromises. While this was attimes
frustrating for all the participants, the project was designed as
an ex-ploratory learning and design collaboration between new
partners over ashort period. In addition, we were working to
develop a student performancepiece in which digital media was not
meant to over-shadow their dancing. Inthe context of Statens
balletthgskole, we felt that our piece was seen moreas a danced
choreography than as aa dance-media hybrid.
The project did not fit easily into the existing structures of
the two in-stitutional contexts. Yet, as a whole, the project was
useful in piloting theneeds of such action-based research in a new
research centre, where manyfacilities had yet to be used
experimentally, and where working with digitalmedia production and
research into electronic arts had not been part of themain concerns
of either research or production. The project also broughtresearch
on choreography and digital media into the dance school.
Performance for researchPerformance for researchPerformance for
researchPerformance for researchImprovisation for researchersOne of
the difficulties of this project was explaining the importance
ofimprovisation and experimentation in the medley of dance,
learning anddigital media: as learning, as design and as
research.
We decided one way to do this was to bring the project out of
the studioin the basement of InterMedia and into the central public
space of thebuilding. The six students improvised dance in this
space for approximatelyfifteen minutes. The space includes the
entrance and the canteen as well as aflight of three levels of
stairs open to the other areas, and linked with glasselevators.
This offered people many points from which to view the
improvi-sation. It also allowed the dancers to move across and up
and down publicspaces and to draw our attention to our own typical
movements acrossthem. The improvisation took place without music
and against the backdropof the daily activities of this pubilic
arena. The students ran up and down thestairs, following some
pre-arranged moves. At times they followed a
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Researching performance, performing research 231
movement one of them had begun. They fell to the floor. They
wrappedthemselves around the bannisters and descended the staircase
in a largemoving mass. One of the students raced up to the top of
the stairs wayabove the onlookers and shouted out into the roof of
the glass atrium. Oth-ers danced in and around the elevators,
pressing the buttons, holding openthe doors and breaking the rules
of polite public use. People going abouttheir business walked right
into this improvisation and responded to it dif-ferently. The
leader of an ICT and learning project was physically drawninto the
dance. As the improvisation piece came to a close, the large
groupof onlookers began to return to offices, labs and meeting
rooms.
The student dancers also introduced improvisation at an interval
in aseminar on Mobility held at InterMedia in November 2001.11 The
stu-dents had been invited to perform an improvised piece to
highlight as-pects of human movement and artistic expression
through dance. Onthis occasion, however, they performed in the open
air, in a large court-yard hemmed in by glass walls and set into a
well in the main entrancelevel of the research park. Participants
in the research seminar on mo-bility were asked to leave the warmth
of the seminar room and to moveoutside to see a dance piece on
mobility and improvisation. As part oftheir improvisation, the
students used the air streams from a large ven-tilation system
cone, and blew leaves, paper and other objects into the air.The
audience, looking down on the performers, was encouraged to
throwchocolates, paper balls and empty cardboard boxes down into
the space.The students then reacted to some of these immobile
objects. They alsotook photographs during their performance. These
were later used in an in-stallation the students made in the
canteen at Statens balletthgskole as partof their contextualising
of the project for their end of year performance.
Performance for researchersHaving introduced Ballectro as dance
to a research context throughimprovisation, the project was now
introduced as dance and mediato teachers, graduate students and
researchers through a researchseminar entitled 'Designing Design'
which we also arranged. Thisseminar discussed how different fields
of design may inform re-search and development in digital media,
and how we may employapproaches from design to investigate, analyse
and understand digi-tal technologies and their uses. It also asked
in what ways an inte-
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232 Researching ICTs in Context
grated approach to design can help us to conceptualise and
practicethe use of ICTs in communication, learning and culture.
Papers forthis seminar were published in electronic form only. The
media re-searchers in the Ballectro project used this occasion to
present theproject from an online research paper. The paper
concentrated oncollaboration and the role of digital media in the
project (see Morri-son 2001). For us, the overall seminar was a
means of building anelectronic resource of academic publications
around design anddigital media. We were able to present material on
the media com-ponents of the project as well as its collaborative
and participatorydesign. This 'design of design' was then extended
at the close of theseminar with the first full public performance
of the dance piece.The researchers, then, shifted their roles from
the seminar and be-came performers of a different kind (mixing
sound, video, projec-tion, and computer files).
Figure 7: Video still from a trio, performance at the
DesigningDesign seminar, InterMedia,28 February 2001; dancers:
MalinRengstedt (back) and Koshiwayi Sabuneti (front).
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Researching performance, performing research 233
Lasting roughly 20 minutes, the performance was specifically for
theseminar participants and other interested researchers. This gave
theseresearchers the possibility of 'performing the text as an
audience', andnot reading about it in a report or article form.
Video material of thisperformance is to be found on the Ballectro
website under develop-ment. We invite readers of this chapter to
interrupt their current role asreaders of print academic discourse,
and to see a mediated form of theperformance by visiting the
'Performances' section of the Ballectro web.
This interruption is a deliberate part of our wider argument
aboutthe possibilities to move between layers of discourse and
discoursetypes in research which is about and in digital media and
perform-ance. Our presentation of this chapter at the SKIKT
conference, forwhich this book has been prepared is a further
attempt to crossboundaries between print and electronic discourse,
between presen-tation and performance, and between production and
interpretation.
Figure 8: The studio space at InterMedia after the
Ballectroperformance at the Designing Design seminar, 28 November
2001.
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234 Researching ICTs in Context
Performance for dancePerformance for dancePerformance for
dancePerformance for danceFrom research to dance context
Following these improvisations and the performance for
researchers atthe University of Oslo, we now moved to the
performance setting ofStatens balletthgskole. This was a shift in
context, in terms of space,technology, performance and audience.
This shift also impacted on ourunderstanding the mechanics of the
project as well as the interpretationof the performance piece.
While Ballectro was given prominence by being the opening
piecein the annual student concert, it was very clear to us as
media develop-ers and researchers that we had entered an entirely
different learningand performance settting. This proved to be
important in two main re-spects. The first concerned technical
adjustment. The second refers tothe multi-level choreography and
multimedia character of the piecebeing placed in an established
dance performance schedule.
Moving to the larger and wider stage, and the fact that our
perform-ance would be replaced by another scenography, meant that
we had toreconfigure the entire technical arrangement of the work.
Although weknew the dimensions of the stage from having rehearsed
there, we hadto alter the screens we had made to fit this space.
However, we did notchange their size as we would have liked to have
done. We also quicklyrealised that due to the scale of the
performance space having ex-panded, the dance itself would open
out. Similarly, our use of digitalmedia would need to accommodate a
broadening of movement. Mostimportantly, this meant that a second,
more powerful computer projec-tor had to be added to the technical
repertoire. This was so that thecomputer projected material would
be bright enough to be seen by anightly audience (of about 150
persons). This audience was also likelyto be more critical of the
dance and choreography, and the ways inwhich multimedia enhanced or
detracted from them.
As the piece was to be followed by an entirely different dance,
the setfor Ballectro, including expensive computer equipment also
had to betaken down in minutes by the non-dancers in the project.
This was quite adifferent kind of performance for us as researchers
to conduct over sixnights. While in its processes of composition
the piece had been frequentlyrestructured, now we repeatedly
re-performed the same structured piece.
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Researching performance, performing research 235
Figure 9: Stills from a Ballectro performance at Statens
balletthg-skole. The dancers (above) are multipled on the back
screen viavideo projection of live camera feed. The dancer (below),
BetaKretovivov, observes the projection of a previously
recordeddigital video of herself dancing. In Icelandic and
Slovenian, shequestions her own moving self. Simultaneously, music
(compressedand accelerated sound built from her own voice)
plays.
While so far we had called the piece and the project Ballectro,
sug-gesting a merger of dance and electronic media, the students
and thechoreographer now decided the piece needed a different, and
less bal-
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236 Researching ICTs in Context
let-like name. After much debate we settled on the title 'flsj
frash'.This pointed to two aspects of the performance. The first
was that wehad used the software Flash to develop part of the
dance, but of coursethe possible 'Flashdance' was the title of an
entirely different Holly-wood film from the 1980s. Second, the
title 'flsj frash' referred first to theNorwegian spelling of Flash
and, in a playful other senses, to one pronoun-ciation of the word
by a Zimbabwean speaker of Shona suggesting 'cool-ness'. This
allowed us to refer to the Norwegian and Zimbabwean partici-pants
in the project, though the nuances in this title may be partly
missed.
Another change we met was that our formerly contained
perform-ance piece now joined a medley of others in an established
dance per-formance schedule geared towards a dance community. In
this context,we were also finally able to see our work in relation
to other cho-reographies, some developed by the staff and two based
on the work ofthe well-known Norwegian chorographer, Jo
Strmgren.
An additional, and difficult, change for us as researchers who
haddriven the digital media part of the performance was that in
this per-formance context some of the technical control now needed
to pass intothe hands of a lighting and sound specialists
contracted by Statens bal-letthgskole. This meant, especially as
regards sound, that we were nolonger able to integrate all the
elements of what was a multi-level cho-reography and multimedia
performance ourselves. Used to mixing theselements in tune with the
dancers and other media, we now saw howseparate many dance
performances are from their creators. Perhaps thisis no surprise to
choreographers and lighting and sound specialists.
Performing researchPerforming researchPerforming
researchPerforming researchReporting research in online
environments
There is a small, if growing body of research about conducting
online re-search (e.g. Jones 1999, Mann & Stewart 2000, Hakken
1999; see also thisvolume). This print based material is chiefly
concerned with how to carryout a range of research methods in
primarily Internet based domains. Ap-plied research is presented
but little mention is made of visual media (seee.g. Pink 2001) or
of building a multi-mediational research rhetoric. Suchan argument
is to be found in several online journals concerned with schol-arly
publication and digital discourse (e.g. Gailin & Latchaw 1998,
Ingra-
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Researching performance, performing research 237
ham 2002). However, as Morrison (2001) has argued, few
electronic jour-nals in the humanities and social sciences make apt
use of images in theirweb-based mediation of research. In addition,
fewer still employ videomaterial as part of an electronic research
rhetoric (e.g. Owens 2000).
Digital video and audio were used to document aspects of
Ballectro. Stilland moving images were an important part of
reflecting on the learning andwork process as well as the
performances.12 We used the projection of re-corded and projected
video to help us decide how to shape the larger chore-ography;
reviewing footage also helped in selecting and refining materialfor
the piece. Drawings, sketches, and notes were used to keep track of
acomplex process. For some of the period a sociologist observed our
ses-sions, and although given the density of the project his role
as a videodocumenter was not fulfilled, he nevertheless introduced
important ques-tions about participant observation in a
performance-driven project. Danceitself was also a mode of
memory-making: the repeat movements, the re-hearsals and the need
to 'learn' the piece as non-dancers forced the multime-dia
developers to put down their notebooks and cameras. In addition to
thevideo material filmed by the researchers, at times the students
also filmedtheir own dance movements as well as the contexts in
which their learningwas taking place at Statens balletthgskole.
Video was also used in severalworkshop activities to highlight
issues of presentation, and improvisation,though video-playback of
dance was rarely used. Elements of the dancewere repeated with
changes and different expressions. This reflexive devel-opment
design also filtered into the ways in which we also worked as
par-ticipants and as participant observers ourselves.
However, face-to-face discussions and actual 'rehearsals' in
theworkshop sessions were the most frequent means of making sense
ofthe ongoing process. The aim of using digital video was not to
producea fully documented multimedia ethnography online, though
such toolsnow enable us to follow research and learning
trajectories via the web.However, building a multimedia-rich
website (now underway) was oneway of documenting aspects of the
project: as a means of record for thedance school and as an aid to
future learning and research projects(Ballectro 2002). We were also
trying to perform research rhetorically,by way of experimenting
with how to present it in an online setting.
Thus we aimed to generate an example of how one approach to
project-based research may be communicated in a digital domain. In
particular, asthe Ballectro website demonstrates, we needed to find
a fit between the
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238 Researching ICTs in Context
content, the process and the medium so as to reduce some of the
distancebetween a partly digitally mediated performance and its
interpretation.
Extending performance based research
This chapter, therefore also, lies within the evolving Ballecto
projectwebsite. It too is part of a wider project at InterMedia to
build capaci-ties for designing research materials for online
communication. Notonly would we need to establish how and where and
why to use still im-ages, but these questions would also apply to
video, and the quality, sizeand streaming of files. Thus, we needed
to select material from the processand the performances. We linked
them with research papers, such as thisone, as well as to other
research on dance and digital media available on-line. In short, we
were trying to develop a prototype to demonstrate howthe web is a
medium within which a convergence between the researchprocesses and
products may be constructed, and thus also interpreted.
Jones and Stephenson (1999: 8) argue that:
Interpretation is, we would argue, a kind of performance of the
object,while the performance of the body as an artistic practice is
a mode oftextual inscription. The body (as the corporeal enactment
of the subject) isknown and experienced only through its
representational performances whether presented 'live,' in
photographs, videos, films, on the computerscreen, or through the
interpretive text itself. Interpretation, like the pro-duction of
works of art, is a mode of communication. Meaning is a proc-ess of
engagement and never dwells in any one place.
With respect to Ballectro, such 'interpretation' may be seen at
two lev-els. First, the project may be read as an instance of what
we call 'per-formance based research'.13 Second, we suggest that it
may be useful tobroaden the electronic reporting of media-rich
ICT-related research toinclude performance.
Future stepsFuture stepsFuture stepsFuture stepsElectronic
rhetoric and hermeneutics
In researching about dance and digital media, we were somewhat
sur-prised at what we did not find online. While many dance sites
exist, in-cluding those which discuss dance and technology (e.g.
the Dance &
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Researching performance, performing research 239
Technology Zone), few of them have high quality images. Rarely
doesone come across a dance site filled with images and text which
contex-tualises these images.14 We imagined that we might also find
videomaterial on dance online, but this was even harder to
find.15
There would still appear to be relatively few examples of dance
on-line in which digital media is prominent but also where a
multimediateddance may be said to be represented (see e.g.
deLahunta 1998a, Bir-ringer 2002) and analysed (Sha &
Kuzmanovic 2000). Online examplesof the documentation of dance in
context, such as that from the De-partment of Dance at Ohio State
University (2002) also exist, particu-larly with reference to dance
and digital media workshops (Birringer2002). Robbie Shaw (2002) has
a five and a half minute web dancevideo called 'Time train'.
Re-mediating the genre of a silent film, thepiece has chorographic
input from its performers. Further, this web-screened video was
edited digitally. In another work, called 'Panic skid',Jennifer
Marshall and Robbie Shaw (1999) present two dance videoswhich run
simultaneously and which are surrounded by text.
The documentation of electronic arts projects is an important
part ofbuilding its history and its rhetoric (e.g. Dpocas, 2001).
However, un-like many of the performance pieces of the 1960s and
even 1970s,digital video, stills and audio now offer handier and
cheaper means fordocumenting performance-based projects, and
especially the corporeal-ity of dance, and their mediation online.
There are now several projectson the documentation of choreography
and related dance performances.The Norwegain dance and multimedia
performer Amanda Steggell andher collaborators provide a
close-to-home example of how a perform-ance work may be viewed
online; in 'Maggie's Love Bites'16 the onlinemediation is part of
the message (see also deLahunta 1996). This is wellillustrated in a
cd-rom based documentation of choreography for workentitled 'A
Desparate Heart'. Similar is an instructional cd-rom 'Prey:
aninnovation in dance documentation' on the choreography of
BebeMiller (Mockebee 2002). This cd-rom contains notes, each of
which
displays Bebe teaching or coaching the dancers alongside the
Labano-tation phrase, a complete edited video of the group work,
historical, cul-tural contexts, interview with Miller, review by
Candace Feck, Miller'sWorld, and brief instances of the process and
moments of the originallong phrase that Miller and the students
created.
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240 Researching ICTs in Context
Such an approach is also taken over to dvd in a title called
'Going to thewall a document of the process', again referring to a
work by Bebe Miller.
Such experimental research and performance settings provide
uswith a 'laboratory' space within which to conceptualise the
changingcharacter of dance and digital media. In particular, they
also provide uswith research driven contexts based on practice
linked with theory.These contexts provide actual, populated
interdisciplinary spaces forthe embodiment of the
synthetic-analytic model Gunnar Liestl (2001,2002 forthcoming)
proposes is so important in digital media productionand analysis.
'Peformance' may thus be seen to be extended beyond therole of the
dancer and the static, seated audience.
Responsive digital media and performance
'Performance' may thus be seen to be extended beyond the
established andassigned roles of the dancer and the static, seated
audience to a more plasticrelationship between tools and tellers,
performers and the audience as per-formative players who may enter
a performance space and piece and trav-erse the divide between the
stage and the spectator. This can be seen in thecollaborative works
of Sponge and FoAM (sic). These are interdisciplinaryand
collaborative research and design teams working with digital
media.
'Tgarden' is one of their interesting performance based project
wes-bites (Sha & Kuzmanovic 2000, Sha et al. 2000).17 This
site, and theirothers, presented us with prototypical examples of
performance, in-cluding dance, digital media and web mediation are
co-present. Impor-tantly, the 'Tgarden' project site stresses the
importance of responsitivity indigitally mediated performance. A
collaborative and interdisciplinary re-search, technical and
artistic venture, 'Tgarden' investigates:
how people individually and collectively make sense of
responsive, hy-brid media environments by articulating their
knowledge in non-verbal ways.More specifically, the project
investigates how a person can create meaning-ful gestures in a
dynamic environment and develop expertise in them.18
This can be seen in the videos which accompany this explanatory
ver-bal text. In a section of their website entitled 'Transforming
the tool',Sponge state that 'We're interested in making it possible
for someonewho is trying to "write", in the broadest sense, to
refashion the tools ofwriting him or herself. A reflexivity of
action.'
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Researching performance, performing research 241
Sponge and FoAM presented us with digitally mediated research
dis-course in which digital media was employed to communicate the
researchcontent and context. In short, it demonstrates a
web-related contextualisa-tion of interests and publication types
similar to ours. In their own words,the web site is a hybrid and
augmented space, but not just about perform-ance but also as the
performance of their research. This is apparent in theirpublication
of a conference paper bearing video material from the perform-ance
(by the audience) as well as slides from the presentation of the
paper.
Two of the project members, Sha and Kuzmanovic (2000), argue
that'By shifting attention from representation to performance, we
shift the fo-cus of design from technologies of static
representation (e.g. snap-shot da-tabase schemas with data from
forms), to technologies of creation and per-formance.' As deLahunta
argues, (and as we have experienced as learners,designers and
researchers), arts education, including dance and media,needs to be
broadened to include the problems and approaches we havetried to
contextualise here as part of an ongoing shift in our literacies.
Hedemonstrates this himself in an online piece as a 'temporary
typology prac-tice' referring to dance and digital media. He links
a presentation text withits presentation notes, video footage and
web links (see deLahunta 1998a).
Dymanic perfomative discourse
As Susan Kozel (1997) says, 'How do we map the body of dance as
itexpands its representational systems?' How too are we to do this
fordigital media? That is for dance and media as artistic and as
academictexts? Now that dance cds and dvds and research projects
and publica-tions have begun to demonstrate links between
choreography and itsperformance, we hope that it will be possible
to stretch this further andtake some new steps into a dynamic,
electronic and responsive per-formance. This may be the case in a
proposed collaboration with threechoreography students in the fall
of 2002 in which they will each de-velop a choreography for other
students to dance. At present we are stillto learn about their
interests, but their chreography teacher has asked usto collaborate
with them in working on renaissance material. At presentwe are
calling this the Piazza project. Piazza might be one site in
whichwe can further investigate relationships between dance and
digital me-dia design, and also perhaps learn how to work and to
develop more re-sponsive multimedia dance spaces and
performances.
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242 Researching ICTs in Context
From the point of view of research and pedagogy on digital
me-dia, through the Ballectro project we learned to perform, to
researchperformance and to perform research. A future
interdisciplinary andcollaborative multimedia-dance project such as
Piazza might result in 'asite' in which research processes,
accounts, performances and interpre-tation are connected with an
electronically mediated rhetoric. In suchfuture steps, we would
also hope to embody the performing of researchso that 'moving
media', responsive performers and audiences might alsobe 'players'
in its making and interpretation, stepping between digital-dance
and digitally mediated dymanic research texts. That, however, isa
matter of a different time, space and context.
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Notes1 Ballectro is a project funded by the KTK initiative,
housed at InterMedia atthe University of Oslo. KTK stands for
'Communication: Technology & Cul-ture', a programme funded by
SKIKT. According to original documentation,KTK 'focuses on the
interfaces between the traditional subject areas. The cen-tral
effort is therefore directed towards the development, application
and
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246 Researching ICTs in Context
analysis of communication technology in the light of
historical/philosophical,linguistic/symbolic, societal, political,
legal, ethical, pedagogical and techno-logical factors. This
applies to both the conditions for and the consequences ofsuch
technology. The aim of this priority area is to develop new
competencethrough interdisciplinary research with a view to meeting
the needs of societyfor new teaching provision, mediation,
publicising and further research.'Statens balletthgskole also
contributed to the funding of the project. Informationon Statens
balletthgskole may be found at:
http://www.khio.no/ballett/index.html.The Ballectro project website
is at: www.intermedia.projects/ballectro.htm. Ourthanks to Brd
Ketil Engen for comments on the chapter.2 Statens balletthgskole
(known in English as the National College of Balletand Dance) is
part of the Kunsthyskole in Oslo. In this chapter will use
theNorwegian name.3 Workshops are being used as part of the
building of the Ballectro website;students from the project will be
partly involved in this process.4 Marita Liulia, Kimmo Pohjonen and
Aki Suzuki's Performance Manipulator(at Kiasma, ARS01, Helsiniki,
Finland) is a combination of concert, exhibi-tion, media, and dance
performance. It involves a similar mixing of art formsand ways of
performing we found interesting in Ballectro. The
Manipulatorartists also combine traditional artforms (dance,
visuals, music) with new tech-nology. Available at:
http://www.kiasma.fi/ars/manipulator/index.php5 The 'Context'
section of the PARIP website summarises this:
The pursuit of practice as research / practice-based research
(PAR /PBR) has become increasingly important during the past ten
years tothe research cultures of the performing arts (drama,
theatre, dance, mu-sic) and related disciplines involving
performance media (film, video,television, radio) as the
contribution of the arts and cultural industries tonational health
and prosperity has climbed up the political agenda. Agrowing number
of performing arts / media departments in higher edu-cation are now
offering higher degrees which place practice at the heartof their
research programmes. This represents a major theoretical
andmethodological shift in the performance disciplines traditional
ap-proaches to the study of these arts are complemented and
extended byresearch pursued through the practice of them.
See: http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/#context6 See:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/#context7 The SKIKT conference website
is
at:http://www.intermedia.uio.no/konferanser/skikt-02/skikt-research-conferance.html8
For example, Tronstad (2002, forthcoming) suggests that the concept
per-formance is only partially useful in conceptualising online MUD
adventures.
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Researching performance, performing research 247
9 Details of choreography and dance aspects will be addressed
elsewhere, aswill a focus on learning.10 For more detail on the
media aspects of the project, see Morrison et al. (2001).11 This
seminar and the one mentioned hereafter on design were both part
ofthe KTK Assemblages project, funded through the SKIKT
programme.12 We documented parts of the process while the project
unfolded. DV cameraswere used to record aspects of the different
sessions. Mostly the documentation wascarried out as general
observation without direct interviews of the students.
Thedocumentation is valuable for several reasons. It demonstrates a
creative process butalso miscommunication. We documented less and
less towards the end of the proj-ect as we started to run low on
people to fill the different roles, and do specific tasks.Another
reason for the decline in documentation was the gradual change from
acreative process to rehearsals. Towards the live performances more
effort was putinto making the performances actually work the way we
wanted than on the re-cording of the process. Given our time
boundaries, recording and interviewing theparticipants tended to
break concentracion and to use up rehearsal time.13 Here we do not
mean the kind which is inherent in research assessment ex-ercises
such as conducted in British universities.14 In contrast, for
example, performance artists and groups, such as the Norwe-gian
based Motherboard, have used the web to link real-time performances
towebsites with scripts and a range of different performance types
to build dy-namic environments. (see
http://www.notam02.no/motherboard/). Troikaranch, for example, has
a salon on projects (see:http://www.troikaranch.org/websalon2.html)
and also provides a different im-age each day (see:
http://www.troikaranch.org/yearbody.html).15 Perhaps, the tradition
of dance for film and the video of dance for televisionoffer
dancers higher quality images and more satisfying representations
of cho-reographies and their performances.16 From online notes to
this piece:
M@ggie's Love Bytes has developed through the group's
engagementin net life, and tries to cater for a great amount, and
diversity of traf-fic/inter-activity during the performance. The
ongoing process of run-ning the show is embedded in the expression
of the piece (words suchas open, close, fetch, connect, disconnect,
and icons such as the runningdog in FTP, and the open and closed
eye in CU-SeeMe, appear on thewall, adding an extra dimension to
whatever may be happening justthen). All these features form an
integral part of net life as we know it.And this is the point:
M@ggie's Love Bytes is in fact a regular dancetheatre performance
of the 90's which dares to reflect upon, and per-form through our
digitally-connected lives as they happen - now! How-
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248 Researching ICTs in Context
ever, what makes this project unique is the (re-claimed) power
of themoving, gesturing human body in cyberspace, embodied in the
dancers.
At: http://www.notam02.no/~amandajs/where.html17 Synne Skjulstad
and Albertine Aaberge were able to become players in thisresponsive
media and dance work at Ars Electronica in Linz, September 2001.18
At: http://www.sponge.org/events_m3_tgarden.htm. See
also:http://titanium.lcc.gatech.edu/topologicalmedia/tgarden/index.html
BLANK