chomsky and chance
julie posted some responses to my post «suikoden» on her site «choreobot8». this is an overview of my response to her thoughts.
vicki can only replicate and automate traditional forms of choreography. it does so by using chance procedures to select and combine performative features. this is how merce cunningham uses chance procedures, separating time, space, path, bodyparts etc. in order to remove his subjective authorship.
the use of computers to create the structure and/or composition of a choreography is not new. there are many other example including tony’s «fugue project». the fugue project also demonstrates the principles of automated (or procedural) creativity (and composition) are ‘traditional’.
the jusdon era, conceptual dance and other dance practices all use(d) the forms vicki does. but in a non-computer automated fashion. it is common (in uk universities) to see realtime chance procedures used with laban movement analysis as verbal instructions. viki has similar options, e.g.:
- action and quality: freeze, broken, isolate, bound, invert, retrograde, rebound … twist, swing, rotate, press, melt, slice.
- pathway and shape: arc like, sideways, diagonal, undercurve, circular, angular, cross lateral, symmetrical … new front, freeze, repeat, slow.
(these were taken from a screen-shot at «dancemachines» which i am assuming to be from a version of vicki.) this is «non deterministic, context sensitive algorithmic choreography».
just as viki calls out the instructions, a person can sit in the audience and tell the dancer what to do. in «solo», william forsythe uses semantic trigger words (around 05:45) as improvisational contexts/stimuli.
it is the performer who develops and shapes their skills of responding to verbal instructions. vicki plays no part in that, other than to offer structures to explore. this is vicki’s strength, automating the creation of variable structures to explore artistic / performative hypothesis.
this is not questioning traditional forms as it uses them in a traditional manner. it is also limited to abstractions and discrete concepts due to the difference between doing and describing. but even with in these limitations there is wealth of research to engage in using vicki.
vicki is also traditional in terms of dance and performance technologies.
the main performative contextualization of vicki as dance and technology is the video screen displaying vicki. this typical of the late 20th century dance technology works; revealed technology. notion of the computer controlling the dancer, and (computer) improvisation in real time that composes the score (choreographic or audio) are also traditional dance-tech formats.
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