research


Just finished up a very fleeting visit to a cold and wet Sydney – presenting some materials from my PhD work at the “International Conference on Memory”. Fascinating to be in amongst the language and metaphor of science. To listen to people investigating how movement contributes to experiencing music (in babies), and particularly in the reduction of aspects of human experience to absurdly controlled domains (although I understand the need for this). The capacity of these experiments to have almost no ecological validity (their term) is wonderfully bizarre. It reminded me that although what we are doing in Perth isĀ  not exactly “everyday” it is actually more deeply considerate of the everyday and of lived experience than these particles of “knowledge”. Not that I want to be too hard on them – I thoroughly enjoyed it and was deeply stimulated by what I saw/heard. But I kept hearing the words of my Professor from the University of Otago saying, “So what Simon, so what? And perhaps it is that — the drive to nestle investigations within broad (or other?) contexts … or perhaps it is to understand what these contexts might be?

so, just because i can’t help but be influenced by these two… here’s my next 2 sec flips that also moves away from the single frame or 2 frame rule. the thing i started playing with here though is the use of blank frames. will try to get back to my own more rigid experiments as soon as i can.

icon for podpress  flip duet [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Paea and I sat and read “Phenomenological Space” this morning/afternoon. An interview with Hubert Godard and Caryn McHose for Contact Quarterly (it would appear I have only read one thing since being here in Perth) – Summer/Fall 2006.

The idea was to read the material at the same time and then discuss/consider any resonances that resulted from our (mutual) introduction to Godard’s thinking.

What became clear, very quickly, to me was that I was going to have trouble pinning his thinking to any one aspect of my practice. I was stimulated creatively (in terms of considering corporeal and audience/performer spaces), personally (in terms of his ideas concerning expectations), as an improviser, and more broadly on issues related to a conceptual understanding of space.

It is tricky to know where to begin. What was significant?

My notes read as follows:

space – imaginary

topos – real (geometric or measured)

space is linked to our personal story.

notion of kinesphere – subjective space – a “gradient of perspective”.

one subjectivity meets many subjectivities, where subjectivity includes personal history & expectation, but also sociological context.

“My perception of space is organised through the habits of our sociology and by the geography.”

p.35: “The reason, for example, that dance contact is so important is because it’s a way to renegotiate: first, the distance to other people; then, the vectoralization of space; then, the many levels of perceiving.”

He describes his notion of the “non-cortical gaze” – a way of looking that is not about naming. “This non-cortical gaze allows you to have very easy body reading because you have the capacity to incorporate people in your subjective space; you are in the space, the space is in you.”

I began to think about the unsighted work we did last week – to try be more clear about what is being negotiated. I have a feeling that independent dancing is central to the work – and yet this independence is ‘touched’ by a concern for the other. The degree of proximity or severence between the unsighted and sighted participants allows a quite precise exploration of the (spatial) edges of the duet. For the sighted person there is (of course) a responsibility to keep the unsighted dancer safe, but at the same time to insert and tease a geography of assisting, resisting and (here’s another attempt at finding a suitable word) DISTORT (others might be: circumvent, mislead, hoax??) what is occuring. For the unsighted mover there is a tension between continuing the corporeal noticing of the sighted, whilst at the same time ‘testing’ the outline of the duetting space.
Godard’s clarification (or delineation) of space (imagined) and topos (real) might also help to clarify what is being practised in this unsighted work. Could it be the overlap between these real and imagined phenomena that is the line on which we are acting/moving?

Towards the end of our session, I asked Paea about what she experienced/considered as she read the material.

She talked of the “space within” her body – and of not hanging on to the way it (her body/moving) should be — “I don’t lose my thread but I stay open”. For her this thread was “of finding my rigour” [It is interesting to consider the notion of rigour as a noun] – “ways to be in movement that I don’t know about”

David arrived eating his lunch and we discussed the idea of “centre” in dance – and he mentioned that Martin Keogh described the body as being polycentric … of being capable of negotiating multiple (parallel?) centres whilst moving.

This idea sits with what was a dense period of thinking and reading. I feel like there are many many strands of Hubert Godard’s thinking (in this one article alone) that I’d like to reflect on, explore and integrate into my current practice.

Tomorrow.

playing with the idea of micro editing. the following text lists the simple processes for exploring the notion of a 2 second feed. taking motion and editing it to stillness then reanimating through compiling frames together. looking at composition, choreo-cinematography, remapping time, loss of information, redundancy, reconfiguring and perception. just for starters of course.

from these edits there are two main streams in terms of inscribing the images. the first is through following the chronological progression of the movement. that is, taking a phrase (be it through movement of body, camera or both) and pulling out frames so that there is still a sense of shape or linearity in the resulting images. it’s almost like the reverse of time-lapse photography or stop-motion animation.

the second stream is more about dislocating the images from their chronology and composing the sequence through other means. each frame has a relationship to the preceding and succeeding frames. this becomes a more compositional assemblage where the editing takes precedence in the choreography of the piece.

other things: what is the resulting visual impact of extracting frames from a linear progression? does it allow the inbetween moments to be represented? are those missing elements holding signifigance in their absence?
using a cell size of 2 frames instead of 1 creates a very different experience. the fractions of movement that the eye picks up with 2 frames makes the sequence fit into a dance idiom. some interesting reading here.
things to try: turn your sound off when you watch them. open them all up in pop-ups and view at once. download to your desktop and open all in quicktime – set them to looping playback. observe the topography of the studio. step through them frame by frame. the clips are listed in order below the body of this post.
process 1

fixed frame, dancer walking and standing score.
import entire 3min clip into FCP
edit frames from viewer onto timeline
1. choosing static poses (1 frame)
2. choosing ‘in-between’ moments (2 frames)
3. compiling chronologically

process 2

fixed frame, dancer walking and standing score.
import entire 3min clip into FCP
edit frames from viewer onto timeline
1. choosing static poses (1 frame)
2. compiling frames with repetition of images

process 3

fixed frame, dancer walking and standing score.
import entire 3min clip into FCP
edit frames from viewer onto timeline
1. choosing ‘in-between’ moments (2 frames)
2. compiling chronologically, duplicating
3. reversing duplication.

process 4

moving frame, dancer improvising with a focus on relationship to camera and sense of moving through the frame
log and capture clips into FCP – extracting ‘useful’ sections
edit frames from viewer onto timeline – one clip at a time
1. choosing dynamic moments (2 frames)
2. compiling chronologically – 5 segments only to create a section
3. repeat section

process 5
duplicate sequence from process 4
1. reduce each cell to 1 frame only
2. duplicate to fill 2 secs

process 6
moving frame, dancer improvising with a focus on relationship to camera and sense of moving through the frame
log and capture clips into FCP – extracting ‘useful’ sections
edit frames from viewer onto timeline – one clip at a time
1. choosing dynamic moments (2 frames)
2. compiling chronologically

process 7

same as process 6 – different footage.

process 8

same as process 7 but there are 2 frames for each cell – this is a 4 second feed

icon for podpress  Podcast Video [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
icon for podpress  Podcast Video [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
icon for podpress  Podcast Video [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
icon for podpress  Podcast Video [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
icon for podpress  Podcast Video [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
icon for podpress  Podcast Video [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
icon for podpress  Podcast Video [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
icon for podpress  Podcast Video [0:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

today began with Paea leading a contemporary class for Strut. i had a good time. really. despite being the unco dancer at the back of the class.

then simon led an improv class looking at the work he started with Alexandra MacDonald earlier this year. in one part of the investigation/exploration simon mentioned one person engaging in resistance, assistance or t-boning (fuck it all up)

hang on – got to go and do some body work… will continue this in a moment

will come back tomorrow now… blah

ok, so a couple of days later i return to finish off my train of thought. and, of course, in the time between i have read the other posts by simon and paea, had a few conversations about the classes, been swimming in the ocean, enjoyed some preservative free wine, helped put in the floor of a tent in Forrest Place and done a couple of loads of washing, all of which mean my original thoughts have been somewhat influenced and diluted by other information.

in fact, one of the thoughts i was having about the classes was to do with information and processing. in paea’s class the information came incrementally and was explicitly directed. it also came at a particular pace, which, to my un-contemporary/un-institutionally trained body, was at a considerable speed. to make a dodgy tech analogy, my CPU had to work at capacity for most of the class to keep on top of the information. towards the end of the class i noticed that i was not taking any new information in – i had reached a level of saturation. and with it the ability to process information? mental fatigue? overheated CPU? i enjoyed working at that capacity. and also of remembering the practice of allowing – that it is possible to let information in without making a conscious decision about the information.

in contrast, simon’s class began with a packet of information that was setting up an exploration. the information was presented to the class without being overly prescriptive. as the class progressed smaller pieces of information were transmitted, which acted like triggers or reminders of the exploration. as we were working in duets, the processing of this information was necessarily handled differently by each person. as a unit, the processing and creation of data were indivisible – is this a recursive system? acting independently but implicitly linked – reminds me of the uncertainty arguement – mutually exclusive, yet jointly essential for a complete description of quantum events.

computer purchase occupying too much of my brain space.

this morning i led a little contact exploration – a trio of investigating the physiology of eachother’s bodies as a preparation for moving with increasing responsiveness (to tactile information) through considering our roles and the intention behind the movement.

the information i gave was sparse – enough to act as triggers but not overly prescriptive. i think one of the reasons i often try to offer less prescriptive task or thoughts is to do with allowing ownership and agency.

i think now i’m going to go and start building something. i want to look at replication and degradation – the simple idea is to build a little web app in php that uses GD to recompress the images that are uploaded. the image that is created will then be compressed again. this is a recursive action. need to find some info about jpg compression and how it anaylses and then reduces information.

off to work.

David leading listening/agency task. Moving with and about others. From released to resistant. Experienced range of sensations from the ultra-clear, to more “slushy”. I questioned my response to this feeling of blurringĀ  (or slushiness) – to be led to more “known” pathways/experiences, OR to feel my body perturbed and extended. The relationship with a beginning (or baseline) state and the subsequent extensions feels critical in my experience. To keep checking in the with the point of entry (and its associated clarity) as a means of organising (and allowing?) the bodymind to venture into newness.

The doing (initially – before I began to acquire an increasing amount of agenecy) felt light, absorbing, and surprising. Corporeal surprise – sounds like a cocktail. But it is those moments that propel me – or are nurturing.

From Fritjof Capra, “Hidden Connections” (pp.32-33).

“Living systems, then, respond autonomously to disturbances from the environment with structural changes, i.e. by rearranging their pattern of connectivity. According to Maturana and Varela, you can never direct a living system; you can only disturb it. More than that, the living system not only specifies its structural changes; it also specifics which disturbances from the environment trigger them. In other words, a living system maintains the freedom to decide what to notice and what will disturb it.”

I was thinking about this in terms of seeking newness – in directing/choreographing/scribing the body in (or with) the unknown. To what extent am I aware of possible disturbances? To which practices/questions might I turn in order to be disturbed?