Addenda, Phenomenology, Embodiment: Cyborgs and Disability Perfomance

The sensationalized of 'addenda' of disabled people are as semiotic markers of difference and seductive performance invitations into a different form of embodiment. Maurice Merleau-Ponty says that visual representation is in a productive tension with a form of tactility, the physical extension of vision, that is, connection between tactility and visibility.

Aimee Mullins : Seduction and other beauty













Aimee Mullins is a disabled fashion model, athlete and activist who walks with leg prostheses. She embodies both the fascination of the ‘other’ – the exotic, strange and different, and at the same time, her representations seem to hover on the edge of inviting me into her living experience. She does not remain ‘other’, but comes closer. Through her photos and a TV commercials, we can stress the ruptures and tensions between the image of Mullins, and the phenomenologically accessible performance of that image.














Body spaces : A disability culture tech-performace














Body Spaces explores physicality and space, public access and intimacy, physical absence and digital presence. From ghostly video projections, stories and photographs emerge sensings of urban spaces inhabited in unfamiliar ways. Traces of previous habitations haunt the location, and motion-sensors invite the spectator to engage in the visual memory of dancing bodies. 3 site-specific installations, created by Petra Kuppers and collaborators, in a residency with young disabled people. Commissioned as part of Digital Summer 2000, presented October 2000, Manchester. Various screens were arranged around the Outpatient's Lobby, hung from the ceiling and from an old-fashioned medical screen. People could moved around and through the screens. The Geometries video was projected onto the screens. One of these projections was a Quicktime Movie, and a Director script on an i-Mac controlled a radio mouse sown into one of the screens (see photo) which moved the film when the mouse button was depressed. In addition to the screens, the installation created a pathway through the lounge - a continuous band tracing a wheelchair wheel around the space, and individual marks, tracing the footsteps of a walking person around the same circuit. During the installation, the enthusiastic workshop participants guided visitors around this circuit, proudly displaying their work. The pathway led to photos, shot by the residency participants, providing new angles on everyday objects in the lounge. Around these photos and objects, stories on coloured paper could be found, telling fantasy narratives inspired by these objects, imbuing them with a different and new life.The soundtrack for the installation was running as part of the video projections, but could also be manipulated via sensor pads, which would activate short soundbytes to weave into the soundscape.

Intelligence, Interation, Reaction and Performance

Susan Broadhurst is a writer and practitioner in the creative arts. She is the Subject Leader of Drama Studies and has worked at Brunel since 1999. Prior to this she was based in Australia at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth. She is also co-editor of the Body, Space & Technology online journal and is currently working on a series of collaborative practice based research projects entitled, "Intelligence, Interaction, Reaction and Performance," which involve introducing various interactive digital technologies into live performance including, artificial intelligence, 3D film, modelling and animation, and motion tracking. The first of which was Blue Bloodshot Flowers. In this chapter, she discusses a series of performances that utilize new technologies. The first is Blue Bloodshot Flowers and the second is Dead East, Dead West. Through both of performances she wants to say about new liminal spaces, that is, tension-filled spaces where opportunities arise for new experimental forms and practices.
Blue Bloodshot Flowers is a movement-scripted piece. It involves the remembrance of a love affair. It performed at Brunel University, West London, and the 291 Gallery, London, in 2001. It consisted of the real time interaction between a human performer, Elodie Berland, and Jaremiah, an avatar(computer-generated image). Jeremiah is a head model based upon Geoface technology(DECface). Jeremiah consists of computerized artificial intelligence with the ability to track humans, objects, and other stimuli and to react to what's going on near him directly and in real time. Most people find him 'spooky' at first and then familiarity. From a technological perspective, Jeremiah is based around two subsystem: a graphics system, which constitutes the head; and a vision system that allows him to see.
Dead East, Dead West was an experimental sound- and movement-based piece with some fragmented script, and was fused with 3D interactive technology. It consisted of motion tracking, interactive pads, and miniature cameras. In addition, Dead East, Dead West was an intercultural and interracial performance that explored and exploded the margin between what is seen as dominant Western art practices and the 'exotic' performance of the 'other'.
She says that 'Intelligence, Interaction, Reaction and Performance' is an ongoing project of what is hoped will be a variety of performances which combine the physical and virtual in performance. In conclusion, she proposes that although much interest is directed towards new technologies, technology's most important contribution to art is the enhancement and reconfiguration of an aesthetic creative potential which consists of interaction with and reacting to a physical body, not an abandonment of that body.

Body Waves Sound Waves : Optik

Body Waves Sound Waves : Optik
Live Sound and Performance
Barry Edwards and Jarlett

1.
- Music and sound have always been key ingredients in Optik.
- 1981-1986 : live acoustic solo instruments
- 1992-2000 : specific acoustic sources, mainly percussion, with improvisation
- 2000 : Internet experiment, electronic sound → live electronic sound
2.
- The first approach : working with blocks of performance material
- The second cycle : working with wave-like transitions and emergent moments of event and action
- the dynamics of the human body in space and time
- the size, shape and acoustics of a space, and of the performers and spectators are all ingredients in the starting mix. There is connection.
- Theatre is a process of flux.
- eidetic intuition : a useful term to describe theatre is a process of flux, the immediate knowledge of the form of something, something that is vivid, and present
- eidetic : the Greek word eidos which refers to a mental image that has unusual vividness and detail
- intuition : immediate apprehension of something without reasoning
3.
- Movement and stillness : silent and sound
- dynamogenesis : what happens before you make an action
- In both music and action, repeating is a key technical building block for the Optik process.
4.
- The sound in recent Optik work is always 'diagetic'.
- That is the source of the sound is always present, not imported.
5.
- Jarlett's system
- A way of generation an electronic sound score that did not rely on using any ingredients produced in advance of the performance itself : to use a granular synthesiser called Granulab written by Rasmus Ekman
- Granular synthesis is a process first suggested by Iannis Xenakis and Curtis Roads.
･ Looping : a loop start, length and rate. This looping control simply defines where in the sound file a grain when produced is to start from-in computational terms it could be described as a pointer.
･ Rhythm : Barry Truax identifies that constant sound grains need to be less than 50ms in duration. The sound produced happens regularly, giving a rhythmic pattern for the performer to react to, but its content can change with every repeat.
･ Texture : altering the grain length, grain frequency and grain pitch → creating diverse timbres-from rumbling bass to high frequency distorted screeches, rhythmic patterns at various speeds → lush ambient drones
6.
- Artist-artist collaboration
- Collaboration as director and sound technologist has been based on interaction as artists.