DRAFT VERSION #4 - 13 November 2000 (sfddft4.doc) by Scott deLahunta

This is a proposal for an initial focussed series of discussion/ thinktank sessions to brainstorm about the possibilities for the development of new rehearsal, performance and documentation software for dancers, choreographers and any other performing arts practitioners for whom the body in motion is a primary material.

These sessions might include more or less public workshop, symposium or conference formats. However, the core AIM is to consolidate knowledge and expertise with an eye towards establishing the appropriate and necessary conditions for support for this area of creative work.

Invitees will be drawn from four different areas of practice/ knowledge:

• Firstly, from a small group of performing artist/ programmers already in the process of developing and/ or customizing software for use within their arts practice. This proposal is largely written in response to a series of early discussions with some of these individuals who have expressed a strong wish and a need to come together with like minded practitioners to develop shared ideas, solutions and code.
• Secondly, while a number of these above practitioners are working in partnership or collaboration with choreographers already, it is crucial that choreographers/ dancers be brought into this discussion who have NOT to this date made use of digital technologies in the context of their rehearsal, performance or documentation practices in order to increase the chances of a wider application for and implementation of these tools.
• Thirdly, a small number of creative software and hardware designers and developers who would be capable of addressing some of the more complex technical aspects that may emerge from the creative imagining of future developments… and to assist the above artist/ programmers in developing distributable cross-platform and scalable architectures.
• Finally, a small number of researchers in the areas should be involved who are able to bring a rigorous critical perspective to bear on these ideas and technology developments to include, for example, a broad understanding of performance making processes and structures and a thorough knowledge of cultural historical contexts relating both to the performing arts as well emerging digital technologies.

REHEARSAL, PERFORMANCE AND DOCUMENTATION TOOLS:

Besides the well known story of LifeForms, which Merce Cunningham famously contributed to developing in the late 1980s, dance as an evolving field of practice and knowledge has had very little input into the early stages of developing software that might be useful to the choreographer's creative process in making a dance. There are reasons for this. One could say that until the early 90s the body in motion seemed to resist the types of analysis and thinking that software development and computation seemed to require. On the practical side, the choreographer whose creative process relied almost entirely on having access to live moving bodies in the rehearsal studio (and since the early 80s regular access to video) found it impossible to imagine a computation tool that could somehow capture and represent the density and richness of the information conveyed by these live moving bodies. The resistance was at times philosophical as much as it was practical with fears expressed about the digitized body representing a loss of something deemed to be essential to live performance.

However, times have moved on significantly in the last decade. The increased ubiquity and integration of technologies in western society has eroded the philosophical resistance as strategies of opposition have given way to a more open-minded curiosity about creative possibilities. In addition and on the more practical front, the ever increasing speed of computation combined with dropping costs and greater access opens up the potential for synthesis across a range of visualizing, sensing, generative, intelligent and dynamic software possibilities. We can now begin to develop new digital rehearsal tools that utilise this potential to manipulate both live and pre-recorded video imagery in entirely new ways, working between pixels and frames to draw out and freshly visualize choreographic possibilities. Evolving camera based motion capture and sensing technologies can now be integrated with simple to complex graphical animation/ notation and autonomous contributions from computer-based algorithms. Combining this with other easy to use input devices such as voice recognition and graphics pads and the possibility for controlling various output media from the same interface and the shape of something useful as a digital dance sketchbook - a functional and useable Rehearsal Tool - begins to come into view.

Whether in the form of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Information) that can be converted to control sound, video and/ or robotic elements or as projected imagery direct from the desktop - the output from any digital Performance Tool generally finds its expression in the space/ time of the performance. The discussion proposed here will not address the form of this expression in the performance as much as the sorts of tools that are possible now for manipulating materials in the computer. One of the key areas of interest today is in developing new ways of working creatively with digitized visual and aural materials. For example, several tools either have or are being developed that allow one to isolate, manipulate and synthesize various properties of a particular media, a video image, sound or graphic. There are artists/ programmers working on developing real-time multi player art making environments, such as Keystroke [http://www.keyworx.org], that take advantage of this particular possibility for combining and integrating media while others are more interested in building such tools to use in a more conventional performance context.

For the purposes of this proposal, the development of Performance Tools is presented separately, but there will always be overlaps in terms of functionality and design between Rehearsal and Performance Tools. However, in the context of Performance Tools, the developments should also be part of a broader discussion about the nature of dance/ live performance making and its relationship to the conventional space/ time of performing arts. The new possibilities mentioned in the above paragraph are generating a great deal of excitement around the potential of integrating image and sound manipulation and synthesis with real-time interaction between performance/ audience in combination with various computation input (sensing)/ output (control) devices, etc. Opening up to the possibility of alternative spaces/ times and audience interaction/ participation/ experience will be an important generative strategy for the development of digital Performance Tools.

The above two areas will create a wide and varied range of artifacts from both the creative process as well as the performance product. Separate issues related to the documentation and preservation of dance works both for the purposes of historical research and reconstruction as well as the possibility of re-presenting the dance work in other forms can be taken into account in the development of documentation software tools. These may in some cases be simple extensions of developing Rehearsal and Performance tools, i.e. capture and logging plug-ins, etc. or separate database structures developed with documentation in mind.

PILOT PROJECT IN DEVELOPMENT

The following project is an example of a software development initiative that this series of sessions should use as a practical case-study in developing ideas for the appropriate and necessary conditions for support for this area of creative work.

'the ChoreoGraph' is a software tool in development since 1998 by a small team (under the umbrella of Barriedale Operahouse http://ww.barriedale-operahouse.com) of choreographers/ artists/ programmers based currently in the UK and in Austria. It is intended to serve as an interactive cross-media scripting, cueing and control tool to be used by dance and other performance makers in both rehearsal and live performance contexts. The software will be programmed in MAX with some extensions written in C all under an intuitive user interface. 'the Choreograph' received initial support from the London Arts Board in 1998 and in kind support from ARTEC and the Greenwich Dance Agency. Currently, the team has a proposal into NESTA (National Endowment for Science and Technology in the Arts) in the UK for further development funding. Project leader Michael Klien, has been commissioned by William Forsythe, director of Ballett Frankfurt, to create a work on the company in early 2002 that will make use of the software.

Both 'ChoreoGraph' and 'KeyStroke' (mentioned above) are examples of creative software development that are in need of a broader base of understanding and support than is currently possible in today's technology development climate. Extensive descriptive articles on both of these programmes can be found in the ONLINE issue of Performance Research, vol.4 (2), pp. 98-100 and 103-106 edited by Ric Allsopp and Scott deLahunta.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

To reiterate from above, the core AIM of the series of sessions is to consolidate knowledge and expertise with an eye towards establishing the appropriate and necessary conditions for support for this area of creative work.

The ever increasing speed, richness, complexity and ubiquity of computation platforms across all disciplines and sectors means that now is the time to come together and draw on the potential for synthesizing and amalgamating a range of visualizing, sensing, generative, intelligent and dynamic software possibilities for dancers. As mentioned above, there are already a number of artist/ programmers beginning to develop software that falls into and across the three categories described above.

It is essential now to establish a LONG-TERM set of aims and objectives with goals that; 1) can benefit from and be of benefit to creative software developments from within other disciplines, in particular science and engineering; 2) might be supported by a range of cross-disciplinary and national and international funding mechanisms and; 3) will develop and articulate clear policies related to industry R&D and the potential for contributions to the commercial marketplace.

Under these LONG-TERM aims and objectives there should fall a range of considerations such as: 1) how to begin to share and benefit from each other's experience and expertise; 2) consider the adoption of open source / open code strategies; 3) development of expandable and transferable user interfaces; 4) developments taking place in a context of ongoing critical and theoretical reflection; 5) immediate implementation of a functional virtual lab**.

**The notion of the virtual lab relates to the need to organise an environment for support and development that takes into account the remote conditions of most of these artist/ programmers beginning to work in this area. Software development is one of the things that has already a tradition of being developed in different places all around the world - so there is no reason to think that it would not work for Software for Dancers.

POSSIBLE SITES AND DATES FOR THE SERIES:

It is intended that a tester series of discussions to give input and feedback on this proposal will be held from 13-15 December 2000 in Monaco at the Monaco Dance: Dance Festival. Several of the performing artist/ programmers referred to in this proposal will be participating in this event presenting some of their own software developments. The results of these discussions could help to inform the further development of this proposal.

There has been some discussion about organising a meeting sited in Europe in the Summer of 2001 possibly in connection with the Dance Lab directed by Emilyn Claid in collaboration with the Performing Arts Lab, Bore Place. The pilot (summer 1999) and first Dance Lab (summer 2000) were funded by NESTA. Further funding for next year needs to be secured. Last year's Dance Lab brought together a range of the best professional dancers and choreographers in the UK for an experimental two week workshop during which time there was an evening devoted to discussing the potential impact of emerging technologies on their practice. The results of this discussion and subsequent conversations suggests that a future Dance Lab might provide a rich and generative context for one of the Software for Dancers thinktank sessions.

There has been some discussion with Johannes Birringer, newly appointed Professor in the Dance Department at Ohio State University (OSU - well known pioneers in the field of dance and emerging technologies), regarding the possibility of organising a meeting sited in the USA in the Autumn of 2001. This meeting could happen either on site at OSU or in some other location perhaps closer to New York City in order to enhance accessibility for travelers.

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