NETWORKED BODIES DIGITAL PERFORMANCE WEEKENDER NETWORKED BODIES SYMPOSIUM Saturday 8 November 2014, 2.30 - 6.30PM Bookings: http://watermans.ticketsolve.com/shows/873522990/events?show_id=873522990
Performance of Three Wearable Devices for Augmented Virtuality, Device #1: A Wearable Garden employing the original sandwich board 3D object in Second Life. Garrett Lynch Performance of The Degree to which a Representation Resembles the Object it Represents is a Function of Resolution and Does not Bear on the Denotation of the Word employing the Sandwich Board at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England. Garrett Lynch
Networks generate transnational zones of action, bring together communities, circulate knowledge and information, expand spheres of influence, contaminate ideas, germinate exchanges, foster innovation, and facilitate distribution of power. However, networks are unfairly distributed and closely monitored. Geopolitical injustices and dominant political and economic forces mean that networks can engender biopower, foster segregation, facilitate hyper-centralized forms of citizen surveillance and control, fragment living space and experience. These developments of the network society generate social tensions, which invest the task of understanding networks in their many manifestations –including cultural ones– with social and political urgency. Networks, despite many past promises of disembodiment and internationalism through the obsolescence of both bodies and geographical boundaries – promises now widely perceived themselves as obsolete – are still experienced by subjects that remain both embodied and geographically situated (Cohen, 2012: 11) As Cohen argues, not only are networks firmly connected to material bodies and physical geographies, but they also play “an increasingly significant role in constructing embodied experience” (ibid), by both empowering and configuring the “networked self” (ibid: 12).
In Networked Bodies at Watermans we want to explore networked performance practices with a view to considering how they transform live (embodied, disembodied and trans-bodied) performance practices. We are keen to consider the many, increasingly well documented, exciting possibilities these present to live performance, as well as their potential downsides. Speaking for the devil (so to speak), we ask: do these practices raise any ethical concerns through the use of surveillance and control, fragmentation of space and experience, alienation or even exploitation of their participants? Networked Bodies will aim to look beyond shiny appearances and into the –occasionally dirty– folds of the networks (and the bodies). Curated by Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka Maria X) and Irini Papadimitriou SYMPOSIUM PROGRAMME 2.30 Introduction Maria X Strand 1: Telecollaborative Practices 2:35 PERFORMATIVE PRESENTATION: Streamed river walk, recounting an embodied environmental networked performance practice, Suzon Fuks and James Cunningham (online) 2:50 Uncanny Performance Interactions, Steve Dixon (online) 3:05 Inside and Outside Telematic Space, Julian Maynard Smith (Station House Opera) 3:20 Q & A Strand 2: Connecting Senses 3.30 From shinkansen to body>data>space, 25 years of placing the body at the centre of virtual/physical interaction, Marie Proffit, Jo Hyde, Nick Rothwell / body>data>space 3:45 Flatland: Exploring creative possibilities of haptic technologies in a theatre installation for blind and sighted audiences, Maria Oshodi (Extant) 4:00 Invisible Flock introduces If You Go Away, Ben Eaton 4:15 Q & A Strand 3: Networked Methods 4.30 MIDAS: Border-Crossing Digital Arts and Social Science: New Methodological Approaches to Embodiment, Prof. Susan Broadhurst 4:45 Digging Dirtiness: Electronic waste recycling as participatory methodology in art, cultural studies and science, Daniel Ploeger 5:00 Weaving Codes – Coding Weaves, Ellen Harlizius-Kluck 5.15 The Prediction Machine: Performing Climate Data, Rachel Jacobs (Active Ingredient and Impact Research Fellow, University of Nottingham) 5:30 Q & A Strand 4: Performing the Network 5.45 - This Floating World, Tim Murray-Brown and Jan Lee Closing performances: 18.00 - Digital Handshake, Christina Papagiannouli and Evi Stamatiou (London), Helen Varley Jamieson, Miljana Perić and Vicki Smith (online). An improvised cyberformance on the topic of networked bodies taking place simultaneously at Watermans and online. http://upstage.org.nz/blog/?p=6272 18.30 – FETISH, Daniel Ploeger A performer licks an iPad screen suspended in front of him. The action gradually lights up the screen. Instead of using mobile technology to harvest extensive user data, process complex algorithms and exploit network connectivity, FETISH reduces the iPad to an electric light. Following McLuhan, the device is transformed into a medium without contents, controlled by a fetishistic action, both in the Freudian and the Marxist sense of the word.
BIOGRAPHIES Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka Maria X) is a curator, performer and Lecturer in Performance and New Media at the School of Drama, Music and Screen, University of Hull. She is co-editor of the volumes Interfaces of Performance (Ashgate, 2009) and Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Maria has published numerous book chapters as well as articles and reviews in journals such as Contemporary Theatre Review, New Theatre Quarterly, Leonardo, Visual Culture in Britain, Body Space Technology and Gender Forum. She has lectured widely, including invited lectures at Yale, MIT and Georgia Tech. Maria was co-founder and co-director of the international media art festival Medi@terra and Fournos Centre for Digital Culture (Athens, Greece, 1996-2002); co-convener of the Thursday Club (Goldsmiths University of London, 2006-2009); initiator and co-director of the festival and symposium Intimacy: Across Visceral and Digital Performance (London, 2007); and co-director/co-convener of several other conferences and symposia including Live Interfaces (University of Leeds, 2012) and Becoming Nomad (York St John University, 2013). She is currently working on her forthcoming monograph Live Art in Network Cultures and the edited collection Live Art in the UK: A Reader. SUZON FUKS is an intermedia artist, choreographer and director exploring the integration and interaction of the body and moving image through performance, screen, installation and online work http://suzonfuks.net During her Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship (09-12), she initiated and co-founded Waterwheel, a collaborative online venue for streaming, mixing and sharing media & ideas about Water, as a topic and metaphor http://water-wheel.net JAMES CUNNINGHAM is a performance, movement, video and networked performance artist working in social, environmental and architectural surroundings, exploring the limits of bodily perception, performativity and the relationality of one’s self with others, objects, and environment. IGNEOUS is the Australian multimedia performance company co-directed by Suzon and James since 1997 http://igneous.org.au Professor Steve Dixon is President of LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore and author of the 800-page book Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art and Installation (MIT Press). His presentation includes examples of his telematic performance work with his company, The Chameleons Group, and collaborations with media artists Paul Sermon, Andrea Zapp and Mathias Fuchs. Julian Maynard Smith is the leader of Station House Opera, a company that has produced work at the intersection of theatre and the visual arts since 1980, using sculptural and behavioural structures to give form to the human use and perception of space, both material and imaginary. A pioneer of theatre using spaces connected by the internet, its most recent piece Dissolved linked London and Berlin. He has recently completed a research fellowship at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama developing strategies for telematic theatre. body>data>space is an East London design unit creating innovative connections between performance, architecture, virtual worlds and new media, placing the body at the centre of digital interaction. Emerging from the pioneer digital performance collective shinkansen/ Future Physical (1989-2004) we produce collaborative R&D projects, events, consultancy, training and websites in the UK, Europe and internationally. Standing at the forefront of the convergence between telepresence, motion capture, social media and virtual worlds, we cocreate collaborative share spaces and develop virtual/physical experience interaction for creative industries, arts and education sectors. www.bodydataspace.net Marie Proffit joined body>data>space as Marketing and Development Co-ordinator in January 2011. In this framework, she has been involved in the development and promotion of key digital and interactive body projects including EU projects Robots and Avatars and MADE / Mobility for Digital Arts in Europe. She has worked extensively on the development of the unique telepresence/ motion capture commission "me and my shadow” and the "seeing sound” interactive theatre work "RING THE CHANGES+”. She co-leads the Women Shift Digital programme of work alongside Creative Director Ghislaine Boddington.
Marie has 8 years of experience in curating, developing and producing virtual/physical projects bringing together creativity, education and innovation in the UK and in Europe. Her deep interest and expertise in audience development strategies, engaging artists, innovators and the public together through knowledge transfer, co-creation process and digital campaigns. Nick Rothwell (body>data>space associate) is a software architect, a programmer and a sound and video artist. He was a Web/CMS Developer for Guardian Media Group, and has built performance systems for projects with Ballet Frankfurt, Vienna Volksoper and Braunarts, and has worked at STEIM (Amsterdam), CAMAC (Paris) and ZKM (Karlsruhe). He recently worked on choreographic visualisation tools for Wayne McGregor|Random Dance at the Wellcome Trust, music composition for Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, and with Simeon Nelson and Rob Godman, having designed and programmed algorithmic physics animations for large-scale outdoor projection in Poland (Skyway Festival), Estonia (Valgus Festival, Tallinn) and Lumiere Durham. As part of RING THE CHANGES+, Nick collaborates with deaf choreographer Chisato Minamimura and body>data>space, developing digital sound visualisation to engage hearing and non-hearing audiences in a visual and sense experience. Joseph Hyde (body>data>space associate) is a musician and sound artist, with a long history in electronic music and sonic art. His recent work has moved into multimedia, where he is interested in the idea of ‘visual music’ – musical ideas explored through visual media. As well as making his own visual music works, he is undertaking a long term study of pioneers in this field, in particular Oskar Fischinger. His interest in movement and interactive systems has led him to an intensive exploration of the revolutionary Microsoft Kinect sensor, through several collaborative arts projects and theoretical writings. In 2012 Joseph Hyde has developed « me and my shadow » an international telepresence experience connecting participants through a shared online environment, in collaboration with Phil Tew and Ghislaine Boddington and p[roduced by body>data>space, the National Theatre with the support of the Culture programme of the European Union. Hyde also works as a lecturer/academic, as Professor of Music at Bath Spa University in the UK. Since 2009 he has run a symposium on Visual Music at the university, Seeing Sound. Maria Oshodi is Artistic Director of Extant, Britain’s only professional performing arts company of visually impaired artists. Extant commits from the start to include the perspective of visually impaired artists and audiences to create unique imaginative collaborations with cross-artform and non-arts partners. Maria Oshodi’s first play, The S Bend, was produced as part of the royal Court Theatre’s young Writers Festival in 1984 and later by the cockpit theatre in 1985. She went on to write four more plays including, Blood, Sweat and Fears, From Choices to Chocolate, and Here Comes a Candle, that all toured nationally and were published by Longmans, Metheuen and John Murray. Whilst studying for her degree, she wrote the screenplay Mug, which was produced by Warner Sisters as a short for Channel 4 in 1990, and Hound which was Produced by Graeae Theatre company and later published in 2002 in their anthology of plays, ‘Graeae Plays 1’. In 1992 she graduated from Middlesex University with a 1st BA honors in Drama and English. Since then she has worked in arts development, for BBC drama production and in 1997 she founded Extant. Maria is also a freelance writer, and was the script writer for Braun Arts On their multimedia project called The Dark, http://www.thedark.net which opened at the Science museum’s Dana Gallery in 2004, and toured Britain extensively in 2004/5 - re-touring in 2007 as Dark Herritage in commemoration of the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery on British ships. In 2007 she was funded by Heritage Lottery to write a site-specific play called A Putney Light Shines produced at St Mary’s Church Putney to commemorate Cromwell’s Putney Debates of 1647. In 2009 she created an audio dramatic walk through Putney based on the 1909 novel ‘Buried Alive’ by Arnold Bennett, which can be downloaded from the Wandsworth local authority website http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/info/200064/local_history_and_heritage/909/putney_walks In 2010 she was recognized as one of the ’50 Women to Watch’ in the Cultural Leadership programme. www.extant.org.uk
Ben Eaton is a digital and interactive artist. He works as one of three lead artists from Invisible Flock who are presenting Chapter One of their latest work If You Go Away as part of Networked Bodies. If You Go Away offers an alternative lens through which to see and effect your city, inspired by point and click adventures and French cinema. http://invisibleflock.co.uk Susan Broadhurst is a writer and performance practitioner and Professor of Performance and Technology in the School of Arts, Brunel University, London. Her research entails an interrogation of technologies and the notion of the embodied performer, expressed in her publications, performance practice and interdisciplinary collaborations. Susan’s publications include Digital Practices: Aesthetic and Neuroesthetic Approaches to Performance and Technology (2007), Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in 21st Century Performance (2010) and Identity, Performance and Technology: Practices of Empowerment, Embodiment and Technicity (2012) all published by Palgrave Macmillan. As well as being the co-editor of the online journal Body, Space & Technology now in its thirteenth year of publication, she is also co-series editor for Palgrave’s ‘Studies in Performance and Technology.’ Dani Ploeger's performance installations involve consumer technologies and readily available medical devices, and explore themes around the technologized body, ecology, sexuality and vanity. Dani makes art and writes about art and culture. Dani holds a PhD from the University of Sussex, UK, and is currently Senior Lecturer and Course Leader Performance Arts at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. He is also Principal Investigator of an AHRC-funded arts-science project on digital performance and the politics of electronic waste. He has presented work at transmediale, Berlin, CYNETART, Dresden, Arse Elektronika, San Francisco Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Museum of Contemporary Art Basel, DEFIBRILLATOR GALLERY, Chicago, IL, Experimental Intermedia, NYC, MOBIUS, Boston, MA, Künstlerverein Bonn, Germany and more. http://www.daniploeger.org/ Ellen Harlizius-Klück is Senior Research Fellow at Leibniz University Hanover and the Centre for Textile Research (CTR), University of Copenhagen. From September 2014, she will be International Co-Investigator in the project “Weaving codes – Coding Weaves”, funded by a Digital Transformations Amplification Award of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her research is based on an individual approach of connecting mathematics and the reflection of art and craft in the humanities. Therefore she conducts her investigations in different research environments (philosophy, arts, textile technology, and history of science) and constantly transgresses disciplinary borders. Her investigations also include reconstructions of looms, weaving processes, techniques, patterns, and structures. Weaving Codes – Coding Weaves: at which historical and theoretical point do the practices of weaving and programming connect? What insights can be gained in bringing these practices together? What role do patterns play in computing? What role do they play in music? Is it possible to combine weaving and live coding in a joint performance? Ellen Harlizius-Klück, Alex McLean, and Dave Griffiths pursue these questions in their project Weaving Codes – Coding Weaves by examining patterns in weaving, music (live coding), and computing. In this context, the ancient loom is taken as an early digital machine that provides the first concepts of a dyadic arithmetic and logic. The code of weaves reflected the involvement of bodies across millennia but gained it’s own purpose, rhythm and speed since the industrial revolution. Can we learn how to involve bodies into technology again by reflecting on those bodily practices and the way they were coded in history? Rachel Jacobs is a solo artist, curator, researcher and co-founder of the award winning artist-led company Active Ingredient. Her latest artwork ‘The Prediction Machine’ is a fortune telling machine that uses live weather and projected climate data to print out ‘climate fortunes’. Rachel has worked with bio and environmental sensors, and mobile and locative technologies to make interactive, performative, artistic interventions. She currently works part-time as an Impact Fellow at the Mixed Reality Lab/Horizon Research Institute at the University of Nottingham. In her talk 'The Prediction Machine: Performing Climate Data’, Rachel will be presenting a new artwork and research project, alongside previous work involving networked sensing and dialogues to explore issues around climate change. www.i-am-ai.net, www.thepredictionmachine.org
Jan Lee is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection where dance and music converge, including elements of somatic awareness, performance art, physical theatre, soundscapes and electronic/acoustic music. She works from unfolding streams of sensation, perception, and relationship to the immediate environments, exploring the changing qualities that pass through us moment to moment. http://janlee.org Tim Murray-Browne is an artist and creative coder working with sound, graphics and movement-based interaction. Through installation and performance works he explores how physical and social interactions form our understanding of who we are and how we relate to those around us. Murray-Browne completed his PhD researching interactive music and art at the Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary University of London in 2012. He has since completed a residency with Sound and Music working with the Music Hackspace, the outcome of which was awarded the 2014 Sonic Arts Prize (Digital Art category). His work has been shown at venues including the Barbian, the V&A and Berkeley Art Museum. http://timmb.com Christina Papagiannouli is a cyberformance director, researcher, and founder of the Etheatre Project (www.etheatre.info). She recently completed her practice-based PhD with thesis title: The Etheatre Project: Directing Political Cyberformance at University of East London, where she also works as an Hourly-paid Lecturer in Performing Arts since 2012. Her paper Cyberformance and the Cyberstage was published in the International Journal of the Arts in Society during 2011. Evi Stamatiou is a theatre practitioner, actor trainer and practice-based researcher with international experience. She is a Teaching Fellow at Guildford School of Acting and PhD Candidate at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She is a member of UK Actors Equity, Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab and a Fellow of Higher Education Academy. Latest performances; 28 Bananas (10/14, London), Caryatid Unplugged (08/2014, Estonia). www.evistamatiou.com Helen Varley Jamieson is a writer, theatre practitioner and digital artist from New Zealand, based in Germany. She holds a Master of Arts (Research) investigating cyberformance - live performance on the internet – which she has practiced since 1999. In 2003 she co-founded UpStage, an open source platform for cyberformance, and since then has co-curated many international online festivals and events. Recent projects include makeshift (2010-12),We have a situation! (2013) and Tales from the Towpath (2014). Miljana Peric, a cyberformer. After the big bang of social networks, her interest to write another biography was lost for good. Vicki Smith is an artist from Aotearoa/New Zealand, one of the global collective of artists performing online since the last millennia who co-created UpStage (a realtime online performance environment www.upstage.org.nz) and co-curating the annual festivals. She is a networker for communities of artists (Aotearoa Digital Arts network www.ada.net.nz) and online educators (virtual learning network communities http://www.vln.school.nz). Vicki navigates the visual and virtual weaving science, the environment and traditional practices to encourage community around researching and developing work that highlights local global issues.