Re: Ruminations on Interaction

Scott deLahunta (sdela@ahk.nl)
Fri, 02 May 1997 09:31:25 +0200

The posts by mark and johannes sparked off a couple of broad thoughts on
dance/performance making with ramifications for issues of interactivity and
audience...

-- Dance/performance in the west is still being largely maintained by
cultural mechanisms put into place in the early to mid part of this
century... and these mechanisms arose from the concept of the individual
artist which began in the Renaissance. What if the particular maker/audience
relationship based on this concept are no longer be viable? So, what do we
base our motivations and decisions as makers on? What of the current
discussions about the 'distributed self (artist)' and 'networked art'?

-- I am of the opinion that audiences for dance as produced in performance
spaces are extremely specialized (and educated to 'see' what is being shown)
-- they are mainly comprised of other makers and a small group of devoted
'cultural' voyeurs. We, as makers, cannot avoid being participants in this
-- so we specialize as well... in order to 'develop' our work... based on
historical precedents and cultural contexts. And THEN, most of our best
moments are appropriated by the advertising industry.

... sounds pessimistic? not meant to be... just my mood I guess. Mark and
Johannes's interesting emails deserve much more comment than this -- but I
am afraid I have to head off now. I'm going to only be able to read the list
for the next 10 days as I'm on the road, copenhagen/nyc.

Scott
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Scott deLahunta and Susan Rethorst
Writing Research Associates, NL
Sarphatipark 26-3, 1072 PB Amsterdam, NL
tel: +31 (0)20 662 1736
fax: +31 (0)20 470 1558
email: sdela@ahk.nl
http://huizen.dds.nl/~sdela/wra (WRITING RESEARCH ASSOCIATES)
http://www.art.net/~dtz (DANCE AND TECHNOLOGY ZONE )