economic barriers

Christopher Sumpton (artaud@vcn.bc.ca)
Fri, 9 Jan 1998 02:25:19 -0800 (PST)

Dawn thanks for your passionate reply, I am sorry if I hurt your feelings.
(guess the radial-arm saw analogy is true for email as well..learning)

I am curious how you perceive the development of technology, it must be
quite different from the pong/pac-man/doom analogy I posted.
Frankly, I'm suspicious of machinery... ever since the tragedy of the
industrial revolution, and then the poison of the nuclear age. I just hope
that computers and machines will help us overcome our destructiveness,
instead of encouraging more extinction. Isn't it strange that such a
spirit based medium such as dance would meet and mesh with science?

Some questions about content

a) What do you use dance and technology to _say_ to the people who have
the ability to experience it? What are themes that are
explicit/implicit in the art that you make?

b) Do you agree that your audience (and feedback loop) is considerably
stunted by an economic status/class barrier?

c) When you dance (with or without technology) do you feel an invisible
communication happening with your audience? Are they breathing with
you, thinking with you, feeling with you? Do you want them to be?
Do you want to inspire them to join you? Or are the audience members
to remain seated and polite, intellectualizing, objectifying your
passion?

To answer you directly I'm on this list to ask questions and discuss issues
that arise while contemplating the integration of dance and technology.
I'm curious what other people think and feel about it.

I've identified the _ability_ to assemble the components necessary for a
dance & technology installation as distinct from the _desire_ to do so.
Unlike painting, which is relatively affordable and accessable. I know an
artist who paints with toothpaste on cherios boxes.

I'm critical of economic barriers especially when they concern the creation
or experience of art.

d) What kind of process would make dance and technology accessable to
those who are economically disenfranchised?

e) Is the expression and interest in exploring dance and technology
limited only by economic advantage to those who have the money/ability
to pursue that interest?

The social structure composite that I observe daily:

the street-people, bag-ladies, squeegie-people, park hermits, the socially
programmed (welfare, uic etc), the minimum-wage slaves, the independent
business entrepreneur, the corporate and management slugs, the bureaucratic
"kept" & union bargains, the politico "inept", the multi-national
"untouchables".