Re: Why dance on the Web?

Jeff Miller (jgmille2@students.wisc.edu)
Thu, 07 Jan 1999 19:14:59 -0600

I've never considered anyone on this list to be "narrow-minded"; the skill set
required to be creative in a technological medium kind of precludes this. But I
think Niels brings up the main question for all of us: we know we are passionate
(as Johannes mentioned) and we put the passion in our work...but sometimes the
tech filters it out again, leaving us wondering what went wrong. Sometimes it's
the other way around...I have had an idea, just a single image, and juggled
together equipment, people, and schedules to bring it all together...and found it
was better than I'd hoped. The uncertainty factor in tech is a lot like the
uncertainty of going before a live audience with a new show, especially in a new
town...it could be the same show, but the new audience can give an entirely
different feel to the whole thing.

And that's the difficulty, isn't it? We can't measure the "feel" with our vector
scopes and light meters and sound levels...the hits, as Johannes puts it. But to
some degree we can. I was discussing this thread with my collaborator this
evening and she mentioned one way to measure your success with an audience:

"When I found out that (fellow artist, name withheld)'s friends all hated our
piece, I KNEW we'd done it right."

Niels, while it may seem difficult to find the spirituality in the work, perhaps
it is the proximity...I saw the work of Maya Deren for the first time this last
semester, one of the first dance/camera artists. She was struggling with a new
medium, lack of audience, technological weights on her creative muscles...yet I
found her work, even in the light of all our new betadigiavidtech, profoundly
moving. She put the passion in, and it stayed, to inspire me and my fellow
students. I can only maintain the hope that as long as we do the same, our work
will hold true for the future.

(swells of symphonic music, slow fade to black, roll credits)