Re: language/ dance and the archive

David Rodger (auricle@alphalink.com.au)
Thu, 23 Oct 1997 19:25:57 +0100

>When one speaks of
>"writing code" for a composition or a "performance" - what does that mean
>to us, and how do we develop and transmit our investment and interest in
>new dance/technology forms and forums?

Well, of course, computer languages are languages par excellence: they
allow little or no ambiguity. (Hey, maybe some folks like compile errors!)

I think your "writing code" generally means trying to find a way of forcing
the stupid machine to respond to our bodies (speech, movement, appearance,
whatever) in a way which admits the sort of interpretation which we do in
our personal interactions every day. This is why people become frustrated
with computers and software: "why doesn't it do it this way?" (answer:
becasue it's stupid -- it can;t interpret what you want to do or
distinguish what you want from what you actually do).

> what is live performance doing in a
>museum, is this the future "site" of performance (website)? O., to return
>to Scott's initial language:

Presumably its creators want to leave a trace of it somehow. Why do any
performers document their work? Or why do people feel the work to
important enought to document?

>I do want
>to mention that at the Liquid Lab I had a furious argument-discussion with
>an black woman filmmaker who is fighting tooth and nail for analog media,
>and considers CuSeeMee and digital video a distortion of language. Meaning,
>for her, realtime is not realtime in an online link, and CuSeeMe is an
>impoverished language. I agree of course, but got to thinking about delays,
>and time.

I wonder how she feels about normal moving pictures. These, too, have
frames and in that sense are digital... "samples" of an event. In a sense,
though, I agree about the real-time aspect. Because of its
packet-switching nature, the current Internet is not suitable for real-time
stuff. And I'm _really_ sick of screwing around with mammoth pieces of
software. The only Netscape plug-in I've managed to get working is
Crescendo and the sites that use it have shocking music and don;t allow me
to _turn_it_off_! I don't understand what this stuff is _for_.

Being a curmudgeon again!

David Rodger, "I'd bet for techno music you
Audio Engineer: could get pretty good lossless
Recording, Editing, Mastering compression, as the compression
Lifeguard and Lifeguard Trainer is based on repeated data."
Phone: +61-3-9459-1898 -- Michael Conlen
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