RE: video screening

Doug Rosenberg (rosend@education.wisc.edu)
Tue, 07 Sep 1999 14:46:41 -0500

Call for entries: "motionmedia"- seeking dance works that are made
for video or film. Works must be submitted on VHS NTSC format. Works
will be screened publicly in Madison, WI. Tapes will be returned with
SASE. For further information contact Rebecca Davis at:
rldavis3@students.wisc.edu

>>> Richard Povall <Richard.Povall@oberlin.edu> - 9/2/99 6:55 PM >>>
Hi Johannes...

>
><<there is a qualitative difference between a piece made with
interactive
><technologies where there is a real, hopefully deep, link between
>performer and
><the environment, and an exquisitely controlled
choreography/video/lighting
><scenario.
>
>Why should these two kinds of work be *fundamentally different* - if
both
>performances are in fact composed to be interactive? I don't
disagree with
>Richard that the interactive programming and scenario perhaps
pursues a
>specific
>aesthetic goal and explores a specific relationship (in space)
between
>performer
>and music, moving images, light, which will also require a specific
kind of
>sensitivity and rehearsal on part of the performers. The performer
moves the
>music, let's say, rather then moves to the music. The difference is
subtle, I
>think, not fundamental.

Thanks, as ever, for your clear thinking on these tricky issues.
What I
believe to be the fundamental difference between an interactive, or
to use
a different phrase, an intelligent environment and a highly
choreographed
and rehearsed performance with all the elements tightly in sync, is
that
the environment is just that - and environment that exists in the
moment
and for the moment. If the connection is THERE, if it's really
working and
there is a real sense in which the performer(s) is living and
breathing and
moving within it, then there is a sense in which that performer, that
body,
has the supreme control over that environment. A choreographed
moment can
be subverted, subtly changed, or completely transgressed - in the
moment -
because the environment is completely tied to the moving/performing
body.
I don't think that's true in any other form of performance - which is
what,
for me, makes it fundamentally different.

It's also what makes it so glorious to work with - when/if it finally
all
happens!!!

r

R i c h a r d P o v a l l
Senior Fellow, RESCEN (Centre for Research into Creation in the
Performing
Arts), Middlesex University (in assoc. with the South Bank, London)
========================================================================
15 Higher Dean, Dean Prior, Buckfastleigh, Devon TQ11 0LY UK
In the UK: Voice: +44.(0)1364.643759 | Fax: +44.(0)1822.890566
In the US: Voice: +1.440.775.1016 | Fax: +1.440.775.8942
========================================================================