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Living Lens: exploring interdependencies between performing bodies, visual and sonic media
in immersive installation.
An exegesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the of the requirements for the degree of PhD (research) in the
Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology
Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk, B.A. (University of New England) Queensland University of Technology December 2007
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KEYWORDS performer-media interdependencies, immersive installation, poetic felt space, living painting, multi-sensory, butoh, dance/movement, body-as-texturiser, embodied visualisation, visual imagery, digital collage, sound palette, adaptable clusters, interactivity
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ABSTRACT Living Lens is a practice-led study that explores interdependencies between performing
bodies, visual images and sonic elements through two main areas of investigation: the
propensity for the visual mode to be dominant in an interdisciplinary performance
environment; and, a compositional structure to integrate performing bodies, visual and
sonic elements. To address these concerns, the study necessitated a collaborative team
comprising performers, visual artists, sound designers and computer programmers. The
poetic title, Living Lens, became an important interpretative device and organising
principle in this study, which is weighted 70% for the creative work and 30% for the
written component.
Working from an experiential and emergent methodology, the research employed two
iterative cycles of development. Drawing on a previous work, Patchwork in Motion
(2005), the extraction of one fragment entitled Living Lens (2005-6) was selected for
further development, specifically to balance the relationship between performers and
visual media with a deeper focus on the sonic component. The initial creative
development (June-July 2005) addressed the area of interdependencies through the
concepts of “poetic felt space” and “living painting”, whilst the final stage of the study
(June-July 2006) adopted the concept of “worlds within worlds” to facilitate greater
contrast and connectivity in the piece.
The final performance made partial progress towards shifting visual dominance and the
development of an integrative structure, the digital media serving to enhance tangible
connections between aural, visual and kinesthetic senses. As an immersive performance
installation, the study thus adapts and extends painterly and sculptural sensibilities into a
contemporary and interactive arts setting. Presenting a case for the personalised position
of the practitioner voice, the study also offers practical and conceptual insights and
solutions, to be adopted, adapted or applied tangentially, by other practitioners and
researchers working in the domains of body movement practices, visual and sonic arts
and human communication technologies.
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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP The work presented in this thesis, to the best of my knowledge and belief, is the original, except as acknowledged in the text. This material has not been submitted, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other university or higher education institution.
Signed:_______________________________ Date:________________________________
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CONTENTS KEYWORDS .............................................................................................. i ABSTRACT ............................................................................................... ii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP.......................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................. vii DVD CONTENTS & HOW TO USE ....................................................... x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................... xii PREFACE ............................................................................................... xiv FRONTISPIECE ......................................................................................xv INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 1
0.1 Background ........................................................................................................... 1 0.2 Living Lens development ....................................................................................... 2 0.3 Director as cultivator ............................................................................................. 3 0.4 Living Lens as poetic translation of experience ...................................................... 4
CHAPTER 1 – RESEARCH DESIGN ..................................................... 5 1.1 Experiential methodology...................................................................................... 5 1.2 Research concern................................................................................................... 6 1.3 Limitations of the study......................................................................................... 7
1.3.1 Scope of the study........................................................................................... 7 1.3.2 Bias of the study ............................................................................................. 7 1.3.3 Ethical considerations ..................................................................................... 8
1.4 Collaborative environment as “habitat”.................................................................. 8 1.5 Practice-led Research as performative research...................................................... 9
1.5.1 Creative Production/Design Research ........................................................... 10 1.5.2 Iterative Process............................................................................................ 11
1.6 Research Methods: Applied processes of practice................................................ 13 1.6.1 Developing movement material as “primary data” ........................................ 13
Image –based methods: ‘butoh-fu’; ‘graining’.................................................... 13 Temporal linkage through ‘clusters’................................................................... 14 Flow Continuums: devising a scaling tool.......................................................... 15
1.6.2 Developing XV3 visual imaging system ....................................................... 15 Image texture bank ............................................................................................ 15 XV3 Imaging tools ............................................................................................ 16
1.6.3 Developing the sonic environment ................................................................ 16 Improvised sound streams to real-time sound “palette” ...................................... 16
1.7 Tracking emergences........................................................................................... 17 1.7.1 Distilling concepts ........................................................................................ 17 1.7.2 Visual mapping............................................................................................. 18
1.8 Feedback ............................................................................................................. 20 1.9 Analysis .............................................................................................................. 20 1.10 Summary........................................................................................................... 22
CHAPTER 2 – CONTEXTUAL REVIEW .............................................23 2.1 Through and With the “Lens”.............................................................................. 23 2.2 “Living” spaces of experience ............................................................................. 24
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2.2.1 Notion of Felt Experiencing.......................................................................... 24 2.2.2 Notion of Perceived-Conceived-Lived .......................................................... 25 2.2.3 Poetic Felt Space .......................................................................................... 27
2.3 “Living painting”................................................................................................. 28 2.3.1 Tableaux Vivants.......................................................................................... 28 2.3.2 Physical/Virtual painting............................................................................... 29
2.4 Towards performer-media interdependencies....................................................... 30 2.4.1 Shifting the visual mode ............................................................................... 30 2.4.2 Notion of Sensuous Geography..................................................................... 33 2.4.3 Immersive Space........................................................................................... 35
Self-contained/distributed performance spaces................................................... 36 2.4.4 Performers as inhabitants .............................................................................. 38
‘Shared Sensibility’: Biped ................................................................................ 38 Impact of technology: The Builders Association................................................ 40 Relationship of organic and electronic: Troika Ranch ........................................ 41
2.5 Summary............................................................................................................. 43 CHAPTER 3 - From Patchwork in Motion to Living Lens......................45
3.1 Introduction......................................................................................................... 45 3.1.1 Generating diverse structures: the notion of “patch” as modular segment ...... 45 3.1.2 Immersive imaging: developing technical tools............................................. 46 3.1.3 Black and white imagery: Test-patches ......................................................... 49 3.1.4 Colour and texture: Patchwork in Motion...................................................... 51
3.2 Focusing on a microcosm: Living Lens ................................................................ 55 3.2.1 Towards a fluid continuum: from “living filmstrip” to “living painting” ........... 55
3.2.2 Developing criteria for analysis and further creative development................. 56 3.3 Living Lens: creative development ...................................................................... 58
3.3.1 Context of Accented Body Project ................................................................ 58 3.3.2 Collaborative team........................................................................................ 58 3.3.3 Towards an immersive installation................................................................ 59 3.3.4 Component “lenses”: body, visuals, sound.................................................... 62
Body “lens”: Butoh and Image induction........................................................... 62 Texture and Space ............................................................................................. 64 Visual “lens” ..................................................................................................... 65 Sound “lens”...................................................................................................... 66
3.3.5 Integrating components: tentative structure based on sleep cycles ................. 67 3.4 Feedback ............................................................................................................. 69
3.4.1 Peer Feedback............................................................................................... 69 3.4.2 Participant feedback...................................................................................... 70 3.4.3 Personal observations ................................................................................... 72
3.5 Further strategies towards an integration of distinctive entities ............................ 73 3.5.1 “Idiosyncratic” movement: specific work areas............................................. 73 3.5.2 Defining and refining movement clusters...................................................... 74 3.5.3 Setting up indicators of change: worlds within worlds................................... 75
3.6 Summary............................................................................................................. 77 CHAPTER 4 - The “Living Painting": Worlds within Worlds..............78
4.1 Generating contrast in the fluid continuum .......................................................... 78
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4.2 Developing distinctive bodies.............................................................................. 80 4.2.1 The Serpentine Line...................................................................................... 80 4.2.2 Notion of idiosyncratic body......................................................................... 82 4.2.3 Parameters for exploring idiosyncratic movement......................................... 83
Body as “seismograph”...................................................................................... 83 Tactility and torsion........................................................................................... 88 “Topography” of the body ................................................................................. 92 Mutable forms: the body as “metaball” .............................................................. 94
4.3 Furthering the notion of clusters .......................................................................... 98 4.3.1 Clusters as adaptable movement sequences ................................................... 98 4.3.2 Image clusters: the “digital collage”.............................................................. 99 4.3.3 Sonic clusters: the spatial-acoustic “palette” ............................................... 102 4.3.4 Shaping clusters as relationships between body, visuals and sound ............. 106
4.4 Feedback ........................................................................................................... 107 4.4.1 Participant Feedback................................................................................... 107 4.4.2 Peer feedback ............................................................................................. 109 4.4.3 Personal Observations................................................................................. 111
4.5 Summary........................................................................................................... 112 CHAPTER 5: FURTHER DISTILLATION.........................................113
5.1 Contributions to the field ................................................................................... 113 5.1.2 Conceptual and performative contributions ................................................. 113
Interdependencies as mutual influences ........................................................... 113 Context of living painting ................................................................................ 114 Adaptable kinetic pathways ............................................................................. 114 Poetic felt space............................................................................................... 115
5.1.3 Technological innovations .......................................................................... 116 5.1.4 Contributions to methodology..................................................................... 116
Personalised position: the practitioner voice .................................................... 116 The metaphor of lens ....................................................................................... 117
5.2 Future directions................................................................................................ 117 5.2.1 Technological focal areas............................................................................ 117 5.2.2 Adaptable clusters....................................................................................... 118 5.2.1 Embodied visualisation processes ............................................................... 119
5.3 Summary........................................................................................................... 119 REFERENCES .......................................................................................120 BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................................................................124 APPENDIX 1: Credits for final performance .......................................132 APPENDIX 2: Biographies of participants (final performance)..........133 APPENDIX 3: Flow Continuums (Laban) ............................................135 APPENDIX 4: Excerpts of butoh-fu ......................................................136 APPENDIX 5: Excerpts of poems by Judith Wright............................137 APPENDIX 6: Workshop excerpts: Interior & exterior space ............138 APPENDIX 7: Texture: body/space ......................................................139 APPENDIX 8: Energy/dynamics ...........................................................140
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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Diagram of iterative cycles of research process Figure 2 Diagram of emergent patterns of practice Figure 3 Diagram of researcher’s coiling process adapted from Rosenberg’s Poetic Research Model Figure 4 Diagram of motions sensor and network system Figure 5 “Barcode”, performer Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk,
Photo: Miro Ito, 2004
Figure 6 “Liquid Dream”, performers Fukiko Endo, Era Kawamura Photo: Miro Ito, 2004 Figure 7 Digitised sides of hand-painted and organic textures Textures and photo: Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk, 2005 Figure 8 Simulation of lens effect in After Effects software Figure 9 “Living Lens” fragment,
Performers Fukiko Endo, Haruna Yamazaki Photo: Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk, 2005 Figure 10 “Liquid Dream ver.02”, performers Fukiko Endo, Haruna Yamazaki Photo: Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk, 2005 Figure 11 “Signal”, performer “Sara” (stage name) Photo: Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk, 2005 Figure 12 Oscar Schlemmer’s human figure and spatial delineations
Schlemmer, O. (1996) Man and Art Figure, p.23 Figure 13 Spider in amber Photocollage: Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk Figure 14 Image of chrysalis
<http://wwwdallasbutterflies.com/Butterflies/PUPA/plexippuspupa.html>
Accessed July 10, 2004
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Figure 15 Performers Ko-Pei Lin and Elise May working in The Loft with
screen plan in progress projected at rear Photo: Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk, 2005
Figure 16 Schematic of screen object Figure 17 Screen object installed in a curvilinear configuration Photo: Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk, 2005 Figure 18 Living Lens: dream/sleep cycle structure Figure 19 Elise May’s mapping of sleep cycles pathway to screen object Figure 20 Modes of sequencing: from phrase to cluster Figure 21 Living Lens: Worlds within Worlds overlay Figure 22 Integrative structure as contoured landscape Figure 23 System plan for Living Lens final performance Figure 24 Unfurling fern fronds as figura serpentina Photo: Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk, 2006 Figure 25 World of Neurology Ward, performers Ko-Pei Lin, Elise May,
Richard Causer, I-Pin Lin Photo: Kirsten Fletcher, 2006 Figure 26 World of Neurology Ward, performer Elise May Photo: Aaron Veryard, 2006 Figure 27 World of Neurology Ward, performers Elise May, Ko-Pei Lin, I-Pin
Lin, Richard Causer Photo: Aaron Veryard, 2006 Figure 28 World of Forest/Cave, performers Ko-Pei Lin and Elise May Photo: Aaron Veryard, 2006 Figure 29 Ko-Pei Lin with motion sensor on wrist Photo: Aaron Veryard, 2006 Figure 30 World of Vortex, performer Ko-Pei Lin Photo: Tomofumi Yoshida, 2006
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Figure 31 World of Vortex, performer Ko-Pei Lin Photo: Tomofumi Yoshida, 2006 Figure 32 Sculpture entitled “Back” (1976) by Magdalena Abakanowicz Abakanowicz, M. & The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
(1982) Magdalena Abakanowicz, p.93 Figure 33 World of Chrysalis, performer Richard Causer Photo: Polly Harrison, 2006 Figure 34 Metaball object
Image: Tetsutoshi Tabata Figure 35 Henri Michaux, Untitled (Mouvements) (1950)
Michaux, H. (2000) Emergences-resurgences, p.35 Figure 36 World of Chrysalis, performer I-Pin Lin Photo: Aaron Veryard, 2006 Figure 37 World of Cosmos/Nebula, performers Ko-Pei Lin, Elise May, Richard
Causer Photo: Tomofumi Yoshida, 2006 Figure 38 World of Forest/Cave transition to World of Water/Ice, performers
Elise May, I-Pin Lin Photo: Polly Harrison, 2006 Figure 39 Dr Junji Watanabe preparing ultrasonic speakers in moving light
housing Photo: Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk, 2006 Figure 40 Image of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy
<http://www.ravenna2000.it/Turismo/S_Vitale.htm> Accessed February 5, 2006
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DVD CONTENTS & HOW TO USE
How to use the DVD The enclosed DVD has been tested on a range of machines and is playable on Macintosh
and Windows computer platforms that incorporate a DVD drive, as well as on PAL DVD
players. Where possible, it is recommended that the reader play the DVD before reading
the written exegesis to become familiar with the different sections outlined in the diagram
above.
The navigation structure employs a main menu which accesses four sections, including
movie files of both the creative development and final performance of Living Lens
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(10mins. and 20mins. respectively), and short excerpts of previous works that inform this
study. Other sections include photographic images of the installation and final
performance, as well as stills of visual textures used as source material for the visual
media. The section, “Sound Palette”, contains various sound samples used in the
production, while the section, “Credits”, lists the names and roles of personnel involved in
the creation of Living Lens and the two informing projects, Test-patches and Patchwork in
Motion. Throughout Chapters 3 and 4, references will be made to the appropriate sections
in the DVD, accessed separately via the DVD menu and viewed discretely. This icon
appears in the text wherever reference is made to the DVD. In DVD player mode, movies
of the creative development and final performance of Living Lens have not been clearly
demarcated into chapters. This is to maintain the integrity of the piece, conceived to be
experienced as a fluid continuum. In computer playback, however, particular sections of
the final performance are referred to in the text by giving the time codes.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The three years of this study, involving an upgrade from a Master of Arts to doctoral
studies, has been made possible through the generous support from a wide array of
people, both in relation to this particular study as well as in previous projects and
experiences that inform the research journey.
I would like to thank the staff at the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University
of Technology for administrative, technical and financial support. Here, I also
acknowledge the QUT Postgraduate Overseas Study Grants-in Aid Scheme award for
assistance in transportation costs to Japan, which enabled me to work on artistic and
technical concerns together with my Japanese collaborators as well as check important
archival materials related to the study. I am also grateful to have received the Australian
Postgraduate Award, which supported my living costs during full-time work on the
project through 2006 to early 2007.
My very special thanks go to all the participants of the Living Lens project. Without their
ongoing enthusiasm and creative inputs, this project would not have been possible. I
extend my appreciation to Kirsten Fletcher, whose sensitively designed costumes were
especially created on the theme of Living Lens. My thanks also to Philippa Rijks, whose
sound composition was an integral part of the final pre-performance installation, yet
could not be covered in this exegesis.
I would like to thank my associate supervisor, Adjunct Professor Richard Vella, for his
warmth, humour and insightful comments, particularly in the articulation to the PhD. I
express my gratitude to my principal supervisor, Associate Professor Cheryl Stock, who
initially agreed to take me under her wing as a postgraduate student, and whose
unwavering faith in my ability led me to consider upgrading to doctoral studies. I further
thank her for being a deeply committed companion, as well as for all the support made
possible through the “Accented Body” project, which enabled this work to be set among
a wider field of practice as part of the 2006 Brisbane Festival.
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On both an artistic and personal level, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my
partner, Tetsutoshi Tabata, without whose ongoing support and collaboration I would not
have been able to undertake this journey. My sincere thanks also go to him for authoring
the DVD that accompanies this exegesis.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this work to the lady with amber eyes, my mother,
Louisa Anna Theresia Verdaasdonk; and to the dancer of amazing grace, Akiko Motofuji,
who helped unlock the deeper recesses of my body-mind-spirit.
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PREFACE
The site of research involves a collaborative team of both Japan and Australia-based
participants, including dancers/performers, visual artists, sound creators and researchers
in information design. As both director and deviser of the research design, written
component and artistic outputs, I am facilitator and co-creator of the work. While I have a
central role in the conceptual and practical process, the research area is a mutual test-bed
to develop environments involving performing bodies and digital media.
As a resident of Japan for thirteen years, I am accustomed to communicating verbally
with the Japanese participants in either Japanese or English, and thus have transcribed or
translated responses myself. The Taiwanese participants have undertaken both
undergraduate and postgraduate study in Australia and hence communication was always
conducted in English. Dialogue and feedback from collaborators has been an integral part
of the research process, however, these responses were more of an informal nature,
including unstructured interviews, e-mail messages, telephone conversations and personal
journals. At times I have taken direct quotations or paraphrased participants’ comments
or written reflections. These records can be made available upon request.
The written component employs Harvard author-date system in referencing published
material, with occasional footnoting for explanatory details. Other issues, including bias
and limitations of the study, are dealt with in Chapter 1, which discusses the research
design.
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FRONTISPIECE
She hid in her paintings, clothed, clouded in leaves; and her piano scattered glittering notes of leaves in sunlight, drummed with winter rains, opened green depths like gullies.
Judith Wright (1994, p.328)
Living Lens, July 2006 The Loft, Queensland University of Technology Performers: Richard Causer (left), Ko-Pei Lin Photo: Fiona Cullen
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INTRODUCTION am I / I am
a living lens
0.1 Background
The creative work, Living Lens, lies at the intersection, or indeed the confluence, of
diverse stimuli drawn from my cultural heritage and life experiences: my Dutch
background, my childhood and early adulthood in Australia, and my long-term residence
in Japan. From these areas emerge my personal “lenses”, the filters that shape my ongoing
concern with ways to bind or locate the human body, the human presence, within
imaginary landscapes.
Within these orientations and aspects of self, I find affinities with southern Netherlandish
and Flemish pictorial approaches, particularly in the attention to detail or the depiction of
multiple views within one field or frame. From this source, for example, stem early
impressions of the fantastic worlds of Hieronymous Bosch, whose weird, composite
creatures seemed to scurry from the posters on my bedroom wall. Impressed upon me too,
from an early age, are the decorative impulses and sacred iconography of a Catholic
upbringing. Later, sporadic work experiences in the horticulture industry fostered my
interest in the intricate textures and shapes of foliage and flora, while several years
alternating as an assistant trekking guide and sea-kayak guide opened up further embodied
experiences of the Australian landscape. Here I am infused by a stream of sensations and
memories: paddling into misty lagoons to gradually unfurling vistas; my body melded to a
kayak and rocked by waves in a disorienting ganzfeld of fog; echoes of water dripping as a
woman sings in the acoustic chamber of a grotto; the poised silhouette of a solitary bird
reflected in the mirrored surface of a pond, encompassed in the twilight glow by a rugged
orange and black escarpment…
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My experiences of nature in both nurtured and wild contexts in Australia helped shape an
interest in the relationship between humans and nature that was further developed in
Japan. Here I became aware of a deeply cultivated sensitivity to nature, for example, in the
metaphors of the cosmos found in Zen gardens; the notion of the macro within the micro
world, such as the idea of a universe contained in a single flower; the beauty of partially
concealed views; and the association of seasonal life cycles with death and rebirth. Several
years study of the Japanese dance-theatre form known as butoh further exposed my
interest in the human body and imaginary environments, and so I find – more deeply in
retrospect – that it reconciles the various orientations within myself. Receptive to the
micro and macro structures of life, the body in butoh is perceived both in union and in
opposition to the workings of nature. Fetal positions, twisted and sinuous shapes, the
crouching bodies of animals and goblin-like creatures, are but a few of the varied,
composite configurations often inspired through the use of visual and poetic imagery. I
find that the interplay of the visual and poetic is significant in my work, reflecting my dual
training in theatre and visual arts. Deeply influenced by this image-based approach and
returning to Australia for doctoral studies, I became reacquainted with the Australian
landscape through the poetry of Judith Wright, her imagery evoking a bodily, sensory
world that became one of the inspirations in developing Living Lens.
0.2 Living Lens development
This study, Living Lens, is an emergent piece that traces a lineage from two earlier works
developed in Japan: Test-patches (2001-2003), and Patchwork in Motion (2005), the latter
being conducted as part of my Master of Arts studies. These two works explored the
performing body and imaginary or virtual landscapes primarily in connection with digital
visual media. The imaginary is conceived here in terms of visual imagery as abstract
textures and patterns, as well as through specific visualisation methods used for
developing movement material, discussed later in this exegesis. The extraction of Living
Lens (2005-6), a fragment of Patchwork in Motion, facilitated a focus on a microcosm of
my artistic process in the creation of work, and was also a means of determining criteria
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for analysis, critique and further development in the final iteration of Living Lens, which
constituted the creative project for this study. Areas for development identified from the
previous version, included the desire to shift from the earlier patchwork approach of
juxtaposed fragments to a more fluid, layered continuum, as well as the need for a greater
focus on sonic elements.
Employing an experiential methodology generated and shaped through the creative
encounter, two areas of research interest emerged: shifting the perceived dominance of
visual images in motion, and a compositional structure to integrate performing bodies,
visual and sonic elements in an immersive installation. To address these issues, the
creative development of this study (November-December 2005) explored the notion of
“living painting” through dynamic and sculptural body movement, hand-painted and
computer-modelled images and a textured body of sounds. To generate more distinctive
aspects in the fluid continuum and facilitate deeper relations amongst the components of
performing bodies, visual images and sound, the final stage (June-July 2006) explored the
structural device of “worlds within worlds”, together with the notion of adaptable clusters
as a flexible method for temporal sequencing. This is discussed in further detail in
Chapters 3 and 4.
0.3 Director as cultivator
Showing a predilection for organic metaphors harking back to my background experience, I
regard the art-making process as a kind of cultivation, allowing for contexts of both
“nurture” and “nature” to co-exist. In the role of project director, I am “gardener” and
“guide”, a cohesive force responsible for the artistic vision, conceptual thinking and
practical process. As gardener, I plot the layout, determine and nurture the “seeds” – seen
here in the sense of both creative ideas and collaborative participants – and allow these
seeds to grow and take shape. As guide, I am responsible for mapping out the terrain to
find pathways and possibilities for action, whilst remaining alert to peer and participant
feedback. The collaborative participants of this project have thus come together as part of
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my aesthetic view, helping to interpret this world as a translation of the imaginary, into
tangible theatrical experience.
0.4 Living Lens as poetic translation of experience
Led by the methods and meanderings of artistic practice, negotiating tangible research
outcomes involves a series of articulations. In my view, the process of articulation occurs
through the coherent expression of thoughts and feelings, as well as in an embodied sense
of the way the various “joints” – in this case, the various components of the study –
connect as parts of a whole. In Living Lens, these articulations become poetic filters,
poetic translations of the creative experience. I find this translation occurs through a kind
of doubling: of my life experiences and artistic ideas into the creative work(s) proper and
of the creative process into the concrete language of this exegesis. Accordingly, Living
Lens is not only a poetic title for the creative work, but a poetic metaphor that I employ
with several practical intentions:
• A means of shedding light on my methods in creating work;
• A way to catalyse theoretical thinking in and around the work;
• An interpretive device focusing on the constituent elements of performing bodies,
visual images and sound;
• An overall organising principle for articulating the journey.
The following Research Design chapter provides a further lens for articulating the
experiential nature of this study where the creative practice itself, along with the continual
refinement of this practice over time, forms the basis of the interpretive environment.
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CHAPTER 1 – RESEARCH DESIGN
The intellect can give you the misconception that you understand something by thinking about it analytically, so that we forget that these are not problems to be solved but, rather, arenas to be inhabited, to be encountered through Being. (Viola and Violette, 1995, p.273) All this is part of the process of ‘naming’, an important step in creative development. Naming is any symbolic representation of the creative act in which that act is described in a medium outside of that reality. (Vella, 2005)
1.1 Experiential methodology The role of researcher in this study is as participant-observer within the natural setting of
lived experience, where having background knowledge of the research site enables me to
be responsive to the immediacy of the situation. The process of researching, however,
does not follow preconceived pathways. Rather, it seeks to shape creative experience,
generated through the imaginative intuitive process, the collaborative interaction of
researcher and participants and the positioning of researcher and research site in the wider
theoretical and artistic environment as outlined in the subsequent Contextual Review
chapter.
The experiential approach of this study is perceived as the interplay of both intuitive and
intellectual processes. Intuitive and non-verbal felt experience is deemed essential in the
creation of meaning while interaction with conceptual and theoretical language helps
shape these intuitively felt understandings. Engaging with the intuitive side alone often
entails pursuing that which feels right or natural, thus there is an inherent tendency for
habit making. Drawing on external theoretical concepts potentially expands more
inwardly-focused intuitive feelings of the artist/researcher, thereby triggering fresh
insights and new levels of experiencing. As a creative practitioner, I address theoretical
concerns through the process of practice, in the handling of ideas, materials and the
relationships with participants, which together form the essential elements of this study.
Theoretical constructs are thus treated as utilitarian rather than pedagogical thinking tools.
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Whilst these constructs may appear to be a “grab-bag” of disparate theories, they form a
cognitive process by which to help craft a language and thus articulate the practice. In this
way, the study combines an analysis of the work from both a research viewpoint and a
personal journey, in an interweaving of academic and experiential styles.
1.2 Research concern
An open-ended approach emergent through lived experience, the study seeks a means to
both guide and work through creative processes, yet without prescribing this experience
through predetermined concepts and theoretical frameworks. Here, the assumption is that
a particular area of interest arises through immersion in the often “murky waters” of
creative practice:
…many practice-led researchers do not commence a research project with a sense of ‘a problem’…Practice-led researchers construct experiential starting points from which practice follows. They tend to ‘dive in’, to commence practicing to see what emerges. They acknowledge that what emerges may be individualistic and idiosyncratic. (Haseman, 2006, p.100)
The ‘starting point’ of this study was a broad focus on the way different relationships are
created through the combination of performing bodies and digital media, with the
subsequent emergence of two areas of interest:
• Exposure and shifting of the visual mode due to the propensity of visual images in
motion to become the dominant element.
• The nature of a compositional structure arising from the interdependencies
between the elements/entities of performing bodies, projected visual images and
sound.
These two areas are clues to facilitate inquiry with the anticipation that new focal areas
will emerge, not only through research conducted as part of postgraduate study, but also
through further ongoing creative practice.
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1.3 Limitations of the study
1.3.1 Scope of the study This study is primarily concerned with visual and performance influences where
technology is seen as a means for enhancing these fields rather than as a conversation
between technology and performance per se. Thus the digital media discussed in this study
provide one of the tools to enable interdependencies to co-exist within the framework of
installation performance. I recognise that there are many cross-disciplinary collaborative
approaches in contemporary performance making and that this work could also be
analysed through the lens of a mediatised performance environment. However, the scope
of this study aims to articulate a poetics of performance and technology that does so by
drawing upon references from a predominantly visual arts lineage to expand the notion of
painting within a dynamic and kinesthetic context.
1.3.2 Bias of the study
The elucidation of “lenses” in which to observe creative practice may assume an
unobstructed observation process with the capacity for distinguishing discrete features of
the environment being observed. However, my view as participant-observer is necessarily
embedded and subjective, hence there can be little distance between the observer and the
observed. Thus, while the isolating of certain focus areas enables the study to move
forward, it also involves the preclusion of other possible modes of experiencing (Gendlin,
2000, p.17). Demarcation offers a practical means for detailing lived experience, entailing
a somewhat artificially constructed process where the
…setting up of divisions and subdivisions through which the study is presented are, to a great extent, superficial. They have been created for convenience and to aid us in the perception of a reality that we generally experience as one forceful totality, not in analyzable parts. (Ani, 1994, p.7)
Whilst the lived experience of all participants cannot be captured totally in this exegesis,
this research site with its artistic outcomes is however, the acknowledged collaborative
8
effort of people of different backgrounds and cultures. As an artificial construction, I
further acknowledge the susceptibility of this study to be filtered through my own
experiences and beliefs. To facilitate a common communication ground, English was the
main language used in the Australia-based research phase, with individual participants
interpreting where necessary into the Japanese and Chinese languages. Though useful as a
cross-cultural communication tool, an emphasis on English may, however, have precluded
verbal and non-verbal nuances specific to these two other languages. Hence the study is
not an impartial view, and, whilst every attempt has been made to include participants’
feedback through interviews and informal dialogues, this document cannot be completely
representative of the lived experiences of all members.
1.3.3 Ethical considerations
As initiator and director of the research site, I am aware that I am entering into personal
relationships with actual people and their lived experiences. As such, there is a duty of
care to ensure that my intentions and purposes do not become the overriding factor in the
relationship. While I have a central role in the conceptual and practical process, the
research area is a reciprocal test-bed: my artistic process is enhanced through skills
brought to the research site by the collaborative participants, with approaches to the body
and applications of visual and sonic media being extended through the combined inputs of
all members. All participants have given written permission for their feedback and
interview material to be included in this research text, the relevant sections of which they
have read and approved. Furthermore, artistic outcomes of the research are the intellectual
property of all creative participants who have given permission for documentation to be
included in the study.
1.4 Collaborative environment as “habitat” The collaborative relationship is fundamental to exploring the connection between
performing bodies, projected visual imagery and sonic media. This involves creative
pathways negotiated between myself, as creative director, in collaboration with dance
9
artists, visual artists, sound designers and computer programmers. Borrowing ecological
terms, I perceive the investigation site as a kind of habitat bringing together a small
community of people of various experiences and backgrounds. Here, I find the context of
biotope, defined as ‘the region of a habitat associated with a particular ecological
community’ (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2004, p.136), aptly describes the
collaborative environment. The notion of biotope articulates the process of co-creation:
given the varied cultural backgrounds and skills of the creative participants, the research
site itself becomes the unifying ‘habitat’ of this ‘ecological community’. This study,
however, is concerned with the activities of a particular assemblage of humans, rather than
of plants or animals living within natural ecosystems. Yet there is, nonetheless, a nurturing
aspect to the research site as a specifically constructed community that corresponds to my
directorial role of initiator, guide, and “cultivator” of the creative process, outlined in the
introduction to this exegesis. Full description of the participants and their roles is given in
Chapters 3 and 4, while credits and biographies are included in Appendices 1 and 2. The
diversity of participants and skills within this particular study reflects the broader,
multivalent context of creative practice as research.
1.5 Practice-led Research as performative research Creative practice is a field of research that embraces a vast array of practices, thus location
within it entails the need to shape methods according to how events emerge through the
particular practice being investigated. Currently there are various approaches attempting to
position creative practice in the field of research, including, for example, practice-based
research, creative practice as research, practice as research, or practice-led research. In my
own research journey I have found myself oscillating between all of these terms, with the
realisation that although they may share a commonality of creative practice, there are,
however, subtle differences. To clarify, this study is conducted through the lens of
practice-led research, an approach that is characterised by the tendency for research to
flow from experiences arising through practice rather than from questions, problems or
issues defined at the outset; and by research outcomes being made through symbolic
‘material forms of practice’ (Haseman, 2006, p.100-101). Examples of symbolic material
10
forms arising from this particular study include creative works, audio-visual
documentation and the exegetical component. Within the context of practice-led research,
‘performative research’ is an emerging research paradigm. Here, research is perceived as
being enacted through the creative process and presentation outcomes and, in this way,
‘they not only express the research, but in that expression become the research itself’.
(Haseman, 2006, p.102) Thus, in performative researching, knowledge is not only
embedded within the creative work per se, but in fresh understandings revealed through
active engagement with the processes and actions in creating the work.
1.5.1 Creative Production/Design Research In accommodating the interests of creative practitioner-engaged research, Scrivener
(2000), distinguishes between ‘technology research projects’ or design research that
produces a functional artifact or product through a process of problem-solving, and
‘creative-production projects’ where research is not generally shaped according to a
specific set of problem-solving criteria, or may not always yield an ultimate outcome.
Scrivener further states that problem-based research aims for solutions that can be widely
applicable or transferable, whilst in creative production, any “know-how” or contribution
to knowledge, occurs as a by-product rather than as a primary objective. He admits that
although the distinction between the two is not always clear, it is useful to understand the
difference in order to prevent creative production processes being subsumed into more
established problem-solving approaches.
I find both the distinction and connection between Creative Research and Design Research
highly appropriate to a research site that is developing a creative work through an ‘open
problem’, yet in the process is also developing visual media tools in response to more
specific aims. Thus, whilst the overall study positions itself in the zone of Creative
Research, it also slides along a continuum towards Design Research through testing and
development of an original motion graphics software called XV3. Here, my intention is
not to presume a common or unified nature to the various approaches used in the field of
design. Rather, I identify with aspects of design research in terms of prescribing a
particular set of requirements, which in this case, is determined in response to the needs of
11
artistic practice. Specific aims of the XV3 visual media tool include the layering of
multiple textures, the capacity for continuous projection across multiple surfaces and the
rendering of three-dimensional graphic objects on the fly. Details of this software and its
application are further described in Chapters 3 and 4.
1.5.2 Iterative Process
The progress of the creative work, together with the media systems within it, involves a
cyclic process with emphasis on the experiential nature of development (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1
The iterative process includes: the informing piece, Test-patches; the research project
Patchwork in Motion undertaken as Masters of Arts study; the extraction of Living Lens in the upgrade to doctoral studies.
12
In terms of iteration, there is further connection to Design Research, where the
methodology is
based on the cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analyzing and refining a work in progress. In iterative design, interaction with the designed system is used as a form of research for informing and evolving the project as successive versions or iterations of a design are implemented. (Zimmerman, 2003, p.118).
The design iteration of XV3, currently in a beta version1, has involved the creation of
specific visual effects in response to artistic needs, for example, the title of Living Lens is
also the name of a 3D object and motion graphics effect developed by media programmer,
Takahisa Sasaki. The requirement determined and given at my behest was for a
transparent spherical object creating a moving magnifying glass effect over the underlying
visual textures. For further description and images of this effect, please see Chapter 3.
Iterations occur on three levels in the research: the development of the media tools,
occurring within the overall process of the creative work, which itself is the outcome of
several previous iterations. These iterations include: the informing piece entitled Test-
patches (2001-2003) created as part of independent arts practice; the first iteration
undertaken through formal academic research entitled Patchwork in Motion (2005); and
the subsequent extraction of one fragment entitled Living Lens (2005-2006) for further
development and refinement. This process is fully explored in Chapters 3 and 4. In terms
of a cyclic process, I see affinities with aspects of Action Research, not in the pedagogical
sense, but in the way practitioners are action and reflection oriented with the motivation to
improve the practice and quality of artistic outcomes implemented through a series of
cycles. The three tenets of Action Research (Bunning, 1994, p.44) are also central to this
site: conditions for intentional change, the subjective inflection of the researcher as
participant-facilitator and the potential empowerment of all participants through the
encounter. The collaborative aspect of Action Research is also relevant here, with the
researcher as a co-participant initially setting the parameters of the research, whilst also
1 ‘Beta’ version is a software engineering term describing the stage of development: new features have been added but are still in the process of being debugged through testing under real conditions, in this case, through live performances.
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establishing opportunities for participants to influence the agenda, evaluate the process
and implement improvements.
1.6 Research Methods: Applied processes of practice
As the research undertaken in this study is enacted through the creative process, that is, as
performative research, the process of “data collection” or “data gathering” is generated
directly through the processes of the practice. In this way, primary source data derives
from specific procedures connected to the three essential components of the study: the
performing body, visual images and sonic elements. The research involves interacting and
responding to this data to seek possible relationships or themes that emerge and take shape
as the creative process unfolds.
1.6.1 Developing movement material as “primary data”
Image –based methods: ‘butoh-fu’; ‘graining’ The approach to developing movement material in Living Lens has been through the use
of poetic texts, and pictorial images such as photographs and paintings. The concern is not
to portray or mimic images with the body, but to allow motion to arise from the
experiences of the body in relation to the texts and images. In particular, the aim of this
approach is to activate sensory levels beyond everyday conscious awareness. Here, there
are similarities to other image-based approaches to the body, such as Ideokinesis or
Skinner Releasing, where visualisation processes are used to modify movement patterns,
or to release and activate energy flows. In this study, however, workshop sessions have
been based around various improvised and task-based explorations derived from the
Japanese dance-theatre butoh, specifically through the use of evocative poetic words
known as butoh-fu. Focusing awareness, for example, on nerves extending through the
body and outwards through the fingertips, or on the location of individual insects crawling
on different areas of the body, helps to develop finely articulated, sculpted movement
14
qualities. In the close-up viewing environment of the installation space, attention to
minuscule detail is essential.
A further approach adopted in the project is a practice known as ‘graining’ (Nikolais and
Louis, 2005). In this approach, a person envisions small particles of varying density
streaming through the inner spaces of the body, and outwards to the external space
surrounding the body. The purpose here is to develop inner textural qualities and an
awareness of directional movement flows. This is particularly important given that Living
Lens is an immersive installation space where performers need to project their energy in
multiple directions.
Temporal linkage through ‘clusters’
In the development of movement sequences, I was seeking a way to understand temporal
linkage beyond the approach of many forms of contemporary dance where a short
sequence of dance steps or movements is generally referred to as a “phrase”. As a
grammatical unit, a phrase is a string of words in poetry or prose, usually separated by
punctuation and pauses. Temporal linkage involves one phrase linked to another,
separated by pauses that give emphasis to what precedes or follows. I sought a different
mode of linking, where a pause potentially becomes an active, generative stillness.
Inspired by Adshead’s statement that ‘a movement is not just a ‘turn’ but a cluster of
spatial and dynamic elements combined with a particular use of the body in action’ (1988,
p.24), I decided to use the term ‘cluster’ to explain particular domains of movement
sequences. With the potential for a malleable and porous temporal mode, sequences could
be rearranged, be open to gaps or be embedded within other movement sequences. Visual
mapping of this idea and discussion of how this process was developed with performers is
detailed in Chapter 4.
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Flow Continuums: devising a scaling tool
To enhance flow and add tensile qualities to the performers’ movements, I was interested
in the flow continuums of Rudolf Laban, a movement theorist who developed processes
for identifying, analysing and notating elements of dance. To this end, a scaling tool
(please see Appendix 3), was devised based on the work of Dunlop-Preston (1980), who
further expounds on the theories of Laban.
Mapping these continuums as a series of sliding scales, I found this to be a useful
processing device that performers applied to preexisting movement material. Here,
continuums − based on the elements of time, space, weight and flow − include movement
transitions between sudden and sustained, direct and flexible, heavy and light, and free
and bound. The performers modified their specific movement characteristics by
individually applying the scales to their own movements, followed by group work where
they directed one another in accordance with the scales.
1.6.2 Developing XV3 visual imaging system
Image texture bank Visual source material for Living Lens has involved the development of a texture bank of
images. This is an ongoing process, conducted by myself together with visual artist,
Tetsutoshi Tabata. My specific visual input for the Living Lens project includes the
recycling of earlier materials through digitally scanning handmade slides containing plant
fibres and hand-painted textures that I made for butoh performances in the early 1990s.
Further input has involved the creation of new jelly-like textures painted onto acetate and
then digitised, as well as a large collection of photographic close-ups of plant, insect, and
mineral textures. Tetsutoshi Tabata subsequently treated these images, for example,
through enhancing colour and resolution, or clarifying textural details, in preparation for
further processing in the XV3 imaging system.
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XV3 Imaging tools
XV3 is an imaging system that contains a database of moving images, as well as a texture
bank of still images that can be manipulated into multi-layered 3D space and set into
motion. As mentioned, media programmer Takahisa Sasaki, has developed various effects
and objects of this imaging system specifically in response to my artistic direction. These
include algorithm-based effects such as waves, snow, clouds and the living lens effect.
The lens effect, for example, simulates refraction and hence a magnified image can be
seen through the transparent fish-eye lens, with distortion occurring at the edges to further
enhance the illusion of a magnifying glass. Non-algorithm effects include 3D objects, such
as spheres and cubes, as well as kinetic effects such as scrolling and spinning. The outer
surface or “skin” of the 3D objects can be rendered with the various image textures from
the texture bank. As the system allows for the rendering of images on the fly, it is possible
for objects and effects to become responsive to performers’ movements via the use of
motion sensors. Further details of this process are given in Chapter 3.
1.6.3 Developing the sonic environment
Improvised sound streams to real-time sound “palette” In the first phase of the Australia-based creative development of Living Lens, the initial
starting point for ideas about sound was inspired by the excerpt from the poem by
Australian poet Judith Wright entitled The Falls Country, given in the frontispiece to this
exegesis. The sound concept was for a contoured stream of sounds reminiscent of the
waning and waxing of lifecycles, and sounds evoking atmospheric conditions such as the
tinkling of water, the rustling of leaves or the dry wind of desert sands. Here, the idea was
to create a kind of dreamscape through the collaboration of two sound artists working in
different contexts, Matt de Boer, working in live acoustic sound, and Luke Lickfold,
exploring computer filtering processes. In the public showing of the first creative
development on December 17, 2005, this process was conducted largely through
improvisation: Luke Lickfold applying filtering processes to the direct sound inputs
generated by Matt de Boer’s acoustic instruments. For the second stage of development, in
17
which Matt de Boer would not be available, Luke Lickfold and I decided that a pre-set
palette of sound textures created in accordance to a specific set of sound tasks, would
provide a more structured sonic environment with the capacity for real-time manipulation.
Details of this process are further discussed in Chapter 4.
1.7 Tracking emergences
1.7.1 Distilling concepts As a practitioner with sixteen years independent arts practice, I find the context of
academic research inquiry particularly challenging in regards to articulation of the practice
and its contextualisation in the wider world of practice and theory. However, glancing at
the various piles of material that surround me, the large number of notebooks and
computer journal files are testimony to the fact that engagement with practice, both
independently as well as in formal research, involves a veritable storm of jottings,
sketching and note-taking. Here I find resemblances to the creative process of Bill Viola
when he states that making work involves
Mapping a personal course through various readings, quotations, associations, observations, experiments and ideas for pieces, all jumbled into one. (Viola and Violette, 1995, p.267)
The process of sorting and sifting through this ‘jumble’ of information has involved the
distilling of salient themes and concepts. The submission of a paper accepted for
publication by peer-reviewed journal, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, was an important
milestone in distilling and revising concepts and ideas from the journalling process into a
coherent manuscript. This paper, entitled “Patchwork in Motion”, appears in the special
edition issue, Multimedia Performance, November-December 2005. This process provided
another kind of iteration in textual form, adding a further layer to the reflective stage of
the research cycle.
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1.7.2 Visual mapping Visual methods of tracking emergences include visual diagrams, such as the looping
iterative overview of the creative process given hereto (Fig. 1) and the mapping of
emergent patterns of practice (Fig. 2) as an aid to orient and situate practice. This provided
a means from which to develop the Contextual Review and further focal areas in this
exegesis.
Fig. 2
Visual overview of emerging patterns to contextualise practice.
Other visual mappings include practical working areas, for example, the idea of temporal
linkage through clusters (see p.74) and the flow continuums scaling tool (see Appendix 3).
To understand the researcher’s way of engaging with practice within a larger global
19
context, I have adapted Rosenberg’s (2000) Poetic Research Model (Fig. 3), which he
states reflects the ‘impulses’ of creative practice rather than being a fixed methodological
stance.
Fig. 3
Researcher’s engagement involves coiling inwards to a ‘ground’ and outwards towards ‘open water’. Adapted from Rosenberg’s Poetic Research Model (2000).
Here, there is a coiling inwards and outwards: a centripetal drawing inwards to a ‘ground’
through connecting with existing knowledge or mode of practice; and a centrifugal or
outward expansion towards ‘open water’ as a way to develop new references and
possibilities. A further visual method used in the project is the video documentation of
aspects of the rehearsal process and practical outcomes as a means to evaluate the work
using criteria related to the research aims. This is further discussed in the Chapter 3.
20
1.8 Feedback Extending the cyclical forms of analysis, it is necessary to elicit evaluation through
participant and to a lesser extant, viewer feedback. Participant feedback has occurred
chiefly via e-mail correspondence, interviews based on a guiding set of discussion points
or unstructured interviews with no preset agenda. The collaborative process, however,
involves ongoing dialogue, a large portion of which is not captured by any particular
documentation mode. The participants’ direct involvement can be seen as a kind of
immersion in practice, where the study itself becomes the immersive context, in both the
creative development process as well as in the live performance outcomes. In this way, the
concern is with the encounter between the elements and the participants themselves, rather
than the encounter between the work and an audience per se. Selected peer feedback,
however, provided an important external viewpoint on the live outcomes. This occurred
through direct communication and via e-mail responses from the general public generated
through the participation of Living Lens in the wider context of the Accented Body project,
details of which are outlined in Chapters 3 and 4.
1.9 Analysis
In the process of iteration, analysis involves the selection of certain criteria as a means to
refine and develop the work for the subsequent iteration. Thus, the research process
involves the distilling of criteria as well as concepts, which then become further filters or
lenses in which to understand the work. While criteria should emerge directly from the
work itself, which in this case, lies in documented traces such as photography, video and
notebooks, the process of extracting criteria also requires time in which to cultivate a
reflective mode of understanding. To grasp the feel of the work’s meaning and move onto
further focusing requires hindsight, for:
It is because our actions and those of others have revealed what the situation was. By that time we see many moves we could have made. Then we say that we know better “what the situation was”. When we know the implied action-possibilities we know what the situation is. (Gendlin, 2000, p.46)
21
The idea of ‘action-possibilities’ is a useful way to view criteria from the perspective of
social practice, for in a collaborative project it is necessary to consider the wider situation
of the creative participants, together with the creative work itself, as a means to determine
the action required for the next phase of development.
As the nature of research requires legitimacy, particularly given the subjective nature of
practice-led research, I look to Richardson’s (2000, p.934) notion of crystallisation, as
contrasted to the traditional triangulation method requiring that different research methods
carry an equivalent domain in order to be “fixed” at a point. It would seem that in more
open research methods, the shifting multi-dimensionality of the crystal becomes a more
appropriate image, one that encompasses the position that whilst something − at least
partially − can be known, there can be no single perspective. The emblem of the crystal is
in itself attractive, its glass-like transparency and ability to refract and reflect colours has a
similarity to the metaphor of lens. As crystals grow and change, there is a “biological”
connection to living lens, a further analogy of the shifting nature of creative practice.
However, there is a solidity and symmetry to the crystal I find somewhat idealistic in light
of this research project. Given that concepts and criteria are being distilled, the notion of
“condensation” becomes a more appropriate metaphor, where inquiry of the methods and
actions of practice, its visualisations, articulations and analysis, occur in the more fluid
and humid conditions of human experience. In this way, the process of crystallisation, thus
inflected with the quality of condensation, becomes an interpretative method for distilling
ideas and concepts as well as a means for determining possibilities for future action.
Here I need to clarify that the distillations articulated in this exegesis, however, are not so
much arrived at or concluded, but are given throughout; the chapters themselves occurring
as distillations conveyed through word and image. This exegesis is a translation, an
interpretation of the creative experience, yet I find that, as such, it is not merely a
subservient vehicle for articulation. Rather, it is itself a kind of Living Lens, taking on its
own life as a creative outcome of the research process. In this light, knowledge is not
something acquired at the end of the research activity, nor is it merely expounded through
“findings” in the conclusion. It is a process, and as such this exegesis moves through
22
phases, drawing on past experiences to inform practice, talking around and about the work
to the contexts in which the work is situated, whilst also acknowledging uncertainty in the
moving of the “lenses” through unmapped terrain. I believe, therefore, that the action of
translating these experiences is a knowledge claim in its own right.
1.10 Summary This study locates the researcher as participant-observer within the naturalistic setting of
lived experience. As such, it involves an experiential methodology emergent from the
needs and processes of creative practice. Addressing the research concern of structuring a
composition as interdependencies between performing bodies, visual and sonic elements,
entails a collaborative process involving dancer-choreographers, visual and sound artists,
as well as media programmers, whose combined efforts have contributed to the overall
process and outcomes. The study sites itself within the context of practice-led research,
more specifically as performative research, a model that allows for practice to perform its
outcomes and processes. Here, the research slips between creative and design research for
it includes the development of digital media tools in the overall creative production.
Specific methods for developing and gathering primary source data are applied processes,
for example, through image-based approaches to devising movement material, as well as
the development of imaging and sonic effects in response to particular artistic
requirements. Tracking emergences throughout the study has entailed a cyclical iterative
process, details of which are discussed at length in Chapters 3 and 4 and subsequent
conclusive distillations. The following Contextual Review provides further lenses on the
study through theoretical and experiential perspectives, whilst also situating the work
within the wider realm of painterly practice and performance in a dual live and mediated
environment.
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CHAPTER 2 – CONTEXTUAL REVIEW
2.1 Through and With the “Lens” Living Lens is a poetic metaphor for a fluid magnification bringing the inner or micro
world to the external or macro world, a shifting window to explore worlds within worlds.
In this way, the title − directly emergent from the creative practice itself − becomes a way
to position the research for both practical and written components:
Lens (metaphorical):
‘…the lens metaphor, which assigns perceptive faculties to organizations, namely ‘eyes’ able to ‘see’ and search, filter, distort, and gatekeep information, processing it through the various ‘membranes’ that connect individuals, organizational units and the environment’. (Strati, 2000, p.53)
Lens (literal):
‘A piece of glass or other transparent material with one or both sides curved for concentrating or dispersing light rays’. (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2004, p.816)
For the purposes of this research, the above meanings could also be posited in this
manner: through the lens as a way of seeing; and with the lens as a way of being. Possible
lenses with which the specific elements of the research area are to be understood include
the body lens, the visual lens and the sound lens. (Due to the applied nature of discussion
on these elements, these “lenses” are further explored throughout the processual Chapters
3 and 4). A metaphorical sense of lens allows for constructs through which to articulate
practice, for example, possible theoretical and conceptual lenses. The second definition
given above has both metaphorical and literal potential in the sense of an intermediary. As
a practitioner-researcher, I perceive that I am a lens, a living lens through and with which
the research is being observed and experienced. ‘Light’ in this sense, concentrated or
divergent, becomes a metaphor for articulation of experience rather than a metaphor for
truth.
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However, both a metaphorical and experiential notion of lens is ambiguous for the word
itself infers transparency: the presence of a clearly observable field and an unobstructed
observation process. The lens metaphor is vision-reliant or ‘ocularcentric’ (Jay, 1994, p.3),
susceptible to the assumption that features of an environment or situation can actually be
focused on as discrete entities (Crary, 1999, p.14). As a participant-observer in the
research process, my view is necessarily embedded and as such, I am fully aware that this
process is a subjective and temporary outlook on a dynamic, shifting environment. In
positioning myself as a living lens, I acknowledge at the outset that my perspective is
being filtered through my own beliefs, values, past experiences, intentional and
unconscious perceptions, and hence the risk for possible distortions. In this way, living
lens is not only a metaphor for the work itself, but also a paradigm through which practice
is emergent. As a process that acknowledges the living, ongoing flow of experience, there
is no prioritising ‘of what is known or seen over what is lived’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p.61).
Accordingly, the experiential process here applies to the practice itself, as well as to
theoretical concerns arising through the encounter.
2.2 “Living” spaces of experience
2.2.1 Notion of Felt Experiencing
In terms of the relationship between practice and theory, Gendlin (1997) claims that
meaning derives from an interaction of experience with terms and concepts. The
experiential nature of human behaviour often involves a pre-conceptual focusing or ‘felt
experiencing’ of a given situation through concentrating on an inner sensing. As he states:
…the roles of felt experiencing in all our conceptual operations are not illegitimate “biases”. They are natural and proper functions… we cannot even know what a concept “means” or use it meaningfully without the “feel” of its meaning. (1997, p.5)
Gendlin further indicates that:
It is not at all vague in its being there. It may be vague only in that we may not know what it is. We can only put a few aspects of it into words. The mass itself is always something there, no matter what we say “it is”. (p.11)
25
Words and concepts are not substitutes for experience, but rather flexible markers that
assist in detailing as yet-to-be-described aspects of experience. Once these aspects are
named, they become transitions to further focusing and articulations. Gendlin thus posits a
dynamic two-way flow between language and experience: the use of words as reference
points, and the inclusion of the pre-conceptual stage of experience as a guide in the
creation of meaning. Gendlin’s views are valuable in light of creative practice-led
research, for he acknowledges a mode of inquiry that makes connections between things
through active cultivation of experience, a mode that does not set out to overturn or deny
logical or objective concepts or methods, but dialogues with them in a mutually
responsive process. Here, the notion of ‘felts’ (Bohm, 1994), namely, feelings connected
to past experience, offers an additional outlook on felt experience. In distinguishing
between ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ as ongoing action, and ‘thought’ and ‘felt’ as past
activity, Bohm draws attention to the way past experiences and habits may cloud or block
receptivity to new emergences. Accordingly, ‘felt experiencing’ is here understood as an
ongoing receptive activity, with emergent experience potentially modifying and
transforming previously held methods or concepts.
2.2.2 Notion of Perceived-Conceived-Lived
As a theoretical lens to open up further spaces of experience, I am drawn to Lefebvre’s
concept of the ‘perceived-conceived-lived triad, an interconnection of social space or
‘spatial practice’, mental space or ‘representations of space’ and lived space or
‘representational space’ (1991, p.40). Here, the intention is neither to engage with these
concepts on a hypothetical level nor to infer a Lefebvre-based reading of the creative
work. Rather, the triad is both a catalyst for thinking about the way space is produced and
created as well as a useful means of bridging the nexus between theory and practice.
First in the triad is perceived space, also termed social space or spatial practice, which
includes an individual’s active engagement as a member of a group, the individual’s
relationship to the group and vice-versa, as well as the networks and dynamics that make
26
up a group. The notion of spatial practice also has a practical basis in terms of the creative
practice of this study. This includes, for example, a performer’s positioning in space,
her/his relationship with the visual imagery, or in regard to the sonic environment, the
spatialisation of sound. These ideas are further addressed throughout the processual
Chapters 3 and 4.
Second in the triad, conceived space, is that which tends towards the coherent, verbalised
and intellectually calculated realm of signs and schematics, including geometric and
architectural spatial representations. Contextual examples here include the diagrams and
charts given in the Research Design chapter and appendices of this document as a means
to visualise the research process and distil emergent patterns. Lefebvre notes the tendency
of conceived space to be the ‘dominant space’ in society (1991, p.39), a relevant point in
creative practice-led research for it is essential that the exegetical component, indeed this
very document, incorporates terms and concepts as a way of looking through and at
practice, rather than the converse where practice becomes subordinate to conceptual
language or preconceived frameworks.
Third in the triad is lived space, the locus of a certain lived action, event or feeling. This is
a fluid realm of non-verbal symbols and signs, such as those associated with metaphors,
dreams and memory. I find affinities with this type of space as it implies pre- or meta-
conceptual, poetic and associative nuances inherent in artistic practice. Yet Lefebvre
sounds a challenging note when he states that this is perhaps the space of artists, writers
and philosophers who ‘describe and aspire to do no more than describe’ (p.39). This
comment is particularly pertinent to practice-led research in view of the relationship
between creative and exegetical outputs where verbal articulation may, perhaps
unavoidably, fuse description of the work with processes involved in making the work.
However, when Lefebvre further elucidates lived space as ‘the dominated – and hence
passively experienced – space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate’
(p.39), I find that that I must necessarily diverge. Specifically, Lefebvre here infers two
aspects of the creative act that seem to contradict my own feelings as a practitioner: firstly,
a mode of imagination that operates through transformative reactions to a perceived
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reality, and secondly, a notion of lived space as passively acted upon by the imagination.
In contrast, I seek an imaginative mode that creates its own space of reality, yet without
negating the vitality of the lived world. Hence, it is a perception of the creative act as an
interaction of dynamic lived experience with a creative, rather than merely reactive, mode
of imagination.
2.2.3 Poetic Felt Space
Filtered through Gendlin’s felt experiencing and Lefebvre’s lived space, I seek an active
creative space that lies beyond, or in-between, these notions. The concept of “poetic felt
space”2 is an intuitive frame of reference that both relates to and extends these two
notions. The allusion here is not specifically to poetic verse; rather the term “poetic” is
applied more expansively to the way lived, felt experience is transformed into artistic
expression.
Bachelard’s Poetics of Space (Bachelard and Jolas, 1994) is a notable and oft-quoted
source of inspiration for creative ideas and thinking on artistic practice. From a complex
array of evocative ideas and images, I find Bachelard’s notion of ‘inhabited space’
particularly resonant in conceiving a poetic felt space in relation to an installation with
performers, visual and sonic media. Living Lens is an inhabited space, for example, in
terms of the performers as “inhabitants” intimately engaging with the installation space.
However, the notion of ‘inhabited space’ may be further applied to an embodied imaging
process where pictorial images and poetic text fragments provide the inspiration for
devising dance movement. (Due to the applied nature of this method, details are further
discussed in Chapters 3 and 4.) Bachelard infers a tactile and emergent quality in the way
a poetic image can ‘take root’ and ‘become a new being in our language, expressing us by
making us what is expressed’ (1994, p.xix). The notion of poetic felt space – thus inflected
by Gendlin’s felt experiencing, Lefebvre’s lived space and Bachelard’s inhabited space –
becomes an active, ongoing interrelation of senses, emotions and feelings. Essentially, it is
2 This term is an outcome of a discussion with PhD peer, Luke Jaaniste, following the November-December 2005 creative development period of Living Lens.
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perceived as the connective tissue that links the performing bodies, visual images and
sound, shaping these elements into creative expression. Here, the notion of “living
painting” is seen as a means to activate this relationship in tangible terms.
2.3 “Living painting”
The Living Lens installation is perceived as a “living painting”, a definition that appears to
emphasise a visual experiencing of the work. The visual images, projected onto a screen
situated at the core of the installation, technically comprise a two-dimensional visual field.
However, through combining photographic and hand-painted textures with computer-
generated imagery manipulated live by visual media artists, the screen becomes an
activated, “living” surface. The performers endow the installation with further dynamic
qualities, creating a more tangible effect than that of static two-dimensional painting
alone. It could be said that the presentation style in Living Lens also involves a pictorial
sensibility in terms of the viewer positioned in front of a wall-like projection surface.
However, the screen is installed in an S-curve configuration and, as such, becomes a three-
dimensional object. Subsequently, a sculptural sensibility emerges, both through the
screen object and the movements of the performer-inhabitants, creating a spatial
environment than can be viewed from different angles.
2.3.1 Tableaux Vivants
Living paintings, in the form of tableaux vivants, also stand at the intersection of painting,
performance and sculpture. In a traditional sense, these include re-enactments of classic
paintings by statue-like performers holding a pose. In a more contemporary sense, these
include the “living sculptures” of 1960s and 70s performance art, for example, Under the
Arches (1969) by Gilbert and George; or video and cinematic approaches, for example,
Hermine Freed’s video work, Art Herstory (1974), where she restages art history by
inserting herself into the painting; Bill Viola’s video installation, Emergence (2002),
where performers re-enact scenes from Renaissance religious painting, or Peter
Greenaway’s film, A Zed and Two Noughts (1985), with its narrative-based reference to
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Vermeer (Peucker, 2003). In Living Lens there are also allusions to tableaux vivants for, in
devising movement material, influences include, for example, the ink drawings of Henri
Michaux, the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch and the sculptures of Magdalena
Abakanowicz. The approach, however, deriving from the Japanese dance-theatre form
known as butoh, involves working from an inner bodily sensing rather than through
mimetic likeness to a specific sculpture or pictorial image. In terms of a sculptural
sensibility, on the other hand, slowed down movements, moments of stillness or suddenly
arrested motion, may serve to highlight particular moments within a fluid continuum. In
this way, Living Lens references certain aspects of tableaux vivants through its statue-like
poses against a painterly backdrop. However, connections between performers and images
are manifested through abstract objects and textures rather than as figures clearly depicted
against representational scenery. Furthermore, as images occur virtually through emitted
luminance and not as actual painted surfaces, the imagery at times serves to camouflage,
rather than highlight the performer.
2.3.2 Physical/Virtual painting
Other “living” painting approaches beyond the two-dimensional format of the picture
frame, include the process-oriented “live paint actions” of the 1950s and 60s, such as
American Action Painting, the Viennese Actionists and the Japanese Gutai. The body is
located at the centre of the creative process, often in visceral or ritualistic events involving
the spattering and smearing of substances, such as paint or blood. Other approaches that
directly insert the body into the painting process include, for example, Carolee
Schneemann’s live performance work, Meat Joy (1964), or Paul McCarthy’s video work,
Black and White Tapes (1970-1975). In depth discussion of the examples given here is
beyond the scope of this exegesis, however, it will suffice to point out a distinct physical
materiality in the nature of these works.
In relation to painterly traditions, it could be said that the action painting and video
performances mentioned above, are in some ways a precursor to current media arts
practices that use digital technologies to create simulated or virtual textures, with many of
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the works having the capacity to react to actions or gestures of the body. A responsive
installation by Plancton Art Studio, Sensitive Painting (Annunziato et al., 2002) is a
specific example of a painterly approach using a combination of real and virtual textures.
In this piece, a large pictorial image created through the multiple layering of coloured
paper fragments is situated on a wall in the installation space. The inner layers of this
painting have been captured and memorised by a computer and projected directly onto the
painting’s surface. Set on a table in front of the painting is a three-dimensional object with
a sensitised surface that modifies visual and acoustic variables in response to the position
of a visitor’s hand movements. Exploring the layers and fragments of the painting, the
visitor triggers modifications in colour, shape and sound that appear to emanate from the
painting itself. Thus activated both visually and sonically, the piece can also be regarded
as a kind of sound painting. In Living Lens, the digitally manipulated images become a
kind of ‘virtual scenery’ (Saltz, 2001, p.124), not only in the sense of an electronic
backdrop of scenic effects, but in the multiple layering of textures. In this way, it is
possible to consider the idea of virtual painting beyond the visual mode, in terms of a
sculpting and layering of sounds to further enhance the “living” qualities of the installation
space.
2.4 Towards performer-media interdependencies
2.4.1 Shifting the visual mode
The research site involves a converging of digital technologies with live elements,
including performers, media programmers and visual and sound artists responsible for the
live manipulation of the visual and sonic media. In accordance with Auslander (1999), it
positions itself broadly within ‘mediatized performance’ where both live and mediated
elements are co-present. In Living Lens, the projection screen is the central ‘locus of
mediation’ (Causey, 1999) becoming both a physical and a virtual space: physical in the
sense of an installed sculptural object; virtual in the sense of an electronic painting
comprising digitally manipulated and simulated images.
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Auslander questions whether the combination of the live and the mediated can be
complementary or equal partners, the tendency being for viewers to be more compelled,
for example, by visual images in motion. This concern has been one of the initial triggers
of my investigation. He cites the piece entitled Pôles (2000) by Montreal group Pps
Danse, a performance he states the makers describe as ‘Dance+Virtual’. In this work, two
dancers perform with holograms of themselves against a background of moving digital
projections. Distinguishing the dancers from their holograms becomes difficult, moments
Auslander admits to finding the most interesting, the live dancers as seemingly able to
enter into the virtual world of projections as their hologram counterparts. However, he
then raises the question as to whether in such performances viewers see
…a juxtaposition of the live and the digital, a shifting among realms? My feeling is that the answer is no, that we now experience such work as a fusion, not a con-fusion, of realms, a fusion that we see as taking place within a digital environment that incorporates the live elements as part of its raw material. Rather than a conversation among distinct media, the production presents the assimilation of varied materials to the cultural dominant. In this sense, Dance+Virtual=Virtual. (1999, p.38)
In Auslander’s view, the live performers are subsumed into the dominant feature, in this
case, the shifting digital projections. As a practitioner, this raises a challenge in terms of
creating an installation environment where there can be interdependencies between
performers and visual media, but in a relationship that need not always blur the distinctive
physicality of the performers’ bodies.
To open up this issue, Birringer (1998) highlights the potential for interdependencies when
he states that:
...[If] technology and bodies are seen in terms of flows of energy or intensity or as a fluid dynamics, then there is grounds for collaboration. (p.127)
Dinkla (2002), corroborates this when she proposes that in interactive performance
environments, performers act as part of a networked system:
The field is characterized by the inherent changeability as well as the impossibility of disentangling the interdependencies between the dancers, choreographer, musician, stage
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space and technological/digital systems, which are interconnected and subject to mutual influence. (p.22)
In Dinkla’s view, it seems that along with the notion of a fluid, reciprocally beneficial
relationship there is an inherent inextricability, a view somewhat similar to Auslander’s
‘fusion’ of elements mentioned earlier. Arnheim (1972), on the other hand, discusses the
issue of dominant feature in a theatrical setting from the perspective of visual perception
theory. In terms of ‘figure’ as the salient or foreground feature, and ‘ground’ as the less
salient feature or background of a visual field, a dancer in motion against a static backdrop
is seen
…in a hierarchical relationship of dependence…The dancer is seen as part of the stage setting, not the stage setting the outer rim of the dancer. (p.366)
The dancer in this kind of setting, clearly outlined against a motionless backdrop, is
perceived as the salient figure in a relationship of dependence to the ground. From the
perspective of creative practice, Arnheim’s quote takes on a shimmering quality for it
provides the inspiration from which to explore the idea of the screen and shifting digital
projections at times becoming, perhaps not the outer rim, but extensions of a performer’s
movement. The intention here is neither to refute Arnheim’s view nor to overturn vision
perception theories as such. Rather, it is an instance of theoretical views opening up
potential artistic ideas. Extension of a performer’s movement in a visual sense is possible,
for example, through wearable motion sensors that capture variables of the performer’s
movement such as speed or rotation, that are then translated to graphic representations on
the screen. Therefore, what is posited is not a denial of the figure-ground relationship, but
an impetus towards possible interdependence between the performer and projected visual
images.
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2.4.2 Notion of Sensuous Geography
To open up interdependencies beyond a relationship between performers and visual
media, it is necessary to take a wider account of experience. Rodaway (1994), refers to
sense experience as a ‘sensuous geography’, a spatial and temporal orientation he
describes as a ‘multisensual and multidimensional situatedness in space and in relationship
to places’ (p.4). Here the senses are taken to include the sensory modes of touch, taste,
smell, hearing and sight, as well as the wider dimension of kinesthetic and vestibular body
senses. Rodaway, however, observes a duality inherent in the word ‘sense’ in terms of
sensations and meaning:
The senses gather information but also contribute to the definition of that information, that is, participate in sense making. Sensuous geography, therefore, is an interaction with the environment both as given to the senses and as interpreted by the senses themselves in conjunction with the mind. (p.26)
This highlights the stance of practice-led research in terms of the nexus between theory
and practice, here seen as an interaction between immediate experience and the setting up
of mental constructs through which to understand experience. However, the notion of
sensuous geographies also enriches the idea of poetic felt space from a practical
perspective. For, if following Auslander and Dinkla there is a blurring of identities in
performances using visual projections and/or interactive technologies, then Rodaway’s
insights open up ways to expand sensuous dimensions beyond the visual mode.
Through ‘haptic geographies’ (Rodaway, 1994, p.41) or the sense of touch, the performers
focus on tactile experiences, such as grains of sand, flowing water or the fissured bark of a
tree, as a way to add tangible details and textures to their body movement and installation
space. Rodaway specifies four touch ranges (1994, p.53): ‘global touch’ as the sense of the
body in contact with an environment, for example, a surface, texture, pressure or
temperature; ‘reach touch’ as the body stretching out and exploring space; ‘imagined
touch’ as tactile experience embedded in past experiences or expectations; and ‘extended
touch’ as touch mediated by a tool, for example, motion sensors that amplify a
performer’s movement to graphic representations on the screen. While primarily a two-
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dimensional visual field, the projection screen itself potentially becomes an illusory tactile
surface of visual textures for the performers to inhabit.
In addition to tactile experience, Rodaway refers to auditory experience, or ‘auditory
geographies’ (1994, p.82), alerting attention to the vision metaphor inherent in the term
‘soundscape’. He connects this to the term ‘landscape’ that
…implicitly links the soundscape concept to traditions of painting and architecture, and ideas of linear perspective and the composed view or scene. In this visual tradition, the observer is detached, the image is static and is viewed from a privileged position. Auditory experience is far more dynamic and the sentient participates within a sonic environment. (p.86)
Sensuous Geographies (2003), conceptually inspired by Rodaway, is an immersive,
interactive installation by Sarah Rubidge and Alistair MacDonald that actively
experiments with the notion of sensuous, auditory geographies. Here, ‘sentients’, the
visitor-participants, don coloured cloaks and blindfolds, their movements triggering sonic
and visual effects via camera tracking and colour recognition software. Deprived of the
use of vision, participants explore the installation space by following their own emitted
sounds and those generated by the movements of others. In this way, the sensory
dimension is stimulated beyond the visual mode, the directional movement of the
participants creating a dynamic sonic environment. Yet, as the collective movements of
participants could be viewed as resulting in a spatial contouring of sounds, it may be
equally valid to say that they are contributing to, and participating within, a soundscape.
The notion of sonic environment is appropriate in terms of a multidirectional,
interweaving and layering of sounds, with variations in intensity, pitch and rhythm. The
visual connotation in soundscape, on the other hand, also has creative potential for it
implies a sculpting or structuring of sound in the manner of “hills” and “valleys”, growth
and decay, architectural surfaces, or different “scenes” unfolding over time. With
reference to the visual mode of experiencing however, particularly in installations
incorporating visual projections, the ‘image in motion will always capture your look,
inscribe you into a direction’ (Cubitt, 1998, p.121). The auditory space in contrast,
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perceived as a sonic environment and/or soundscape, offers both directional and
encompassing qualities. Situated within the enclosed environment of the Living Lens
installation space, it becomes possible to mould and shape sound towards a more tangible
immersive experience.
2.4.3 Immersive Space
Grau describes immersive spaces from a visual perspective as those ‘where the intention is
to install an artificial world that renders the image space a totality or at least fills the
observer’s entire field of vision’ (2003, p.13). He references illusionistic painting and
photographic techniques of the past, such as frescoes, frieze paintings and panoramas
where the viewer, integrated into a figurative or representational image space, is
positioned at the centre. Grau also refers to contemporary immersive spaces, such as
virtual reality environments where, for example, performers and/or viewers interact with a
computer-generated image world by way of head-mounted stereoscopic monitors or other
sensing techniques3. The aim of researchers into these environments, Grau states, is to
achieve a multi-sensory experience where
…simulated stereophonic sound, tactile and haptic impressions, and thermoreceptive and even kinaesthetic sensations will all combine to convey to the observer the illusion of being in a complex structured space of a natural world, producing the most intensive feeling of immersion possible. (p.15)
Given Grau’s distinctions, the Living Lens installation is only partially or semi immersive,
for both performers and viewers move through, or around, the projection surface rather
than being centrally positioned in a 360-degree image space or enveloped in a three-
dimensional digital environment.
However, Grau points to a possible immersion strategy in terms of the treatment of visual
elements, specifically the technique applied by Monet in his monumental diptychs and 3 Contemporary virtual worlds such as Internet-based Second Life, however, do not require sensing devices. Through a downloadable program, users create their own customised avatars, or digital personas, that allow them to interact with others, as well as create and trade items. This is also an immersive experience, with the creators, Linden Lab., regarding users as “residents” inhabiting a three-dimensional digital world.
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triptychs of water lilies and lakes. In these paintings, the horizon is removed to position
viewers within, as Grau states, ‘the watery scene, not “submerging” them in water, but
immersing them in an image space with indeterminate perspective: floating above the
water’s surface’ (p.142). I find this comment valuable for it reveals potential immersive
qualities in terms of the treatment and layering of textures rather than through depiction of
perspectival horizons.
Self-contained/distributed performance spaces
In positioning this research site, I find it useful to make a distinction between self-
contained and distributed immersive spaces. Specifically, self-contained immersive space
refers to an event situated within a single, physical space; while distributed, also referred
to as telematic4, immersive space refers to events networked via computers or the Internet
over multiple time-spaces, both physical and virtual. Parameters necessarily blur, for
example, distributed events can be seen as being both self-contained and distributed, while
self-contained events may involve various media being networked through computers.
However, in the context of a stand-alone installation in a single site, Living Lens is an
example of a self-contained immersive space. In both self-contained and distributed
spaces, immersive qualities occur through multiple digital projections and spatialised
sonic elements, with many artists employing interactive technologies that enable
performers and/or viewers to potentially influence the work in some way.
The Kyoto-based multimedia collective Dumb Type is a notable example of artists using
immersive approaches within a self-contained performance context through eclectic multi-
layered collages of digital imagery and electronic sounds. Media art critic, Yukiko
Shikata, claims that in Dumb Type’s work the performers
4 Telematic (adjective) or telematics (noun) is a broad term for computers networked with telecommunication systems. In telematic performances, artists and technical personnel collaborate remotely from different physical locations, transmitting live video feeds or data converted from body movements into sonic and/or graphic representations. In this way, the performance or movement occurs in various spaces or dimensions, for example, in physical space, in video or projected space and in virtual, or remote space.
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… function as mapping modules of the image machine and are permeated by its effects which are generated by connections and complicity between media technology and the real physical body subject to sensory experience. (2000, p.42)
In the piece entitled pH (1990), audience members look down into what seems like a huge
scanning machine, the performers perilously ducking under automated low-moving
trusses. In OR (1997), on the other hand, a rapid montage of digital images, stroboscopic
flashes of white-outs and periods of unrelenting electronic noise, generate a bleak and
alarming environment that is felt on both a retinal and a visceral level. Interspersed with
poignant and quirky moments, the total effect of a Dumb Type performance is a surreal,
multi-sensory experience where both performers and audience members are not only
immersed, but are ‘permeated’ by an intensity of visual and auditory information.
Escape Velocity (1999), the work of Melbourne-based new media ensemble Company in
Space, is a distributed piece involving two dancers located in remote sites performing the
same choreography. The two women become
…a composite dancer floating in a third space created by the overlaid projections, which included film footage of several outdoor locations (a forest, a desert)…a dialogue between spectral dancers mixed onto the pixilated, filtered and manipulated surface of the filmic space created by the projectors’. (Birringer, 2003, p.106)
Here, a multi-dimensional otherworldly quality emerges, the physical presences of the
performers co-existing with their simulated counterparts to create a wraith-like hybrid of
them both. Hellen Sky, co-founder of Company in Space and choreographer/dancer in
Escape Velocity, describes the feeling as an ‘expanded sensory perception of being
present, and giving presence to both physical and virtual worlds’ (2005, p.11). In this way,
immersion in an embodied, physical space extends into the immaterial realm of virtual or
data space. The Light Room (2002) incorporates dance, live music, spoken text, lighting
and digital projections in an interactive set design of luminescent glass. Although not
distributed in the sense of being connected to remote sites, this piece however, also
involves an interaction of physical and virtual dimensions. Reminiscent of a hall of
dreams, the piece is described on the Company in Space website as an, ‘immersive filmic
opera’, a ‘transcending of art into the realm of poetics of technology’. Responding to my
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e-mail query as to what sense a ‘poetics of technology’ is here implied, Hellen Sky states:
I suppose here the idea that technology alone is not able to transform something into a poetic experience - it is in the space in between the creation - the creativity, the ideas that evolve the experience becomes the medium, that the combination of the technological system and the creative imaginative which then uses it alchemically can shape the experience of the work, can be taken to another realm, into the poetic realm - 'the poetics of technology'. (Sky, 2006, August 23)
I find these comments insightful for it becomes possible to consider immersive space not
only in terms of physical and virtual spaces, technological systems, or creative outcomes,
but further beyond to a creative in-between space that actively shapes and transforms
experience. In this way, the intuitive realm of poetic felt space finds resonances with
Hellen Sky’s notion of a ‘poetics of technology’, in both an embodied, as well as
metaphysical, sense.
2.4.4 Performers as inhabitants
‘Shared Sensibility’: Biped
A prime example of artists whose work can be considered in light of a ‘poetics of
technology’ is renowned choreographer, Merce Cunningham, an early pioneer in
collaborations of dance performance and technology. Whereas Living Lens investigates
the nature of intentionally interdependent connections between performers and media,
Cunningham’s oft-cited approach randomly brings together elements of movement, sound
and stage décor which are developed independently, only coming together near or at the
time of the public presentation. This, however, is not simply an arbitrary arrangement of
elements, but is developed through a ‘shared sensibility’ (Copeland, 2004, p.9) among the
collaborative artists involved in a particular work.
A significant example of this ‘shared sensibility’ is the 1999 piece entitled Biped, a
collaboration with digital artists Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser. In this piece, movements
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of the dancers were first motion-captured5; this information was then translated as hand-
drawn humanoid and abstract animations and later projected onto a large transparent scrim
across the proscenium in front of the dancers. The scrim created a shifting, floating realm
of live bodies and their doubled, virtual selves, the dancers seemingly materialising from
booths located at the rear of the stage. The device of abstraction, which in Biped involved
the human figure, was investigated in Living Lens through the abstraction of plant and
organic textures rather than the human form. Abstracting and layering textures in this way
reflects my interest in bringing a painterly sensibility to dealing with technology. In Biped,
the sketched figural outlines in motion juxtaposed with the movement and bodies of the
live dancers, also displays characteristics of “living painting” approaches, outlined earlier
in this chapter. Furthermore, the use of frontal scrim adds to a sense of inhabited theatrical
space, the projected animations at times appearing as external armatures of the live
dancers. In an essay on Biped, Kaiser (2000) states that chance operations were used for
deciding sequencing of animations, the projections and dancers uniting for the first time at
the premiere night. As a result of these chance operations, one dancer appeared ‘haloed in
a projection of her own motion capture’, a feeling Kaiser states she later described as if
she were dancing inside herself. This sheds light on the dancer’s connection to her virtual
body, where rather than being perceived as something “other” or outside of self, this entity
– that she herself had generated – becomes an extended periphery of her own live body.
Hence a sense of inhabited space occurs not only in context of the stage environment as a
whole, but through an embodied perception of self inhabiting “self”. For Kaiser, it was
important that the connection between the dancers and their virtual counterparts remain
credible. As he notes, they
took care never to lose the underlying perception of real and plausible human movement. A case in point: when our stick figure leaped, its various lines were flung upward in the air, then gathered back together on landing. While no human body could do this, you could still feel the human motion underlying the abstraction. (Kaiser, 2000)
5 Originally developed in biomechanics research, motion capture is a technique used in computer animation that digitally records body movement such as position, range of motion, velocity and acceleration, via markers worn on specific parts of the body.
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Thus, while at times the animations transformed into abstract dots and lines, there was a
perceived need to maintain anthropomorphic or dancer-like aspects of these virtual bodies
in order for the connection to be understood. The transparent scrim played a crucial role in
the illusion of dancers and visual projections co-inhabiting three-dimensional space yet the
piece was still framed in a conventional proscenium arch environment. An immersive
installation, on the other hand, requires that performers, audience members and technical
elements inhabit the same environment at the same time, thus to a more tangible, physical
sense of inhabited three-dimensional space.
Impact of technology: The Builders Association
Whilst Biped incorporated motion-capture technology, this was a technique used in the
pre-production stage; in the actual production, however, no real time interactive link
occurred between the dancers and their projected counterparts. In contrast, many
contemporary performance groups actively integrate interactive components into their
productions, where performers have a role in triggering, manipulating or affecting sonic
and/or visual events. The Builders Association is a performance and media group directed
by Marianne Weems that uses a combination of live performance, sound, video, text and
architectural elements. There is a distinct televisual quality to their work where multiple
images and architectural simulations are projected onto large-scale rectangular backdrops,
the performers operating functions on computer desks or speaking directly into cameras,
in an approach that exposes the mechanisms of the mediation between the live and virtual
bodies. In this way, relationships between performers and media are effectively opened up
for observation.
A further method of The Builders Association is the use of narrative-based structures that
explore the impact of technology on humans. One example is the 2005 work, Super
Vision, created in collaboration with dbox design studio. This piece incorporates live
actors, computer music and digital animation techniques in the attempt to make tangible
the invisible aspects of the data world of surveillance and information. Here, there is a
multiplying of bodies; the physical bodies with virtual “data” bodies, whilst projections of
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simulated rooms further add to the sense of the performers as co-inhabitants of the virtual
or data space. In this kind of mise en scène, therefore, the live performers seem fully
integrated into the mediated environment. Weems (2005), however, points to a further
characteristic of their work that arouses my curiosity in terms of interdependencies
between the live performers. In her view, the emphasis is on the individual isolation of
each performer, for as she states:
In every performance, in all of our shows, for me it is about the performers being really isolated physically, but we are mediating them electronically and so what the audience sees is the network that is joining them all. (Weems, 2005)
In this approach the network of relationships is exposed to viewers, yet it requires that the
performers themselves maintain physical isolation from one another, where addressing or
interacting with each another occurs only through the projected visual imagery and
mediated counterparts. While in some ways this highlights the alienating effects of
technology on the individual, it is certainly a provocative approach, particularly given
performance conventions that depend implicitly on direct connections made between the
physical performers. As Living Lens was designed as an immersive installation and the
relationship was one of interdependencies, interaction occurred between the performers
themselves as well as between the performers and the mediated elements.
Relationship of organic and electronic: Troika Ranch
An example of a company that also incorporates both inter-performer relationships and
performer-technology relationships is Troika Ranch, a dance theatre company directed by
Dawn Stoppiello and Mark Coniglio. Deep ongoing research into human gesture and the
potential for interactive manipulation and control has resulted in the development of
original software and hardware, including MidiDancer and Isadora6. On their website
Stoppiello and Coniglio state their aim for the media elements to possess the vitality and
6 MidiDancer is wireless sensory bodysuit that tracks multiple points on the dancer’s body to measure flexion and extension of different body parts. This movement data is then transmitted to Isadora, a graphic programming environment that receives information from various sensory devices for real time control and manipulation of visual and sonic elements, lighting and robotic set pieces.
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live-ness of the actual dancers themselves, yet claiming that the ‘linkage of body and
technology highlights the uneasy relationship between the organic and the electronic’
(Troika Ranch, n.d.), a central theme in their work. Whilst Troika Ranch actively seeks
complex interactions with technology, the suggestion here is that this relationship involves
discomfort and uncertainty.
The nature of how human or organic gesture can be mapped to electronic media formats is
one that is constantly explored in Troika Ranch’s works. In an interview (2002) Coniglio
uses a biological metaphor to explain this relationship:
In the past I have referred to our technology as “parasitic”, in the sense that it feeds off of the live performer, and cannot survive without the host. But this parasitic relationship goes both directions: do we modify the movement of a dancer who is being monitored to satisfy the needs of the technology that is reacting to her movement? The answer is yes, but, and I feel this is important, not unconsciously. We try to be hyper-aware of the ways in which we are accommodating the technology that we choose to make use of, so that these limitations inform the piece itself. (Coniglio, 2002)
These comments certainly convey a sense of unease, for rather than being seen as
symbiotic or mutually beneficial, there is the feeling of a reciprocal depletion of energies.
In contrast, however, Troika Ranch further details this relationship through the analogy of
“instrument” and here an image emerges of the dancer learning to “play” the interactive
components in an extension of her/his own body movement. Given the various graphic
and sonic parameters that are controlled through body gesture and movement, dancers
need time to practice with these devices. A concern here for Troika Ranch is the extent
audience members are cognisant of the instrumental nature of this practice (Broadhurst,
2007, p.120) and whether connections between the various triggered events and body
gestures are perceptible or coherent.
From an array of works by Troika Ranch investigating this linkage between the body and
technology, 16[R]evolutions (2006) focuses on a single evolutionary path that explores
‘similarities and differences between human and animal and the evolutions that both go
through in a single lifetime’ (Broadhurst, 2007, 126-127). Here performers’ gestures
influence 3D visual imagery, such as all-enveloping breathing ribcages and ribbon-like
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strands of DNA, to convey the idea of evolutionary change. The creators state on their
website that their aim was for the virtual elements to be ‘more “animal” than the
characters onstage’ (Troika Ranch, n.d.) in a questioning of whether it is possible to
connect basic needs of survival to so-called higher evolving forms of life. Thus there is a
perceived need for the electronic elements to take on greater attributes of the organic,
possibly to a domain where the ‘uneasy’ linkage of bodies and technology moves from
relations between human and animal, to similarities and distinctions between organic and
artificial life forms. Although the specific focus of Troika Ranch is on the uneasy linkage
of bodies and technology, my interest in their work is the idea of technology taking on
greater attributes of the organic. In my background in body movement and visual arts
practice, organic metaphors and textures and have been at the forefront of my creative
process. Troika Ranch’s approach, therefore, resonates with my own exploration into
more seamless connections between natural and mediated contexts.
The examples given above help both frame and differentiate the approaches of Living Lens
in relation to several key issues. Specifically, the need for a shared sensibility between
collaborative participants and between the performers and the media, as well as the issue
of perceptibility, particularly in case of Living Lens where visual images are not virtual
bodies in the sense of anthropomorphic or humanoid entities, but rather form an abstract
tapestry-like environment where any interactive relationship may be more difficult to
discern. In addition, Living Lens is located in an installation environment and not in a
proscenium or seated auditorium that perhaps sites performers against more clearly
identifiable backdrops.
2.5 Summary
This Contextual Review presents a set of lenses through which to view the processes and
practice of the work Living Lens, thereby locating it within a wider frame of reference. An
experiential sense of living lens implies recognition of, and receptivity to, the lived,
ongoing flow of experience. The notion of poetic felt space attempts to capture the
embodied and metaphysical dimensions of the work, whilst also providing a paradigm
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through which practice is emergent. As such, it enables the setting up of conceptual or
theoretical lenses through which to articulate practice. Addressing the issue of visual
dominance by positing interdependencies between performing bodies, visual and sonic
media, Living Lens is conceived as a “living painting”, where performers inhabit the sonic
spaces and “skin” of the projected visual imagery. Examples of artists and groups using
digital technologies in live performance help shed light on the nature of collaboration and
issues related to live bodies in mediated environments. To further position the work within
an emergent and iterative context, it is necessary to discuss the development of Living
Lens through the lenses of previous works, discussed in the following chapter.
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CHAPTER 3 - From Patchwork in Motion to Living Lens
An idea nurtured in minds and bodies is passed from one to another by a process of variation (embellishment or modification), selection (chosen or remembered), adaptation (editing, or elimination)… Processes involving both thought and action unfold in time. Substantial achievement is the result of the blossoming of ideas, the selective success and further evolution of some of these ideas and the dying away or editing out of others. (McKechnie, 2005, p.85)
3.1 Introduction The main focus of the creative process in this study is the exploration of performing
bodies within imaginary visual and sonic worlds facilitated through digital media.
Iterations of this process include an earlier work entitled Test-patches (2001-2003),
followed by Patchwork in Motion (2005), undertaken as part of my Master of Arts studies.
The subsequent extraction of one fragment of the work entitled Living Lens (2005-6)
facilitates a focus on a microcosm of the creative process and is also a means of
determining criteria for further development in the upgrade to doctoral studies.
3.1.1 Generating diverse structures: the notion of “patch” as modular segment
As stated in the Contextual Review chapter (see p. 32), Auslander highlights a key
concern in the perceived tendency for visual images in motion to become more compelling
than the movements of the performers whose physicality is often subsumed by the visual
media. The intention in the earlier works was to open up this issue by generating a
diversity of performer-media experiences through a series of short performance segments.
To clarify, the use of the word “patch” does not refer to computer code or to linked
modules in sound and graphics programs as such. Rather, along with the word
“patchwork”, the two terms were engaged as metaphors to create a non-linear assemblage
of juxtaposing contrasts or moods, yet with no central, predominant motif. While this
approach echoes the rapid switching and short attention span of channel-surfing, it also
reflects the manipulation and combinatory possibilities of digital media, for as Birringer
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states, ‘the velocity of digital video also brings concepts of non-linear editing to the
practice of composition and scenography’ (2003, p.95). Developing scenes as segments
enabled an exploration of diverse relationships between visual images, electronic sounds
and body movement derived from ballet, contemporary dance, mime and butoh. Ordering
of the segments necessitated taking into account not only artistic options in terms of
associative connections and overall compositional structure, but also logistical concerns,
such as costume changes, performer energy levels and the technical preparation required
for each segment. While Test-patches was composed as a series of brief vignettes or
“patches” developed around a particular mood or theme, the patch metaphor was actively
extended in Patchwork in Motion where scenes, reminiscent of fragments in a patchwork
quilt, are joined together as subsystems in an interconnected fabric or network. The
fascination here was in the creation of larger structures from smaller ones, for open,
mobile spaces to be added onto and/or reconfigured. Whilst an actual patchwork quilt is a
two-dimensional static form, a stage space comprising performers and audio-visual media
operates within kinetic and dynamic spatial and temporal dimensions. As such, the
compositional structure can be thought of as a patchwork in motion.
Both Test-patches and Patchwork in Motion appropriated a cinematic editing style in,
what I have termed, a “living filmstrip” approach. This played out temporally in the live
presentations as a series of segments of varying duration and rhythm within a continuum.
In terms of the creative process, the scenes were composed in the manner of a series of
action “shots”. However, where a specific cinematic aim may be for a seamlessness that
conceals or dissolves the edges of shots to create the illusion of uninterrupted sequences,
the intention in the live staging was for a sequencing sufficiently fluid to sustain the
patchwork in motion, yet that also ensured the marks of its construction – its patchwork
structure – were not effaced in the process.
3.1.2 Immersive imaging: developing technical tools In addition to the patchwork structure explored in Patchwork in Motion, a further aspect of
the process included immersive dimensions of the visual imagery. Immersive imaging, in
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the form of panoramic paintings, tapestries and murals were used in times past to represent
the visual qualities of landscape. Contemporary digital software tools further enhance
possibilities for creating visual representations not only imbued with aspects of landscape,
but imaginary worlds of geometric shapes and abstract representations, surface texturing,
lighting and motion. While there is a range of commercially available motion graphics
tools, what has emerged through ongoing practice using visual media in live performance,
is the need for a customised program with the capacity for transforming a variety of visual
textures, including still images, into kinetic three-dimensional digital space. Thus, in
collaboration with visual artist, Tetsutoshi Tabata, and media programmer, Takahisa
Sasaki, I have been contributing ideas and visual input towards the ongoing development
of the XV3 software. As mentioned in the previous chapter, this is a graphics program
with a growing palette of visual textures and effects that can be used to compose images
as three-dimensional objects and render these images on the fly. This program has enabled
great flexibility in exploring a wide variety of graphic images and textures in relationship
with the performing body.
In addition to graphics software development, Tetsutoshi Tabata and I have been
collaborating with Dr. Junji Watanabe, a cognitive scientist, on wearable motion sensors
to connect a performer’s movement to the imaging system. These sensors are modified
wireless pointing devices normally used as presentation tools where subtle hand gestures
in mid-air activate the control of various effects. The application of these sensors as
human motion tracking devices enables the sensing and measurement of a performer’s
movement such as body angle and rotation. This data is then converted to the digital data
exchange protocol MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) and sent to the XV3
imaging system (Fig. 4).
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Fig. 4
Wireless sensor measures data from rotation/body angle, which is then converted to MIDI and sent to the XV3 imaging system.
Via MIDI, it becomes possible to link body movement to visual as well as sonic elements.
To date, these sensors have been used on single points on a performer’s body such as
wrists, hips or upper back. This contrasts to more complex wireless sensing systems such
as the MidiDancer system developed by dance theatre group Troika Ranch (described on
p. 41) which measures joint flexion of up to eight points on a performer’s body. However,
it is the interest in this project to explore an immersive space where visual or sound media
only at times become responsive to performer movement through technological devices.
The concern here is rather with the visual and sound artists responsible for the live
manipulation of the media as being co-agents in the creation of the work.
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3.1.3 Black and white imagery: Test-patches In the informing piece, Test-patches, black and white imagery was used to minimalise
visual information. As the natural world is generally perceived in colour, typical visual
associations may have been suspended, while the use of bold computer-modelled
geometric shapes and sharply defined areas of darkness and light, facilitated high contrast
visual environments that masked, highlighted or immersed the performer. In a scene
entitled “Barcode” (Fig. 5; see DVD under Test-patches movie files), alternating black
and white gratings of varying widths create a vertical venetian-blind effect.
Fig. 5
“Barcode”: Shifting black and white gratings both mask and highlight the performer.
The black-costumed performer is partially viewed between the shifting gratings while
multiple cast shadows complicate the task of distinguishing the actual performer. A
similar masking effect is achieved in the scene “Montage” (See DVD under Test-
patches movie files) through successive white squares that frame different body parts of
the three performers in a tight synchronisation of choreographed body movement to
prerecorded visuals and sound. A synchronisation of body movement to visual image also
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occurs in a scene entitled “Liquid Dream” (Fig. 6; see DVD under Test-patches movie
files), where liquid Chinese-ink ripple effects are created in response to the hand
movements of performers wearing motion sensors on their wrists.
Fig. 6
“Liquid Dream”: Motion sensors on wrist create ripple effects.
Although these liquid effects are computer-generated images rather than actual water, the
fluid nature of water, even in its virtual form, makes it difficult to ascertain whether the
movements of the performer are the source of successive ripples. Thus, while the
connection between body gesture and visual image may initially appear coherent, it
becomes increasingly ambiguous. “Liquid Dream”, together with other scenes outlined
here from Test-patches, are several amid an accumulative assemblage of thirteen scenes.
These were shaped and developed collaboratively between dancers, choreographers, visual
artists and programmers, through the sketching out of different concepts based around a
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visual design, a mood, a body movement or an interactive idea, all unified through the
black and white aesthetic.
3.1.4 Colour and texture: Patchwork in Motion In the next iteration, Patchwork in Motion, I engaged the metaphor of patchwork to further
generate a range of performer-media experiences. While patchwork, or quilting, implies a
piece-meal construction of repeating elements, each element need not be homogeneous
but can be of varying size, shape, colour or texture. Hence, colour and texture played a
vital role for extending possibilities for variation and variegation.
While high contrast visual effects were achieved through light and shadow in Test-
patches, the aim in Patchwork in Motion was to create contrast through an emphasis on
visual textures, including organically derived or inspired textures. Texture, as applied
here, refers to the way visual images can be used in combination, for example, through
multi-layering or montage of visual elements in a single scene, or temporally through
juxtapositions of visual images from one scene to the next. Although not consisting of
actual physical materials, these images, as virtual textures, could evoke a sense of tactility.
For the original “Living Lens” fragment (see DVD under Patchwork in Motion movie
files), I opted to recycle previous material through digitising slides I had made many years
ago using oil paints and natural fibres (Fig. 7) as a way to imbue the projected imagery
with an organic, painterly quality.
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Fig. 7
Digitally scanned slide containing plant fibres and painted textures.
Simulation of the lens effect was initially created in After Effects software (Fig. 8) as a
pre-recorded image. After trials with the pre-recorded lenses using various textures in the
studio, Takahisa Sasaki subsequently programmed the lens effect as a real time object in
the imaging system XV3 (Fig. 9).
I initially coined the term “body-as-texturiser”, as a means to explore the way projected
visual textures can appear to intensify or be modified by performer movement by way of
interactive devices. Here I revisited the scene “Liquid Dream” (Fig. 10; see DVD under
Patchwork in Motion movie files), where watery ripple effects correspond to performers’
hand movements via motion sensors.
Fig. 8 Simulated lens effect in After Effects
software.
Fig. 9 Performers with projected lens effect using
XV3 imaging system.
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Fig. 10
“Liquid Dream ver.02”. Motion sensors on wrist create ripple effects and red brushstroke effect.
In this scene, a further visual layer was developed where the two performers had the
option of a nebulous red brushstroke effect through expansive, circular movements of their
hands. Thus, in contrast to the initial version of “Liquid Dream”, where correspondence
between the visual media and performers’ gestures was left ambiguous, the relationship in
the later version became more tangibly coherent.
In “Signal” (Fig. 11; see DVD under Patchwork in Motion movie files), on the other
hand, a performer wears a sensor on the back that generates a linear cubic structure that
expands, contracts and rotates with his breathing and upper body movements. In this
scene, a notable influence in terms of performer-stage spatial relationships derives from
the theatre of the Bauhaus, specifically Oskar Schlemmer’s notion of an abstract stage
space consisting of an imaginary network of lines in both ‘mathematical’ cubical space
(Fig. 12) and ‘organic’ circular space (1996, pp.23-24).
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Fig. 11
“Signal”: The projected cubic structure expands, contracts and rotates via motion sensor
worn on the performer’s back.
Fig. 12
Oskar Schlemmer’s human figure and ‘invisible’ linear spatial delineations.
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Whilst Schlemmer experimented with representations of lines and spatial volumes through
geometric costumes and body extensions in theatrical performances such as the Triadic
Ballet (1922), in “Signal” the projected grid-like structure immersed the performer in an
illusory cubic space, which via the motion sensor, became a virtual spatial extension of his
movement. In a further scene, entitled “Relief” (see DVD under Patchwork in Motion
movie files), a different means was used to extend the performer’s movement. Here, a
camera tracking system captured the performer’s silhouette, enabling the projection of
multiple reflections of his body transmitted with a degree of time delay. This created a
bas-relief effect as an overlay of visual impressions on the projection surface. The
examples given here illustrate how a performer can interactively shape the visual layers,
thereby becoming a living “texturiser”, inhabiting and affecting the visual environment.
3.2 Focusing on a microcosm: Living Lens
3.2.1 Towards a fluid continuum: from “living filmstrip” to “living painting” The extraction of Living Lens from Patchwork in Motion, as the creative title and focus of
the research area in the creative development phase of this study, is a means to explore the
idea of worlds within worlds. This contrasts to the previous method of generating diversity
through the creation of larger structures from a series of smaller ones. In Living Lens,
temporal ordering shifts from the earlier patchwork approach of juxtaposed fragments, to a
more fluid, layered continuum. With the aim of evoking a three-dimensional living
painting, the work incorporates photographic and hand-painted textures, computer-
modelled imagery and a textured palette of sounds. The performers in this setting are
perceived as “inhabitants” endowing the visual and sonic installation with kinesthetic,
sculptural qualities. At times camouflaged as transparent entities against the projected
visual surface, they are also revealed as distinct physical presences. Identification with
organic life processes becomes the commonality linking body, visuals and sound, in terms
of microscopic forms and sensations, the forces of growth and decay, and in the
transformation of one movement, visual image or sonic phase to the next.
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3.2.2 Developing criteria for analysis and further creative development For initial creation of the scene “Living Lens” performed as part of Patchwork in Motion,
I gathered a catalogue of images and photographs that encapsulated the symbolic
metaphor of magnification and the paradox of seen and unseen perspectives. The notion of
lens brings the inner or micro world to the external, or macro, world and at the same time,
it is a window showing worlds within worlds. Apart from my initial handmade slides, the
image that best epitomised the effect I wanted to achieve was of a spider in amber (Fig.
13) which, as a fossilised life form, represents suspension and stillness in time, while also
evoking for me, a world within a world. An additional image was that of a chrysalis (Fig.
14) representing transformation, in-between realms, and the paradox of seen and unseen.
These images were catalysts for directly exploring body movement, visual and sonic
possibilities, yet they also became the basis for a conceptual language from which to distil
possible criteria for assessing and developing the work.
Fig. 13
Spider in amber
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Fig. 14
Chrysalis
From the initial fragment of “Living Lens”, I extracted various criteria for artistic analysis.
These included the idea of inner and outer worlds as the seen and unseen, and the theme of
transformation in the cycle of nature in terms of birth, growth and decay. Analysis of
video documentation revealed that the cyclical notion of life was reflected in the curved
and spiral movements of the two dancers and the two circular lens objects projected onto
the screens, while qualities of glow and luminance were present in the visual imagery and
stage lighting. However, I observed that for further development of “Living Lens”, I
needed to address the following: the idea of decay or rupture in the cycle of nature, the
notion of transformation and transition in terms of body, visuals and sound, and the notion
of seen and unseen. Furthermore, I wished to explore the idea of worlds within worlds,
with projection surfaces beyond the frame of the planar screens used in Patchwork in
Motion.
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3.3 Living Lens: creative development
3.3.1 Context of Accented Body Project With Living Lens now the title of the work and no longer a fragment, I will henceforth
refer to it in italicised form. Living Lens is situated within the Accented Body project, an
interdisciplinary, site-specific performative event conceived and directed by my
supervisor, Associate Professor Cheryl Stock, as a collaboration involving international
and local artists. The initial creative development of artists in residence took place from
the end of November to mid December 2005, with a live showing held on December 17.
The second development took place from June to July 2006, with performances held on
July 15-17 as part of the 2006 Brisbane Festival. The placing of Living Lens within the
context of a larger body guaranteed that the research did not occur in isolation. The project
was thus set within a community of practice, surrounded by peers working differently in
similar areas, thereby ensuring opportunities for relevant dialogue and feedback.
Furthermore, the context of Accented Body provided access to a level of human, financial
and technical resources normally difficult to organise or obtain in independent arts
practice.
3.3.2 Collaborative team
The project team for the initial Australia-based creative development of Living Lens
comprised familiar and new participants. My role in this process was chiefly as creative
director, as well as contributing to visual source material through organic, hand-painted
and photographic textures. Familiar participants include Tetsutoshi Tabata, in the role of
visual media coordinator, and Takahisa Sasaki, as media programmer of the imaging
system XV3. New participants included Elise May, Ko-Pei Lin and Richard Causer,
contemporary dance artists with emerging choreographic practices. Choreographic ability
was an important requirement for participating in the collaboration, for as my own
background is in experimental theatre and somatic body movement processes, it was
essential to work with dancers that could introduce their own choreographic devices to the
shaping of movement material. In order to bring in sound artists as part of an
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interdisciplinary team, I sought the advice of Greg Jenkins, lecturer in the Music and
Sound discipline of the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of
Technology (QUT). At his suggestion, I sent out a brief calling for sound creators
interested in a collaboration involving body movement, visual and sound media. The two
respondents to the brief were Luke Lickfold, a student in Communication Design
exploring computer filtering processes, and Matt de Boer, an acoustic musician. Thus,
with initial collaborative participants finalised, it became possible to continue the
exploration of body movement, visual and sonic media.
3.3.3 Towards an immersive installation Patchwork in Motion involved short investigations of diverse relationships between visual
media and the performing body in a sequencing of non-linear juxtapositions. A stage set
comprising three planar screens and seated audience with a fixed viewing position allowed
for highly visible presentations of the performing body and visual projections. For the next
iteration of my research, I was seeking a more fluid sequencing and an exploration of
worlds within worlds. I felt that a solution to this was a shift away from the planar screen
configuration and seated audience, to an installation environment with the viewer posited
as an ambulatory presence with a shifting point of view.
My initial idea for Living Lens was for an immersive environment with continuous
streams of projections occurring on the walls and floor surfaces of the venue, rather than
projected onto multiple rectilinear screens. This idea approached the notion of immersive
space as a 360-degree field of vision, as stated by Grau in the Contextual Review chapter
(see p.35). However, as this proved technically impossible due to projection angles and
distance factors, I proposed an ovoid screen object, a configuration comprising two
concave arcs enclosing an inner space with openings at each end. This design conceptually
represented both the circular shape of a lens and the cycles of life, while the egg shape
symbolically reflected the nurturing structure of a cocoon or chrysalis. However, this
design also proved technically difficult in terms of positioning the video projectors. Matt
de Boer, a musician who is also an installation artist, proposed opening the two arcs of the
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ovoid, setting them length to length in a line consisting of concave and convex arcs.
Tetsutoshi Tabata, the visual media coordinator, calculated the projector distances and
angles required for a continuous stream of imagery using three projectors: two projecting
onto the surface of one side of the screen object, the third projecting onto the other. By
tweaking the arcs, he found that a smoother undulating configuration could work
technically. I found this solution also echoed the wave-like, serpentine forms found in
nature (Fig. 15). For a complete schematic of the screen object, please see Fig.16.
Fig. 15
Creative development, November 2005: Elise May (left) and Ko-Pei Lin working in the The Loft, QUT, with plan (in progress) of proposed screen projected in the background.
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Fig.16
Floor plan of S-curve projection screen with calculation of projectors angles.
(Marked in green: 3 x horizontal and 2 x down projections.) Designed by Tetsutoshi Tabata.
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3.3.4 Component “lenses”: body, visuals, sound
Body “lens”: Butoh and Image induction Butoh plays with time; it also plays with perspective, if we, humans, learn to see things from the perspective of an animal, an insect, or even inanimate objects. The road everyday is alive…we should value everything. Tatsumi Hijikata, co-founder of butoh (Viala and Masson-Sekine, 1988, p.65)
An important method in my practice is the use of visual images and poetic fragments to
evoke or inspire movement. As a performance artist based in Japan in the early 1990s for
the study of the dance-theatre form butoh, my practice in the area of body movement has
largely been informed by the use of visual imagery. Tatsumi Hijikata, co-founder of
butoh, created his own system of butoh-fu (commonly translated in English as “dance
notation”), which involved the use of visual sources as the inspiration for movement.
Working from an inner sensing, there is a watching and listening of the “inner eye” or
mirror. The body is a receptacle or vessel, a deep resource of gathered gestures,
movements and entities imagined to be “sleeping” inside the subconscious, for example,
memories of the muscles and cells; childhood memories; memories of the womb; spirits of
the living and dead; natural phenomena; primordial and non-human vegetable, animal or
mineral states.
To access this resource or inner well, images are induced through a kind of poetry. Word
streams and disjointed particles of words, often from nature, provide the inspiration rather
than the form for movement. A performer does not just imagine or try to express
something, but rather seeks to excavate a quality, image or state deep inside the body as a
receptacle of time. Through training in this way, a performer may become aware of a
deeper physiological and psychological sense. At times, in this kind of training, one feels
in control, at other times it is a struggle, whilst at other moments, one submits or abandons
oneself to what arises or is aroused, not through mimicry, but by allowing these entities
and qualities to become manifest. Tatsumi Hijikata would describe this process through
poetic metaphors, for example, as a person descending by means of a ladder into the well
of his/her own body in order to ‘drink’ its water (Hijikata, 2000b, p.51). One learns
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through practice to objectify the body and in this way, it becomes possible to manipulate
the body to “transform” into various entities, states or characters. Excerpts of Hijikata’s
butoh-fu, which I have adapted from the transcriptions of his student Yukio Waguri’s CD-
Rom entitled Butoh Kaden (Waguri, 1998), include the idea of nerves extending from the
body, flower petals curling up from the hip or the skin as the deeply fissured bark of a tree
filled with crawling insects. These excerpts of the butoh-fu are given in Appendix 4.
As a movement-based artist, my approach has been influenced and inspired by the
philosophical aspects of butoh, yet the attempt here is neither to make presumptions
about Hijikata’s choreographic processes nor to emulate any of the distinctive forms
established by himself or his students. Rather, his words have been used as way to induce
or evoke movement. While I was interested in using images adapted from Hijikata, I was
also seeking an Australian context in which to explore this image-based approach and
hence selected excerpts from the three-part poem entitled Flesh, by Judith Wright. What I
find particularly evocative in her imagery is the identification of the bodily, sensory world
with stages of plant growth and decay, for example, the hand as something wild which
pivots and withers on the stalk of the wrist, or the head as an unfolding bud shaped of
flesh and blood (Wright, 1974, pp.145-146). There are undercurrents of tension in her
image-making that I find similar to Hijikata’s butoh-fu, where the correspondence of the
body to natural processes is not only one of harmonious unfurling expansion, but also a
curving, twisting contraction to an inner, perhaps more psychological state. Inspired by
butoh, my view of the poetic includes distortion and rupture; aspects of which I thought
could be explored through Wright’s poem. Excerpts of this poem are given in Appendix 5.
The preliminary workshop with performers Elise May, Ko-Pei Lin and Richard Causer,
involved the use of poetic text fragments and visual images to provide the inspiration for
exploring movement. Graphic images included the spider encased in amber and chrysalis
mentioned earlier, while the initial poetic texts were the excerpts from Wright’s poem.
The first task was to create a two to three minute exploration, or “microdance”, based on
the images or poetic text. For Ko-Pei, it was the image of the spider in amber that was the
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initial catalyst for her exploration, with an additional photograph of unfurling fern fronds
that subsequently inspired tendril-like qualities. For Richard, the excerpt from “The Hand”
section of Wright’s poem led to an exploratory focus on the spinal area with arms moving
independently to the rest of the body, while detailed movements of the back and scapula
area created a contoured, body “landscape” or topography. For Elise, it was the
combination of a line from “The Face” section of Wright’s poem referring to the notion of
life stinging deeply, and her daily life situation of moving house and packing things into
boxes, that developed into an exploration of multiple faces meandering in and out of the
spaces or “compartments” created by different shapes of her body. These examples were
early explorations in movement workshops, where the performers improvised movement
material in response to the images provided by my directives. Excerpts of the workshop
exercises used in the initial creative development are given in Appendices 6 to 8.
Texture and Space As an expansion of the notion of body-as-texturiser, I was interested in ways to heighten
awareness of space and texture. This, I felt, was a useful way to deal with the research
concern of shifting the dominance of the projected visual media, for in an immersive
environment, performers could easily be overshadowed by the visuals. Engaging with
external space involved the idea of sculpting space with the body as well as texturing
space with qualities of temperature, density or fluidity. In the sense of Hijikata’s interior
well, or “inner landscape” of the body, work centered around the idea of moving
materials, such as sand, water, oil or honey, through different parts of the body. Here, I
found the notion of ‘graining’ by American modern dancer/choreographer, Alwin
Nikolais, an effective method to experience the flow of textures through the body. This
method was of particular interest as Nikolais himself was an early pioneer of multimedia
performance who explored physical space and dance movement through projected images,
lighting, sound collages, costume and set design. In the principle of graining, the body is
conceived as filled with imaginary particles of varying density, the dancer thus projecting
these particles towards a point or part of the body, or further extending the stream
outwards into external space (Nikolais and Louis, 2005, p.13). The intent here was for a
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heightened awareness of the subtleties of movement, as well as the extension of the body
to further sensuous dimensions created by the visual and sonic textures.
Visual “lens” In contrast to the earlier works where performers appeared in front of rectangular screens,
the projection surface with its curvilinear configuration becomes an environment for the
performers to inhabit (Fig. 17).
Fig. 17
Creative development, December 2005: screen object installed in a curvilinear configuration.
Visual images are programmed to move continuously across the double-sided surface and
in this way the screen becomes a kind of a “living” body. An installed sculptural object, it
is animated through the kinetic motion and movement of the visuals and performers.
Through multiple overlaying of images, layers can be added and removed as membranes,
or “skins”, concealing or revealing innermost depths. In terms of the performer
interactively influencing these layers, Tetsutoshi Tabata, Takahisa Sasaki and I developed
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two applications for use with the motion sensors. The first was a variation of the
brushstroke effect previously developed in Patchwork in Motion. When the performer,
Ko-Pei Lin, twirled her wrist in expansive curves, a white brushstroke effect became a
ribbon-like visualisation of the graining method, while simultaneously erasing a line
through the coloured layer of the visual imagery. In the second instance, a particle effect
was programmed to respond to the breathing and upper body movements of the performer,
Elise May. Here, the particles created tiny holes in the surface layer, revealing the
“innards” or underlying texture. These two examples reflect the body-as-texturiser
approach, the graphic representations of body movement occurring as alterations in visual
texture. However, a clear cause and effect relationship between performer and visual
media may be difficult to discern. Of relevance here is Palindrome Inter-media
Performance Group’s notion of ‘gestural coherence’, described as ‘the perceptual
coherence between sound and the movement that generates it’ (Rovan et al., 2001).
Although gestural and sonic coherence is being specified, the notion equally applies to
coherence between body movement and visual media.
Sound “lens” In discussions with computer sound artist Luke Lickfold, and acoustic musician Matt de
Boer, it was agreed that Matt would take the role of generating live source sounds using
readymade instruments, such as pan pipes, clarinet, tambourine and drums, as well as
using devised instruments and amplified breathing. Luke, on the other hand, would be
responsible for the real-time filtering of these sounds using custom-made re-sampling
processes. What I was seeking sonically, was a layering of foreground and background
textures that unfold in phases representing a life cycle of birth, transformation and decay.
Here I was inspired by composer, Toru Takemitsu, in the notion of inhaling and exhaling,
ascending and descending waves of sound, rather than a structured ‘piling up bricks of
sound to erect edifices of varying styles’ (Takemitsu et al., 1995, p.17). In terms of micro-
and macro- magnification, a small sound could have large intensity and vice versa.
Enlargement of a sonic detail could arise not only by means of amplification, but also
through revealing hidden structures within the texture, for example, fine grains of sound
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that expand and contract, appear and recede. These could be little snippets of sound, like
the rustle of leaves or the tinkling of water, perhaps against a continuous, more universal
sonic texture reminiscent of sand. Along with a dreamlike ambience, I was also seeking a
kind of unsettled quality, with unexpected shifts as ruptures in the continuity. A further
potential outcome was that sonic textures could at times become responsive to performer
movement via the motion sensors. However, it was understood that time constraints meant
that Luke Lickfold and Matt de Boer would only be able work together several times
before commencement of the creative development period. Thus, it was ambitious to
assume that any customising of the filtering processes or trialing of interactive sonic
outcomes could be achieved in the lead up time.
3.3.5 Integrating components: tentative structure based on sleep cycles
After brainstorming around the idea of life cycles and notions of waning, waxing, birth
and decay, Matt de Boer suggested the idea of sleep cycles as a kind of working template.
To this end, I devised a plan based on different phases marking out higher and lower
frequencies and periods of REM (rapid eye movement), a format that conceptually echoed
the undulations of the screen object. The approach was not an exploration or study of
brain waves per se, but rather, a way to lay down a kind of substrata from which to
address the research concern of a compositional structure to integrate body movement,
visuals and sound. Discussion of the sleep phases with the performers, focused on
perceptions of increased breathing and heart rates, periods of muscular twitching, and
bursts of vivid dreaming. For a diagram of the initial sleep cycle structure see Fig. 18.
Once the screen object was installed in the venue, the performers began to spatially map
their movement material as a pathway through the various phases of the sleep cycles (Fig.
19).
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Fig. 18
Living Lens creative development: dream/sleep cycle structure.
Fig. 19
Elise May’s spatial mapping of sleep cycles to screen object.
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The sleep cycle template thus became a general score from which to integrate visuals,
body movement and sound. Regarding sound, Luke and Matt improvised material in a
largely experimental and serendipitous manner as the performers and I worked on
movement material in the space. During this time, visual material from a large palette of
textures was tested and modified, which, together with Tetsutoshi Tabata, I conceptually
matched to the various stages of the sleep cycle (see DVD for samples of these textures
under the section “Stills and Textures”.) However, due to time constraints and outcome of
a public showing, it became necessary to shape the experiments into a specific format.
Consequently, there was very little time to trial possible interactive links between
performer movement and the sound and imaging system. For video documentation of
Living Lens presented at the public showing, see DVD under the section “Movies”,
with a link from “Living Lens” to “Creative Development”.
3.4 Feedback
3.4.1 Peer Feedback Following the creative development public showing (December 17, 2005 at The Loft,
QUT), peer feedback included responses from my associate supervisor, Richard Vella,
Adjunct Professor in the Music and Sound discipline of the Creative Industries Faculty,
QUT; Greg Jenkins, lecturer in Music and Sound; and fellow PhD candidate Luke
Jaaniste. In personal communication (December 20, 2005) Richard Vella suggested that
the movement qualities, or gestures of the performers, were somehow unrelated to the
aesthetics of the work in terms of the installation object and the projected visual imagery.
Luke Jaaniste, on the other hand (personal communication, January 15, 2006), stated that
the performers themselves seemed arbitrary components of the installation. It may be,
however, that these comments reflect a musical and/or visual arts milieu rather than a
movement-based performance background. Nevertheless, such comments trigger
consideration of how the performing body is deemed an essential element of the
installation environment.
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Further feedback from Greg Jenkins (personal communication, January 10, 2005) noted an
overall homogeneous feel to the installation. Although this particular observation was
mainly directed towards the sonic environment, I find it applied equally to the relationship
between all elements of body, visuals and sound. If the prevailing mood or composition is
considered uniform, then it can be assumed that interest − from the perspective of all
creative participants as well as that of the viewers − soon wanes.
3.4.2 Participant feedback Following feedback on the sonic area, a post-production discussion (January 21, 2006)
with Living Lens sound designer, Luke Lickfold, elicited that sonic homogeneity occurred
because sounds generated by acoustic and percussive instruments played live in an
improvised manner, were manipulated in real time through computer filtering processes,
hence producing a constantly tweaked, rambling quality. For his part, Luke said that
having a constant input of live sounds made it difficult to generate any distinctive or
abrupt periods of change through the computer filtering process. Although there was a
general structure to follow in terms of the sleep cycle template, the different sections
tended to blend into one another. However, he personally felt that given the limited time,
the sonic results were interesting and generally successful as soundscape material. As Matt
de Boer would not be available for the second stage of development, Luke and I decided
that in working to a sound brief, a more standard method of sound pre-composition could
be combined with live processing. This would have the added advantage of giving the
performers something more structured with which to rehearse. Visual media director,
Tetsutoshi Tabata (personal communication, December 20, 2005) felt there was a need to
develop a stronger relation between the performers and the visual imagery, with a clearer
matching of visual images to the specific moods or phases. Media programmer, Takahisa
Sasaki (e-mail correspondence, February 4, 2006) suggested that interactively, a stronger
relation could occur, for example, through the development of a wave-effect algorithm,
where visual images are raised or contoured in response to performer movement.
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From the perspective of body movement, all three performers found the process quite
different to their previous experiences of performance making. Ko-Pei Lin (unstructured
interview, March 10, 2006) found that although she could evolve her movement
possibilities, it was difficult to delineate a pathway through the piece, an experience that
entailed negotiating several layers: her character inspired by the spider in amber image,
the visual imagery and the sleep cycle structure. She found that one or other of the layers
would somehow block the progression of her pathway. In working with the motion sensor
she felt that an actual link between her body and visual images created a challenging sense
of ‘being both in control and controlled’. Specifically, she felt that the brushstroke effect
created a tangible extension of her body movement via the motion sensor, yet, as the
location of the brushstroke on the screen often seemed unpredictable, she experienced a
dimension to the relationship beyond her control. This, however, she found to be a point
of interest rather than a problem. For Elise May (unstructured interview, March 8, 2006)
the performer’s role in using the motion sensors was unclear. Specifically, she felt that as,
a performer, the issue of a) choreographing movement to engender particular effects, or b)
of improvising movements to see what effects emerge, had not been resolved through this
iteration of the study. In addition, a problem she found in working from an exploratory
image-based approach, was whether it becomes a question of which performance style to
adopt, or alternatively, a complete ‘stripping away’ of styles to explore movement inspired
from more intuitive bodily reactions. Nevertheless, she felt that working in this way
…opened up a whole new world of possibility in terms of finding innovative ways to develop movement and imagery in performance and has had a profound effect on my own creative process. (Accented Body feedback report, March 2006)
For Richard Causer, on the other hand, the dilemma as a performer accustomed to
developing concrete phrases of movement as an outcome of any exploratory work, was the
undertaking of exercises that often did not lead to any specifically structured movement
material. However, he found that he was eventually
…able to fuse what I learnt into my own style of movement. I found a way of moving that I have never experienced before on my own body, discovering that my body can actually do much more than I thought. (Accented Body feedback report, March 2006)
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From the comments given here, it can be construed that although there was a degree of
pressure and frustration in terms of the performers’ usual approaches to performance
making, it was also an important learning curve contributing further strands to their
performance technique and choreographic practice.
3.4.3 Personal observations
The shift away from the performers’ usual body vocabularies – largely informed by
contemporary dance training – perhaps entailed entering into a different cognitive
dimension that disengaged them from their encoded techniques. This, along with only a
small number of pre-structured movement phrases, meant that their performance became
largely dependent upon improvisation to fill any gaps in their pathways. The sleep cycle
structure served as a useful guide in the initial exploration, yet this, together with the
blended nature of the sound, may have contributed to the prevailing dreamy, almost
trance-like quality of the performers’ movements.
The serpentine screen object dissecting the venue meant that there was no clear distinction
between front or back views. However, viewers to the installation tended to huddle in the
corners of the venue and so did not take on an ambulatory role. A further dilemma for the
audience was the placing of the technical sound and visual team on one side of the screen,
in a sense framing the installation as a staged theatre rather than installation mode. The
slits in the screen enabled partial viewings of performers who slipped through and around
the object. In this way, even if a viewer remained stationary, s/he could see the
performers’ actions when they passed within close proximity, or glimpses of action taking
place on the other side of the screen. Thus, in response to proposed criteria for “seen” and
“unseen” outlined earlier in this chapter, there was a definite sense of revealed and
concealed dimensions in viewing the installation. The responsibility, however, was on the
viewers themselves to make the decision to move around the installation. In slightly
altering the size and configuration of the screen object and positioning the visual and
sound teams on either side of the screen, it could be possible to create an environment
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more conducive to viewers immersing themselves in the space rather than remaining on
the periphery.
3.5 Further strategies towards an integration of distinctive entities The first stage of the creative development period established a kind of substrata from
which to elicit further action-possibilities. Specifically, the aim for the next stage is to set
up ways in which to develop more distinctive qualities to the components of performing
bodies, visual images and sound. In addressing the issue of homogeneity, a newly
emergent criterion is to enhance contrast through a more structured scenario as an overlay
to the sleep cycle template. This potentially enables deeper connections between the
performing bodies and the visual imagery, as well as providing a guideline for developing
a specific array of sounds that can be manipulated live in the installation. As such, for the
next development phase I have marked out several areas discussed at length in the
following chapter. These are briefly outlined under the following headings.
3.5.1 “Idiosyncratic” movement: specific work areas To offset the feedback on the creative development as being too monodynamic, I decided
to explore distinctive qualities of the individual performers through a focus on
idiosyncratic movement. This was achieved by setting up specific areas of work for each
performer. Steinman (1986, p.14) refers to ‘idiosyncratic’ movement where ‘each body
speaks its own native language’ in order to ‘find one’s own movement sources within
oneself’. She suggests a dancer should ‘work from inside to recover’ his/her ‘own body’s
native language’. For Ko-Pei Lin, the specific work area is further development on the
spider in amber character through a focus on tactility and torsion to enhance her
movement with more finely sculpted detail. For Elise May, it is the notion of body as
“seismograph”. Here, the body is an antenna, a sensitive instrument that detects and
registers vibrations, the dance thus becoming a kind of channeling, or “seismogram”. For
Richard Causer, it is further work on the notion of body topography with a focus on
developing simultaneous or sequential dynamics in different parts of the body. For new
member, I-Pin Lin, also a contemporary dancer, it is the notion of body as “metaball”:
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from small, enclosed shapes, the body extends outwards, “grows” a movement and then
morphs from one movement to the next.
3.5.2 Defining and refining movement clusters As a result of performer feedback, I looked into additional ways of entering into
movement explorations. From the movement material that emerged through the creative
development, the task was to select particular movements or sequences and refine them.
To this end, I drew upon Adshead’s notion of clusters to formulate an approach for
developing and arranging movement sequences (Fig.20)
Fig. 20
Cluster as a mode of temporal sequencing.
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I regard these clusters as being porous: malleable in that they can be linked in multiple
ways and allow for moments of “unknown”, permeable in that other movements can be
embedded within them. The noted butoh critic, Nario Goda, indicates the potential for
movements to evolve when he claims Tatsumi Hijikata attempted to make the body ‘an
incarnation of time and space…by fragmenting motion into articulated movements that
expressed precisely the temporary forms of each moment, and then entrusting the dance to
the accumulation of those momentary changes in time and space’ (Goda, 1989, pp.86-87).
In this way, the notion of cluster becomes a means to structure an accumulation of
sensory, bodily experiences into distinctive yet adaptable sequences of movement.
3.5.3 Setting up indicators of change: worlds within worlds From the creative development I identified the need to break up the continuous undulating
stream of visual imagery and sonic textures to create distinctive moods in which the
performers develop movement material. With this aim, the notion of “worlds within
worlds” becomes a further overlay to the sleep cycle structure. Moreover, this notion
echoes the sense of “living lens” encapsulated by the initial images of the spider in amber
and the chrysalis described earlier in Chapter 3. The idea of “worlds within worlds” is also
partly influenced by Yukio Waguri, student of Tatsumi Hijikata, who categorised the
butoh-fu terms into seven interrelated worlds (Waguri, 1998). While there may be some
similarity to Waguri’s naming of the worlds, in my case they become components of a
structural device to integrate body, movement and sound, rather than areas in which to
categorise specific movement images. The eight worlds are: World of Chrysalis; World of
Forest/Cave; World of Water/Ice; World of Wall/Skin; World of Neurology Ward; World
of Animal; World of Vortex; World of Cosmos/Nebula (see Fig. 21).
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Fig. 21
Living Lens: second stage plan for setting up clearer instigators of change in the cycle.
The installation environment, conceived as “inhabited space” with performers as
“inhabitants”, implies qualities of intimacy, familiarity, comfort and attraction. However, I
am also interested in shifting moods, in creating tension through contrast. In the next stage
of development, I seek an unsettled quality, or rupture, as a clear indicator of change in the
fluid continuum.
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3.6 Summary Exploring interdependencies between performing bodies, visual and sonic media, work
shifted through the creative development from the earlier approach that generated a range
of performer-media relationships through juxtaposed modular segments. This particular
stage aimed for a more fluid sequencing where focus moves from the frame of a staged
setting to an immersive installation mode. The segment Living Lens is selected as both a
microcosm of artistic practice and a means to determine and evaluate criteria within one
specific area. Organic life processes become the commonality linking the elements of
body, visual images and sound, with contrast occurring through transitions and layering of
textures. However, as a means to generate more distinctive aspects of performative, visual
and sonic elements in the fluid continuum, the next stage of Living Lens will explore the
structure of “worlds within worlds”, described in detail in the following chapter.
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CHAPTER 4 - The “Living Painting": Worlds within Worlds
The prime instance is not that of parts vanishing into the whole and thereby losing their identity but rather the state of affairs in which each part displays its double nature, its being in and by itself and that within the whole. (Arnheim, 1989, p.338)
4.1 Generating contrast in the fluid continuum
The notion of “worlds within worlds” further addresses the research concern of a
structural device (see p.76) to integrate performing bodies, visuals and sound. It is an
overlay to the sleep cycle template and a means to generate diversity and contrast in the
fluid continuum. In this way, further dimensions are added to a contoured landscape of
“peaks” and “valleys” (Fig. 22).
Fig. 22
Integrative structure visualised as a contoured landscape.
Shaped through a scenario of eight realms (outlined on p.75), the live performance is an
enactment of a voyage through these worlds. In setting up these realms, imagery of
nocturnal forest depths, the vault-like chamber of a cave or the disturbed ambiance of a
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neurology ward, become poetic indicators of place: potential spaces to inhabit as well as
positions marking a temporal pathway.
It is interesting to note that while the initial creative development entailed a shift away
from the earlier patchwork approach to a more seamless continuity, current action,
addressing the criticism of homogeneity, invokes characteristics of the collage principle:
in this case, the use of contrasting images or worlds towards the overall theme of Living
Lens. Here, however, contrast occurs through fluid transitions rather than juxtapositions of
discrete pieces of the patchwork structure. Organic metaphors provide a basis for
exploring microscopic forms and sensations, the forces of growth and decay, and
transformations of one body movement, visual image or sonic phase to the next. While
primarily reflecting the temporal continuity of organic life cycles, transitions also occur as
ruptures in the continuum. These ruptures occur through visual and auditory atmospheric
effects reminiscent of disturbances in the natural world, or by sonically or visually
evoking architectural metaphors of boundaries and enclosure, such as walls and rooms.
Integrating the component lenses of body, visuals and sound through the wider “worlds
within worlds” context of the living painting, the notion of poetic felt space (described on
pg. 27) refers to the connective tissue binding the various realms and entities. Although
imaginary, I nevertheless perceive this as a palpable and malleable substance. Whilst the
worlds within worlds scenario works as an integrative structure, the aim is to generate
relationships with the potential to evolve, rather than creating a synchronous score or
converging entities into a unified body. Thus, in order to explore interdependencies
between sonic, visual and bodily entities, it is necessary to consider them as independent
identities within a larger whole. The following diagram (Fig. 23) shows the system plan of
the final performance. (For documentation of the final presentation, see DVD section
“Movies” with link from “Living Lens” to “Final Performance”.)
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Fig. 23
System plan for final performance of Living Lens.
4.2 Developing distinctive bodies
4.2.1 The Serpentine Line
In relation to all four performers – Elise May, Ko-Pei Lin, Richard Causer and I-Pin Lin –
it was necessary to develop the body as a three-dimensional figure that could be viewed
from several angles in the installation space. In order to show various aspects of the body
simultaneously, I was interested in exploring twisting, coiling movements of the body.
This involved, for example, rotation of the upper body in opposite direction to the lower
body, or spherical movements drawing inwards, or opening outwards, from the central
axis of the body. Here, the S-curve line known as figura serpentina (also called figura
serpentinata), found in the work of Michelangelo, Mannerist art, or the various styles of
Art Nouveau, afforded a practical means for addressing this issue, particularly as it also
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reflected the sinuous configuration of the projection screen. The use of the serpentine
figure in Living Lens, however, is not to portray an ideal of beauty as being twisted or
contorted, nor does it represent the body in bondage. Rather, the curving line evokes the
workings of nature, for example, the unfurling of a frond (Fig. 24) or the twisted features
of a weathered tree branch.
Fig. 24
An approach to figura serpentina: the image of unfurling fern fronds inspired the idea of the body twisting around itself in Living Lens.
In this way, attention can be drawn to fine details of the body in motion, such as the
contraction and expansion of sinews and muscles. Within the general serpentine approach
to bodyline, the performers were each given specific work areas. This allocation served a
dual function: as a means to elicit or enhance the movement material of each performer,
and given time restraints, a way to encompass the different facets of body movement I was
keen to explore.
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4.2.2 Notion of idiosyncratic body
To create an installation work where the performing body comprises one element of the
whole, I was interested in exploring a sculptural sense of the body, in a dynamic rather
than static sense. Through a sculptural sensibility, the performer-inhabitants could create a
three-dimensional volume of space viewed from various angles. However, in developing
this sculpted notion of movement material, I did not wish to proceed from any specific
inventory of movements derived from the various styles in which the performers had
previously trained, for example, ballet, contemporary techniques or Chinese traditional
dance. Working from text-based and visual images, the concern here is how performers
produce movement from an exploratory inner sensing. Steinman (1986, p.14) refers to
‘idiosyncratic’ movement, where ‘each body speaks its own native language’ in order to
‘find one’s own movement sources within oneself’. Hence, the intent is not to deny
previous dance encodings but to access specific characteristics and experiences of the
individual performers. Margolis (1981) describes ‘idiosyncratic energies and habits’ as the
‘autographic’ of the individual body. The performer, influenced by training in a single
method or in various movement styles:
does not work simply with positions and movements, but with the naturally expressive use of positions and movements generated (not altogether consciously) by that person’s use of his own body through the accumulated grooming of a continuous life, and, imposed on, and altering, this natural and acquired expressiveness, individuated through an exclusively privileged experience within a single body. (Margolis, 1981, p.421)
In this project, there is no perceived dichotomy between ‘naturally expressive’ movements
and specific dance techniques. Rather, the idea is to explore idiosyncratic qualities of
movement ‘by exposing the hidden potential of the style, or by distinctively determining
“free areas” of the style’ (Sirridge and Armelagos, 1983, p.304). It is significant that all
four performers involved in the project are young choreographers starting out in their own
practice, and hence in the early stages of developing an individuated movement style. The
image-based approach is therefore explored in interaction with the performers’ own life
experiences and dance training – as a means to perhaps tease apart the layers of
‘accumulated grooming’ and therein discover new approaches to movement. I realise,
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however, that there is an inherent paradox in seeking both a notion of the idiosyncratic
body and the releasing of accumulated habits and encodings. For the performer pursuing
her/his individual or idiosyncratic body, there is the definite risk of actually falling into
habitual movement patterns. Whilst this risk is acknowledged, the intention here, however,
is for performers to develop heightened awareness of various sensations within the body.
The image-based, metaphorical approach is seen as an important key to directly
experiencing movement sensations in the effort to ‘release a habit’s hold on movement, to
“allow” rather than “to make” the movement happen’ (Fraleigh, 2004b, p.169).
Accordingly, I have set up several parameters as a means to facilitate the specific
characteristics of the individual performers.
4.2.3 Parameters for exploring idiosyncratic movement
Body as “seismograph”
In regards to my own experience as a performer with several years training in butoh and
also the martial art, aikido, an ongoing interest is the idea of the body as a sensitive
resonator receiving and transmitting energies in connection with the exterior world.
Helping to catalyse this concern is a statement by Berghaus (2005) that artists in the early
twentieth century explored the performing body not only in terms of conveying narrative,
dramatic or intellectual concepts, but also as
…scenic elements with a visceral quality in their own right. Modernist directors discovered the actor’s physical means of expression and combined these with other scenic elements such as sound, lighting, costumes, stage sets, etc. For example, the Expressionists employed the body as a seismograph for psychic states and created extremely stylized, physically heightened renderings of mental processes that went far beyond conventional acting. (p.132)
The notion of seismograph holds particular appeal in terms of the body as an antenna
detecting and registering tiny vibrations, with movements of the body as a kind of
seismogram in space. The intention here, however, is not to attain a ‘psychic state’ as
such, nor is it a perception of body movement as the specific ‘rendering of mental
processes’. Rather, the metaphor of seismograph is seen as a baseline to develop a
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heightened physical and mental awareness, with the body itself perceived as the source for
generating movement.
The body as seismograph was the allocated area of the performer, Elise May, who
explored this notion as the underlying characteristic of her movement material. A
workshop (Brisbane, February, 2006) that I undertook with butoh dancer, Yumiko
Yoshioka, provided practical exercises for experiencing a similar approach to the body,
several examples of which I subsequently shared with the Living Lens performers. Termed
‘Body Resonance’, Yoshioka describes her method as an interaction between the interior
of the body and the external environment, where the ‘world, including our body and soul,
consists of vibrational waves that create constant resonances like echoes. When we tune
our body to a certain frequency, we consequently get a resonance, and according to the
frequency, we get different resonances’ (Fraleigh and Nakamura, 2006, p.120). Through
one particular exercise Yoshioka calls ‘Fractals of Figure Eight’, a performer “tunes” in to
particular frequencies by firstly initiating momentum with a pulsation and then
subsequently allowing this impetus to move the body. This is a highly focused exercise
beginning with large alternating circles of the thoracic and pelvic girdles that gradually
decrease in size towards the central core of the body. This develops into a series of
accelerated yet increasingly miniscule oscillations, the body thus becoming a vibrating
tuning instrument, receiving and emanating waves of energy.
The idea of the resonating body became a specific focal point in a section of Living Lens
called “World of Neurology Ward”. This is a domain I adapted from the ‘Seven Worlds of
Butoh-fu’ by Yukio Waguri (1998) mentioned in the previous chapter. Here, the body is
described as a ‘gigantic kingdom of nerves’ with multiple references to the overlapping
and tracing of nerves throughout the body. There are allusions, for example, to the nerve-
like drawings and inkblots of the poet and artist, Henri Michaux, including a reference to
the flow of ink as a metaphor for outlining nerves through the body:
Michaux’s ink bottle crashes into your right forehead. The bottle cracks and ink spills into the inside parts of your body. Your nerves trace the spilled ink inside your body:
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From the right temple through the right cheek and to the twitching side of the mouth and to the neck. The ink is now through your neck and out on your back. It then re-enters your back and comes out of your chest which then goes up your neck again. The nerve tracing the ink coming up your neck is suddenly severed. The nerves then become like roots pulled out of dirt. (Waguri, 1998)
These words provided one of the directives for Elise May’s explorations, the imagery of
flowing ink eliciting a fine, almost imperceptible tracing of movement through the body.
However, it was noted both by Elise and myself, that the collision in the imagery of the
first line, and sudden severing and uprooting of nerves in the last lines, created an
intriguing sense of shock or rupture. Hijikata (2000e) sheds light on such contradictory or
contrasting images, implying that while words may serve as ‘intermediaries’ to access
inner realms of the body, they can also be useful ‘obstacles’ that help prevent the
performer from falling into a superficial or trance-like exploration. In this way,
contradictory or paradoxical images alert the performer to the seductive potential of
words, and may also prevent her/his bodily responses from becoming merely reflexive or
habitual. Thus, in focusing on the body as a sensitive network of nerves, Hijikata seems to
point to the need for disruption, jolting the performer from inner modes of sensing to an
awareness of the body impacted by the external environment.
In creating the different worlds of Living Lens, “World of Neurology Ward” itself was
conceived as a rupture or jolt, contrasting to the fluid, overlapping transitions of the
previous sections. In response to Elise May’s feedback following the creative
development regarding the nature of her interaction with the motion sensor, it was decided
that she would work from an intuitive bodily response to the butoh-fu imagery,
improvising movements to discover what effects would emerge. (For documentation, see
DVD section “Movies” with link from “Living Lens” to “Final Performance”; from
start of movie, click fast forward button to 8’20”.) In this section, Elise wears the sensor in
a pocket on her upper back. Spasmodic movements of the spinal area between the
scapulae are mapped to three visual projection layers. Two of these layers represent the
idea of neural activity. One layer consists of a white pulse representing a synaptic signal,
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the image flickering according to speed of movement. The second layer is a cube textured
with branching “nerve” fibres that expands or contracts with horizontal and vertical
movements of the performer. A third layer, representing the idea of seismogram, is an
oscillating waveform that fluctuates in response to horizontal movements. The relation
between body movement and the visual images is complex and so perhaps not easily
perceptible. The intention, however, was for an overall disturbed atmosphere where jerky
spasms of the body create almost subliminal alterations in the different textural layers of
the visual projections (Figs. 25-27) further accentuated by rhythmic and pulsating sound
effects.
Fig. 25
World of Neurology Ward. Motion sensor worn by Elise May (centre) is mapped to white pulse and spinning network of fibres.
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Fig. 26 Movement of Elise May at centre is mapped to a fluctuating wave effect.
Fig. 27 Movement of Elise May (centre) is mapped to white wave effect.
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Tactility and torsion
The focus on the body as a system of nerves was also the approach taken in developing the
existing movement material of the performer, Ko-Pei Lin. Here, the aim was to augment
material she had already created as the “Spider in Amber” character in the initial creative
development through a focus on kinesthetic and sculptural detail and texture. Ko-Pei’s
lithe build, together with her highly articulate hands and fingers as a result of her Chinese
dance training, meant she was very receptive to the focus on finely sculpted body
movements.
The notion of torsion, in this case, links to the notion of the serpentine figure with an
emphasis on minuscule twists and tensions in the neck, limbs, digits and joints. Tactility,
on the other hand, refers to the sense of touch, not only in terms of making actual contact
with a surface or the body of another performer, but also in the sense of invisible
connections between the body and the surrounding space. Here again, Waguri’s
transcriptions of Hijikata’s butoh-fu provided useful directives to explore the idea of
poetic felt space, with the extension and retraction of nerves as a means to facilitate both
tensions and counter-tensions in the body, as well as a heightened awareness of external
space. With this aim, I adapted excerpts from various sections of Waguri’s butoh-fu:
Your fingers are pinching small flower petals. The antennae stretching out of your fingertips infinitely trace the grains of wood on a door in front of you… You feel the very tip of the faraway nerves, You crack tiny whips on your fingertips… The nerves then withdraw into the body. (Waguri, 1998)
The imagery of nerves extending outwards from the fingertips to trace grains of wood,
provides a means for imagining invisible lines connecting the body to various points in the
surrounding space, while the imagery of pinching flower petals and the cracking of tiny
whips elicits finely-detailed, tensile movements of the fingers. An evocative mode for
sensing a connection to the projected imagery, the highly tactile tips of the fingers, are
perceived as antennae extending from the body to trace fine details of the images in
“World of Forest/Cave” (Fig. 28).
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Fig. 28
World of Forest/Cave. Ko-Pei Lin (left), with “antenna-like” fingertips, moves through multi-layered images of lace-like skeleton leaves.
The idea of nerves extending and retracting through the body relates to the ‘graining’
method of Alwin Nikolais (Nikolais and Louis, 2005) mentioned in the previous chapter.
In this approach, the idea is to direct imaginary particles within the body towards a
particular focus point. This can either be from one part of the body to another, for
example, from the hip to the hand, or stream outwards from the body to points beyond.
The idea of streaming is also useful in terms of varying the density of particles, for
example, from compressed to dispersed, as a way to alter the quality of the direction flow.
These two notions – extension of nerves and particle flows – subsequently became a basis
for realising a more tangible relationship between body movement and visual images via
the motion sensor. In the section “World of Vortex”, Ko-Pei Lin wears the sensor on her
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wrist, with an off-on option provided by rings worn on the index and middle fingers (Fig.
29).
Fig. 29
Ko-Pei Lin wearing motion sensor on wrist with on-off option rings.
When the two rings come into contact, Ko-Pei has control of two effects: a ripple effect,
and a white brushstroke effect that cuts a ribbon-like line through the watery blue visuals.
Both effects correspond to horizontal, vertical and rotating gestures of the wrist (Figs. 30
& 31). (For documentation, see DVD section “Movies” with link from “Living Lens” to
“Final Performance”; from start of movie, click fast forward button to 12’20”.)
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Fig. 30
World of Vortex. Ko-Pei Lin with motion sensor ripple effect.
Fig. 31
Ko-Pei Lin with white brushstroke effect.
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“Topography” of the body
The initial poetic inspiration for devising movement material with the performer, Richard
Causer, was an excerpt entitled “The Hand”, from Judith Wright’s poem, Flesh (Appendix
5). What emerged from explorations based on this text was the idea that the arms have
their own life, moving independently to the rest of the body. With the arms thus explored
in opposition to both the body and to each other, Richard’s torso took on interesting
contoured features that I came to regard as a kind of topography of the body. A geological
term, topography refers to the description, measurement and classification of the features
of a particular terrain. Thus, whilst the notion of topography is here meant in terms of the
body as a shifting “terrain”, it does not refer to any configuring or mapping of the body in
the scientific sense. An image serving to catalyse a topographic notion of the body is the
sculpture by Polish artist, Magdalena Abakanowicz, of a shell-like formation of the back
area of a headless torso (Fig. 32).
Fig. 32
‘Back’ by Magdalena Abakanowicz, 1976. The fissured, contoured surface contributed to the notion of ‘topography’ of the body.
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The idea was to develop a deeper awareness of the spinal area of the body, for example,
on detailed movements of the scapular regions and muscles of the back. In this way,
bodily features were explored as a shifting topography or landscape, for example, craggy
contours that arise through various manipulations of the scapulae. Directives adapted from
Waguri’s butoh-fu included the idea of maintaining the body at different inclinations and
angles (Fig. 33), for example, using the image of a tree growing upright through the spine,
or a shrub with strong lateral tendency growing sideways from the chest. Imagery was also
used to stimulate small, microscopic movements, for example, the idea of the skin of the
back as the fissured bark of a tree filled with crawling insects:
A branch of a tree becomes a very straight nerve inside your body and grows out of it… A second branch grows at a different angle from inside your body and out of your chest. Showing the two branches at the same time means showing separate inclinations… The person becomes like barks of trees. Your back is full of insects. (Waguri, 1998)
Fig. 33
World of Chrysalis. Richard Causer: movement as “topography” of the body.
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Exploration of the arms moving independently, together with the imagery of simultaneous
inclinations of the body, sparked an interest in the idea of ‘simultaneous dynamics’
(Humphrey, 1959) as a means to further develop topographic bodily features. In relation to
body movement, dynamics applies to motion such as momentum, force and energy, and
the interrelationships among the elements of space, time, weight and flow. The challenge
for Richard was to focus on different dynamics in the body simultaneously. Here, Laban’s
efforts and flow continuums (see Appendix 3) became a useful means to explore
variations of movement qualities in different parts of the body, for example, from short to
sustained, from bound to released and so forth. While such exercises may be useful for
generating diverse movement qualities, it is important to consider not only the external
features of the body, but the interconnection with the body’s invisible interior or its “sub-
terrain”. As Magdalena Abakanowicz states in regard to her sculpture:
The inside has the same importance as the outer shell. Each time shaped as a consequence of the interior, or exterior as a consequence of the inside. Only together do they form a whole. (Abakanowicz and Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, 1982, p.102)
Hence, it becomes possible to consider the idea of topographic body as the
interrelationship between the body’s exterior surface and its interior realms. This can be
understood in the literal, physical or visceral sense, yet also in a metaphorical sense of the
body perceived as a permeable container of ideas, experiences and memories. In this way,
the ‘idiosyncratic’ body - here Richard Causer and his specific dance training and life
experience - becomes an individual, dynamic topography unfolding in time.
Mutable forms: the body as “metaball”
For new participant, I-Pin Lin, it was my initial observation of a series of movement
sequences she created on the suggested theme of wind that drew me to viewing her
flexible, compact body as a kind of “metaball”. A computer graphics term for the
modelling of 3D objects, I was attracted to the clay-like transformations of simple ovoid
objects that appear to grow protuberances and develop into more complex forms. This
computer animation object thus reflects the
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…ideas for curvaceous and organic forms that designers wanted to explore. It did so in the flexible, algorithm-based modeling programs originally designed for the special effects and animation industry, which encouraged dynamic curves and shape-shifting forms. (Holt et al., 2005, p.50)
In this way, the metaball object (Fig. 34) mirrors characteristics of the biomorphic process
of growth, change and development. An attribute of the metaball I find particularly
effective in relation to the performing body in space, is that objects have an attractive or
repulsive force attached: the attractive force impels the object to stretch outwards, while
the negative force creates an inner curvature or depression in the surface of the object.
Fig. 34
A simple example of expansion or growth in a metaball object
In terms of I-Pin Lin as a living human body, the metaball was a useful metaphor for the
growth and development of body movement, with expansion outwards and retraction
inwards as a means to work through various cycles of movement sequences. The notion of
attractive and negative forces thus provided a means for thinking how the performer might
react to invisible influences within the body itself and surrounding space, or to visible
presences, such as the projected imagery and other bodies in the installation space.
When conceiving the transforming human body through visual metaphors, I find a
connection between the fluid form of the computer graphics metaball and the
configurations of Henri Michaux’s inkblots (Fig. 35), which he states are
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…all emerging from the human shape, perhaps missing legs or arms or torso, but nevertheless human by the inner dynamism – twisted, exploded – which I submit (or feel submitted) to torquings and stretchings, to expansions in every direction. (Michaux, 2000, p.34)
Fig. 35
Fluid forms: Henri Michaux, Untitled (Mouvements), 1950.
Michaux attributes the movement patterns of his anthropomorphic inkblots to an ‘inner
dynamism’, an observation that reflects the way movements and gestures of the human
performer outwardly express internal, invisible impulses. Nevertheless, it is also useful to
think of any ‘torquings and stretchings’ – in this case, of the human body - as reactions to
an external dynamic space. Here, the phenomenon of wind as studied by I-Pin Lin in her
preliminary movement studies, is one example of an imaginary external force acting upon
the body. With the mutable, changeable body thus conceived as responsive to both interior
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and exterior impulses, I-Pin explored a series of movement cycles, each evolving from and
returning to the initial ovoid shape (Fig. 36).
Fig. 36
World of Chrysalis. I-Pin Lin: the body as ‘metaball’; movement “grows” from an initial ovoid shape and stretches outwards.
Whilst a mutable approach to body movement potentially generates a series of variable
movement sequences, there may, however, be a tendency towards amorphous rather than
well-defined or clear-cut postures of the body. In this way,
…bodily control goes the way of imagistic morphology, the metaphysics of becoming through metamorphosis, not arriving, but always in process of integration and dissolution. (Fraleigh, 2004b, p.29)
Fraleigh’s comment is particularly relevant to the idea of a dynamic sculptural sensibility
expressed earlier in this chapter. Accordingly, a sculptural perception of the body as
metaball may be understood as a cyclic process of emergence, development and decay,
rather than an arrival or termination at any final, definite form. Thus, the concept of
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mutability further points to a potential structuring principle in conceiving and ordering of
movement sequences. Here, the notion of cluster is applied to both the temporal ordering
and permeable nature of individual units of movement. As adaptable parts within a whole,
they have the capacity to be linked in various ways or be embedded within other
movements.
4.3 Furthering the notion of clusters
4.3.1 Clusters as adaptable movement sequences
I arrived at the notion of cluster in the search for an alternative to the compositional
approach of phrase. In studio workshop with the performers, I worked either one-to-one
on their specific focus areas, or in task-based group sessions to develop possible material
for the different worlds of Living Lens. It was in the latter that I encouraged the idea of
creating movement clusters as contrasted to phrases, that is, each session did not
necessarily build on movement elicited in the preceding workshop. Rather, the performers
created brief clusters of movements in the vein of microdances, as mentioned in the
previous chapter. These were based on various poetic text fragments or through
explorations on the aforementioned focus areas.
The difference between the terms phrase and cluster was not merely perceived at a
semantic level, however, for there was an important practical reason. As the visual team
was at this time still in Japan, the performers and I initially worked on body movement
alone, with the gradual introduction of sound textures by Brisbane-based sound designer,
Luke Lickfold. Without the co-presence of all elements, it was neither feasible nor
desirable to create fully developed sequences of body movement. Hence, these clusters
became tentative, adaptable movement sketches that were later shaped at the venue in
relation to visuals and sound. It should be pointed out that my use of cluster in relation to
body movement differs to that of Adshead, who, writing from the perspective of dance
analysis, refers to clusters as groupings of various movement elements, for example,
spatial and dynamic qualities, the specific characteristics of different dance styles, and so
forth. In my use of the term, I was not forming any particular analysis of movement, nor
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did I wish to classify elements within a particular movement sequence per se. Rather, it
was seen as a structuring device to which the performers applied their own choreographic
strategy, namely, each performer created three to four short sequences on a given working
area, which they then shared collectively through numbering and ordering into adaptable
configurations. While this connotation may be somewhat at variance to Adshead’s, when
she subsequently refers to the components of staging the dance (Adshead, 1988, p.21), it
becomes possible to extend the notion of cluster to visual and aural elements.
4.3.2 Image clusters: the “digital collage”
As mentioned in the two previous chapters, the visual source material for the XV3 image
processing system used in Living Lens comprises an image bank of still images: digitally
scanned hand-painted textures and slides containing plant fibres, as well as photographic
images of plant, insect and mineral textures. These images are animated through
algorithm-based effects or used to render surface textures onto 3D graphics objects. This
process of manipulation produces a ‘mixed image’ (Spielmann, 1999, p.134), in this case,
the transformation of static painting and photographic modes into dynamic computer-
enhanced imagery. Spielmann notes, however, that as images are processed in digital or
binary format, there is no actual transformation of one visual mode to another but rather
the simulation of transformation. She further points out that the complex layering of
images in digital processing produces a ‘spatial density’ or ‘cluster’ (p.139). In Living
Lens, for example, layered clusters of formerly discrete images appear to seamlessly
emerge and recede, giving the illusion of three-dimensionality on the projection surface.
Spielmann’s notion of image clusters thus enables an aesthetic consideration of the visual
imagery beyond descriptions of tools and effects. Specifically, her insights into the spatio-
temporal dimensions of digital images in motion through the principles of collage and
montage facilitate an understanding of the visual elements in Living Lens. As she states,
the collage - an approach emerging from painting and fine arts - is used spatially as a way
to break up the structure of a surface or to represent concepts of fragmentation and
simultaneity (p.138). Spatial organisation of the collage in terms of moving digital images,
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however, occurs through high density or layering. Montage, as derived from cinematic
principles on the other hand, links fragmented elements both spatially and laterally within
a space-time continuum (p.139). Accordingly, it seems that in Living Lens, both the spatial
density of the collage and the connecting function of montage are displayed:
High density collage results from the insertion of many, many layers and comprises the components of montage in such ways that the two directional functions of the moving image – namely, to represent time and space – are transformed into another form of the image that expresses a spatially organized structure, such as collage clusters…The digital collage not only inherits the spatial structure of painterly collage, but it also encompasses the filmic montage. (Spielmann, 1999, p.139-140)
Thus, in seeking contrast within a fluid continuum – an aim stated at the outset to this
chapter - the pictorial structure of the Living Lens visual environment is here understood
as a type of ‘digital collage’ (Figs. 37 & 38).
Fig. 37
Digital collage: World of Cosmos/Nebula. Layers include moving spherical lens objects, organic plant fibres, hand-painted and photographic textures.
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Fig. 38
Word of Forest/Cave, fluid transition to ice floes in World of Water/Ice. Elise May (left) and I-Pin Lin.
As a digital collage, distinctive aspects of selected images in Living Lens emerge through
the interplay of layers and transitions rather than as discrete spatial or linear combinations.
Through floating, fluid oscillations between surface textures and spatial depths, the
projected imagery seems to breathe, an illusion further amplified by the actual flow of air
through the screen panels. The resultant form is thus conceived as a luminous living
painting: clusters of digitally enhanced photographic and painterly colours and textures are
combined with a range of computer-generated objects and effects, creating an immersive
membrane-like structure for the performers to inhabit.
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4.3.3 Sonic clusters: the spatial-acoustic “palette”
The idea of creating a soundscape of “breathing” sound textures was also the approach
used in the initial creative development of Living Lens. Here, streams of ascending and
descending waves of sound produced a rambling continuity that contributed to the overall
homogeneous mood of the installation. Although I found this approach evoked a
contemplative, almost ethereal atmosphere, I was seeking to highlight more distinctive
qualities and tensions in the different worlds of Living Lens.
Whilst the approach of living painting implies a predominantly visual mode, it is also
perceived in the spatial-acoustic sense of a tangible, ‘auditory geography’ (Rodaway,
1994). To this end, I devised a set of tasks that Luke Lickfold developed as a palette of
adaptable sonic clusters. Although visual and spatial metaphors were used to inspire these
sounds, they were not applied in a directly representational or synchronous sense. Rather,
the idea was to ambiguously or abstractly suggest various spaces and realms, for example,
a deep forest, the vault-like interior of a cave, the high-pressure depths under ice floes, or
inner realms of the body evoked through pulses or spasmodic “firings” of neurons in the
brain. (For sound samples of the different “worlds”, see DVD section “Sound Palette”.)
In this way, The Loft, as a venue with a high ceiling, was seen as a kind of resonating
chamber or sensorium, with diverse possibilities for the spatialisation of sound.
To further address ways of generating contrasting sounds in the installation, I suggested
that Luke set up both obvious and subtle indicators of change; for example, through an
abrupt change such as a plunge, or through gradual change, such as a murmur to a clangor.
It was also possible to indicate change as a presentiment or omen, for example, through
the sub-rumblings of low-frequency sounds. Here I was interested to discover that the use
of low-frequency sound also creates an illusion of proximity (Schafer, 1994), with the
potential for a more encompassing immersive sound quality:
…the longer wavelengths of low-frequency sounds have more carrying power…and as they are less influenced by diffraction, they are able to proceed around obstacles and fill space more completely. Localization of the sound source is more difficult with low-
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frequency sounds, and music stressing such sounds is both darker in quality and more directionless in space. Instead of facing the sound source, the listener is immersed in it. (p.116)
Schafer here points to the potential for immersive, low frequency sounds to be used in
combination with more localised, directional sound sources. In Living Lens, this was
achieved by the separation - and therefore the localised spatialisation - of sound through
the quadraphonic speaker system. In the “World of Vortex”, for example, the effect of a
whirling mass was produced through the panning of sounds specifically created on the
vortex theme, creating the illusion of a force pulling into the center of the installation.
Interested in developing other directional aspects of sound, I visited the Japan-based
research laboratory of my ongoing collaborator, Dr. Junji Watanabe, a PRESTO
researcher at Japan Science and Technology Agency. Together with his assistant,
Tomohiro Yoshida, he introduced their current research-in-progress entitled ‘Moving
Ultrasonic Speaker’7 to the Living Lens installation (Fig. 39).
Fig. 39
Dr. Junji Watanabe preparing the ultrasonic speaker in a moving light housing.
7 MUS (Moving Ultrasonic Speaker) integrates an ultrasonic speaker (Mitsubishi Electric Engineering Co. Ltd., Japan: MSP-10MA) and moving light system (VisionLight Corporation Korea: MOVING PAR 201). MUS is being developed under the PRESTO Japan Science and Technology Agency residency program, Atsugi, Kanagawa, Japan. Living Lens was the pilot project for this device.
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These speakers emit high-frequency sound in a focused beam, creating a kind of
ventriloquist effect: when the beam reflects off a particular surface, it sounds as though it
has originated from that position. (For sound samples used with the ultrasonic speakers,
see DVD section “Sound Palette” under “Ultrasonic Speaker Sound”.) The specific
innovation developed through the Living Lens collaboration was firstly, to install the
speakers in computerised moving light housings to enable control of beam direction; and
secondly, to trace the direction of a performer’s movement in space or the direction of a
visual image across the projection surface, via camera-tracking. Whilst this has ongoing
potential, what could be effectively achieved in this iteration was the combination of
sound sources and body movement. For example, in the section “World of Animal”, low
frequency sounds generated by the quadraphonic speakers produced a general drone,
against which high frequency synthesised sounds emitted by the moving speakers created
an eerie swooping effect. As the performers Richard Causer and I-Pin Lin leaped
vertically or across the space at alternate moments in time, the sound beams created the
illusion of low-flying bats moving in several directions through the space. (For
documentation, see DVD section “Movies” with link from “Living Lens” to “Final
Performance”; from start of movie, click fast forward button to 10’32”.)
To make further use of the spatial qualities afforded by the venue, I made the decision to
recycle the original soundtrack created for the first “Living Lens” fragment as part of
Patchwork in Motion. With vocals by Kim Hosugi and polyphonic arrangement by
Mitsuru Kotaki, this piece was inspired by the haunting, hypnotic effect of traditional
Bulgarian female chorale. An image that evoked the spatial qualities of polyphonic
singing was a photograph of the domed fresco of San Vitale, a Byzantine basilica in
Ravenna, Italy (see Fig. 40). In this way, the soundtrack became a means to generate
ambient resonances in the The Loft, reminiscent of a choir ‘heard in the cathedral, where
the singers’ voices waft through the space, filling it like incense’ (Schafer, 2001, p.61).
This sensation was enhanced by transmitting processed strands of the vocals into the upper
regions of The Loft via the ultrasonic speakers.
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Fig. 40
The interior of San Vitale: the domed ceiling and painted lens-like fresco inspired the decision to recycle the original Living Lens soundtrack.
Thus, in contrast to earlier dark, dense sensations of forests, vaults, and inner realms, there
was a distinct release of tension in the final section, “World of Cosmos/Nebula”. Here, the
performers moved in fluid interaction with the gliding lens objects and richly textured,
emotive chorale. As the performers depart and the voices dissipate, there is a gradual
return to the opening sound and initial visual imagery of “World of Chrysalis”. In this
way, the closing of one cycle of “worlds within worlds” occurs through the inferred
emergence of a further cycle of transformations. (For documentation, see DVD section
“Movies” with link from “Living Lens” to “Final Performance”; from start of movie, click
fast forward button to 12’22”.)
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4.3.4 Shaping clusters as relationships between body, visuals and sound
The shaping of the “worlds within worlds” scenario through the various clusters of body
movement, visuals and sound, took place on site with all creative participants during the
two-week period prior to the public presentation. Here, it was a matter of participants
inhabiting the space and refining the different elements, yet without feeling constrained by
what had already been created. In a number of instances, including “World of Neurology
Ward”, “World of Animal”, “World of Vortex” and “World of Cosmos/Nebula”, the
intention was to generate correlations between visual images and body movement via the
motion sensors, or between the ultrasonic sound beams and a performer’s movement
pathway. In these cases, technological devices facilitated the direct mapping of movement
to visuals, or between audio and movement.
In other sections, however, relationships were not directly connected or entirely
synchronous. Many sounds, for example, occurred as audible tensions or invisible
presences, with interpretation left ambiguous. In “World of Forest/Cave”, the sound
evokes various kinds of pressure-induced creaking, such as the rasping of trees in a forest
or the slow splintering of ice floes. The visual images, on the other hand, comprise
multiple layers of skeletonised leaf textures, emerging and receding on the projection
surface. Whilst hinting at organic forest life, the branching structure of the leaf veins could
equally evoke ligaments or nerves within the human body. Accordingly, there is an
inferred connection between the performer, Ko-Pei Lin, and the visual imagery through
the idea of nerves extending from her fingertips. With the scenario of worlds used as a
guiding template, shaping of the clusters emerged through open, reciprocal analogies
between the various elements.
This development occurred through dialogue between the participants, as well as by
observing and listening to what was emerging collectively in the space. As Luke Lickfold
states in relation to sound, his particular method was to
…find a goal, an emotional or conceptual destination inspired by the dance or visuals in any particular scene, and then use whatever sounds, processing and spatialisation to
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achieve this goal… most of the time there was an evolving, organic background layer to the sound, with elements forming and dissolving in the foreground as punctuation, often synchronised with significant moments in the movement and visuals. (E-mail correspondence, October 20, 2006)
As Luke states here, development also involved finding points of connection, for example,
to signal an abrupt change at the start of “World of Neurology Ward”, a precise timing cue
synchronised visual image, lighting and sound to body movement. As the audio and visual
desks were located on opposite sides of the screen, headsets and camera monitoring were
crucial to communication and visibility. The process for the performers, on the other hand,
involved puzzling out the temporal and spatial sequencing of movement clusters on either
side of the screen, finding gaps that enabled new movements and transitions to emerge.
Hence, connections between body, visuals and sound were primarily malleable and
porous: while the qualities of each inflected one other, this did not always occur through
direct synchronisation.
4.4 Feedback
4.4.1 Participant Feedback
In post-production discussion with the performers (September 4, 2006) several interesting
points emerged. In regard to the cluster approach, Ko-Pei Lin, Richard Causer and I-Pin
Lin initially found it both frustrating and fearful to create sequences of movement without
being sure how they would eventually slot together; particularly as their own dance
composition method involved a more stable progression of consecutive phrases. In
retrospect, however, I-Pin found that her explorations based on the metaball body
connected to the cluster approach, specifically in the way this allowed for multiple
linkages and diverse transition possibilities. She further stated that my method of
integrating transitions between different sections of the “Worlds” provided an interesting
alternative to the tendency for demarcation through blackouts, noting that this approach
has helped her own emerging choreographic practice. Elise May, on the other hand, found
the clusters provided a little “pouch” of movements that together with her focal area of
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body as seismogram, provided an underlying reservoir of movement material and energies
she could draw upon during the performance.
In using images and language as a basis for movement explorations, Elise May found that
she started composing her own butoh-fu as a means to understand the different sensations
in the body. Ko-Pei Lin, however, found that repeatedly working on imagery through the
focus on tactility and torsion, created certain residues or ‘body memories’ that were later
reactivated in the live performance. Richard Causer, on the other hand, found that working
through imagery with emphasis on the topography of the body, facilitated a deeper
sensitivity and vulnerability of the head and spinal areas. He noted that spastic, painful-
looking ‘grotesqueries’ of movement not normally associated with being human, induced
various emotional qualities that he wanted to convey to the viewers through his body. In
addition, he found that in order to ‘stand out’ from the visual projections, he became a
kind of conduit ‘pulling’ the projected visual textures into three-dimensional space, the
tensions provided by the different sounds serving to activate or heighten sensations and
emotions through the body.
With regard to the visuals, Tetsutoshi Tabata (e-mail correspondence, September 20)
made an intriguing observation: whilst greater detail and density may have facilitated a
deeper involvement of the viewer in the visual environment, this very complexity may
have obscured the relationship between performers and the images via the sensor devices.
In respect to the latter, Ko-Pei Lin found a coherent relationship between her wrist
movement and the painterly brushstroke effect, which she felt influenced the quality of her
movement. Elise May, on the other hand, was not sure whether to improvise freely with
visual effects responding to her movements in an ad hoc manner, or whether to develop a
specific set of choreographed movements to generate predetermined visual
representations. Here Elise May points to possible future directions of the work, outlined
in the following chapter.
Regarding the interactive properties of the moving speaker devices, Junji Watanabe (e-
mail correspondence, October 15) suggested the projected sound beams contributed to an
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overall enlivening effect rather than a specifically integrated relationship with performer
movement or visual images, speculating that viewer attention may have been attracted to
the dynamic presence of the sound beams. Luke Lickfold, for his part, found the moving
speakers created a unique ability to ‘throw’ sound, a capacity warranting further
experimentation to explore spatialisation possibilities in conjunction with surround sound
systems. In addition, he felt that given extra time and resources, an extended improvisation
process could enable further discovery of how different elements interact, whilst allowing
for more variable configurations in Living Lens.
4.4.2 Peer feedback
Feedback from peers was elicited through an e-mail questionnaire devised by Cheryl
Stock, director of the Accented Body project (Brisbane Festival, July 15-17, 2006) in
which Living Lens comprised one of six site teams. Accordingly, several of the responses
given here refer in general to Accented Body, while others refer specifically to Living
Lens. Apart from Mary Ann Hunter, a reviewer for RealTime magazine, names of people I
cite here have been withheld for confidentiality reasons.
It appears that when using interactive technologies in live performance, many viewers
expect to be able to recognise the relationship. Feedback on the technological aspects of
Accented Body from a viewer described as a National Executive Arts Officer (August 21,
2006) stated that although these aspects were ‘intriguing and beautiful’, this person ‘was
not always sure of their relationship to what I was seeing in the ‘real’ bodies’. This
sentiment was echoed by a person described as a Senior Arts Officer, who stated that the
…subtlety of many of the connections made it difficult or even impossible for the audience to read, thus depriving the audience of the enjoyment of discovering many of the connections or understanding the nature of the interactivity. (Name withheld, August 3, 2006)
These comments reflect the importance for some viewers to “get” any interactive elements
of an artwork, for example, how a performer’s movements are mapped to sound and/or
visual representations; how sounds are mapped to visual elements and vice versa; or, in
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the case of a distributed performance or installation, how communication is exchanged
between different sites. If these relationships are not readily perceptible, feelings of
dissatisfaction or frustration may ensue. The question thus arises for artists and others
developing interactive technologies, as to whether issues of complexity or ‘subtlety’,
rather than transparency or coherence, are of central interest in a work. Yet the ‘nature of
the interactivity’ referred to by the Senior Arts Officer, need not only be understood in
terms of technological relationships, but also as mutual influences and interactions
between people and the specific creative environment. This idea reflects Kaiser’s notion of
‘shared sensibility’ (outlined on p.38) in reference to work developed collaboratively. On
this point, it is interesting to note the comment of one viewer, described as a Legal
Professional/Musician, who expresses the experience of the Living Lens installation in
terms of ‘the constantly interacting elements of the dance studio
(sound/lighting/dance/props) playing both sides of the room simultaneously’ (name
withheld, August 18, 2006). From this person’s perspective, therefore, the perceived
nature of the interaction was the involvement of all elements rather than of the
technological aspects per se. Nevertheless, for artists working with digital media, the need
for perceptually plausible connections between the dancer and the virtual components
remains a crucial issue that both Kaiser and Troika Ranch have highlighted in relation to
their work (please see p.39 and p.42 respectively). On this point it is interesting to note the
response of RealTime reviewer Mary Anne Hunter that Living Lens
…had the alternate effect of vortexing the mind to an indoor fixed screen which overwhelmed the bodies of the dancers whose attached motion sensors were directing the projected forms. (2006, p.10)
The feeling here is that all performers were directing the visual elements via the sensors,
with the subsequent effects engulfing both viewers and performers. The fact only two of
the dancers used the motion sensors intermittently seemed unclear, an indication that
relationships were perceptually incoherent. In addition, Hunter’s comments reflect the
sensations she felt as she moved through the installation: the visual projections quite
powerfully captured her attention, yet in so doing they also took predominance over the
performers.
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4.4.3 Personal Observations As one of the purported aims of this study was to shift the perceived dominance of visual
elements in motion, it is clear that the work Living Lens only partially succeeded in
addressing this imbalance. The large screen object that formed the central locus of
mediation was a compelling theatrical device that apparently claimed the greater share of
attention focus. Yet it would seem that a call for interdependencies between performing
bodies, visuals and sound implies an equal weighting. From this particular study, however,
it emerged that this was not the case. Rather what occurred was an installation
environment where the main perceptual domain was a visual one, enhanced by kinesthetic
and sonic strands. Apart from kinesthetic properties of the body, performers also added
dynamic sculptural qualities to the piece, and in this light can be seen as further
contributing to the visual dimension. In regards to sonic weighting, I find Junji
Watanabe’s comment (p.108) on the overall enlivening effect of the moving speaker
devices, to be an apt description of the soundscape in its entirety; the use of spatial and
directional sound in Living Lens served to actualise the notion of worlds within worlds
through shifts in texture, mood and tempo.
These changes in moods facilitated variety and contrast in the piece, and in this way, the
second iteration of Living Lens did succeed in breaking through the perceived
homogeneity of the first creative development. However, as the aim was also for an
integrated relationship among the elements, a focus on distinctive qualities of the dancers
meant that whilst at times they appeared to merge with the visual environment, at others
moments they appeared distinctly at counterpoint to the projection screen. Here, the
emphasis on the distorted aspects of movement inspired by butoh may have contributed to
a ruptured sense of space where the quality of interconnection was not always fluid. Seen
in this light, it becomes evident that the desire for rupture or breaks in the flow of the
continuum, to some extent also countered the aims for a more integrative structure. The
perception of performers as inhabitants of the installation space, moreover, infers a
seamless, sheltered relationship. In this respect too, the work only partially fulfilled its
aim, for if temporal sequencing is to involve aspects of rupture, a more unsettled and
uncanny sense of space is implied.
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4.5 Summary
In the final iteration of Living Lens, the “worlds within worlds” scenario was a means to
facilitate contrast in a predominantly fluid continuum and to focus on both distinctive and
integrative aspects of bodily, visual and sonic elements. In terms of the body, this occurred
through designating individual work areas to each of the performers, as well as through
the creation of adaptable movement clusters. The notion of cluster was further extended to
include visual and aural elements, specifically through image clusters as a digital collage,
and sonic clusters as a palette of spatialised sounds. Whilst at times the use of
technological devices enhanced connections, interdependencies occurred primarily as a
result of the elements inflecting one another, rather than through the direct integration or
synchronisation of performing bodies, visual images and sound. Thus, whilst the analogy
of “living painting” facilitated a poetic felt space of sensuous textures, the pictorial nature
of the focus resulted in the visual dimension remaining predominant in the work.
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CHAPTER 5: FURTHER DISTILLATION
…What the twittering-tree could be attributed to was the zone of indiscernibility – the affectivity and quivering – that passed between, indeed twittered between both trees and birds, which as such belonged to neither yet made both become musical being…The real subject was the coming about of this becoming, it was the performance of the process of composition. (Lomax, 2005, p.22)
5.1 Contributions to the field Living Lens is both a title to the work and a means for positioning the researcher as a
participant-observer, directing and articulating the encounter. In this way, the study itself
was a lens, augmenting my perspective as a practitioner through a focused and filtered
view that attempted to get closer to the lived experience of the creative act. Distillations of
this process occurred throughout the various phases of this exegesis, and, as asserted in the
Research Design chapter (see p.22), it is the translation of these experiences that I believe
constitutes a knowledge claim in its own right. To further clarify this process of
distillation, the study contributes to the area of existing practice and field of practice-led
research under the following headings.
5.1.2 Conceptual and performative contributions
Interdependencies as mutual influences
As pointed out in the last chapter, I believe the study made partial progress towards its
aims for achieving a more balanced relationship of elements in an integrative
compositional structure, the digital media serving to enhance tangible connections
between aural, visual and kinesthetic senses. Whilst visual elements remained the
prevailing feature in the final performance, the study on the whole highlighted the nature
of interdependencies between the collaborative participants themselves as well as between
the participants and the technological systems; relationships that were indeed subject to
mutual influence. The study also considered the specific nature and affective qualities of
each, facilitated by a compositional structure that, whilst not fully succeeding in
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integrating the components in the live performance, did nevertheless establish a shared
and integrative basis for collaboration.
Context of living painting
In addition to providing a further basis for a collaborative framework, the concept of
living painting was an effective means for contextualising the performance within this
exegesis. On a formal level, Living Lens displayed painterly characteristics through the
varied oscillating textures on the screen surface, whilst the double-sided curvilinear screen
installed in the centre of the space provided an in-the-round performance environment.
Consequently, the work moved beyond a conception of the moving image as a scenic
backdrop, an approach typified by more conventional fourth-wall theatrical approaches.
The undulating configuration of the screen reflected the idea of “stream” through which
the various worlds unfolded, hence the work successfully achieved a sculptural and
flowing sense of space that allowed interaction to occur between the performers, screen
and audience. The approach also integrated principles of living painting into a dance
context, the segmented screen allowing the performers to slip through and around the
“painting” environment. The performers’ close proximity to the screen, for example,
created bas-relief effects where projected visual textures became part of their bodies and
vice versa. When positioned at a distance to the screen, however, their bodies took on
tactile dimensions through sculptural and kinesthetic details that were further enhanced by
lighting. As an immersive performance installation, I believe this study contributes to the
chronological lineage of living painting contexts, adapting and extending this genre into a
contemporary and interactive arts setting.
Adaptable kinetic pathways Within the field of contemporary dance and choreographic practice, the use of butoh-
inspired poetic imagery offered a valuable contribution in terms of breaking habitual
kinetic pathways, allowing new approaches to the discovery and development of
movement material. Here too, there was a shared sensibility to the collaborative encounter,
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where the image-based approach of butoh-fu, with its particular focus on minute
movements and sensations in the body, was explored in tandem with task-based
manipulation methods and structural approaches of contemporary dance-making. The
feedback of the dancers themselves in response to both stages of the development (given
on pp.71-72 and pp.107-108) highlights the effect the work has had on their own creative
processes in terms of adding further strands to their dance and choreographic practices. In
addition to generating new ways of creating movement, the cluster approach contributed
further compositional strategies. In contrast to fixed linear sequences, the idea of creating
“pockets” of adaptable movement material provide a useful resource for dancers,
particularly in works that are of a more improvisational nature.
Poetic felt space
In the shared effort to develop a compositional structure involving performing bodies,
moving images and sound, the notion of poetic felt space provided a useful means of
conceptualising this relationship. Distilled through the creative and reflective process, it
also facilitated the performative process in a practical sense. The focus on sensory
qualities including texture, colour, vibrations and radiating energies, created an ambience
of layered and porous physical and virtual “skins”: the skins of the projected visual
textures on the screen, the auditory membranes of sounds and the physical skins of the
performers’ bodies as conduits of their own bodily sensations. I find, however, that the
interconnection of these permeable skins in the installation space points to a ‘zone of
indiscernibility’ (Lomax, 2005) that cannot be completely captured or articulated. Thus,
while I consider that a focus of this study has been towards a tangibility of immersive
space, alertness to the non-tangible dimension or in-between space is as important to an
understanding of the interconnections between people and elements in a mediated
performance environment.
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5.1.3 Technological innovations
In terms of tangible outcomes, the study resulted in the development of technological
instruments, namely, the XV3 imaging system and the Moving Ultrasonic Speaker system.
The technological approach, sliding towards the parameters of Design or Applied
Research, involved predetermined as well as emergent objectives; for example, in terms of
XV3, the creation of specific algorithms, 3D objects and textures with the capacity to
become responsive to performers’ movements and gestures. In case of the Moving
Ultrasonic Speaker (MUS) system, Living Lens provided a pilot project to solve particular
issues, specifically direction control through the modification of moving light housings,
and the location of performers’ spatial positioning through camera tracking. Thus new
visual and sound possibilities emerged through applications of the imaging and sonic
instruments, specifically developed in response to the needs of practice.
5.1.4 Contributions to methodology
Personalised position: the practitioner voice
As practice-led, performative research, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of
the way creative practitioners make sense of things, for example, in the borrowing of
theoretical concepts and/or the coining of new ones as tentative or more firmly positioned
markers to expand artistic ideas and articulate the encounter with the work. Here, the
study in its entirety, including performance outcomes and exegetical component, makes a
strong case for presenting a personalised position within a contemporary arts context.
Whilst an approach that acts from a premise of intuitive felt experience may not follow
current modes of thinking on performance making in terms of a social or political critique
or a questioning of issues such as identity or gender, it does, however, provide a solid in-
depth view of the inner workings of collaborative creative practice. In this way, the study
contributes to current literature of the field from the experiential domain of the practitioner
voice.
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The metaphor of lens
In understanding the nature of an interdisciplinary collaboration, the metaphor of lens in
its function of interpretive device and organising principle, offers a practical means that
could be adopted, adapted or applied tangentially by other creative practitioners. The
detailing of different focal aspects of the study resulted in an experimental laboratory-like
atmosphere, adding a further dimension to the notion of immersive space as a shared,
focused activity with all participants contributing to the process of research and creation.
In this way, the particular lenses adopted as focusing mechanisms on the performing body,
visual images and sonic elements could have wider or transferable application beyond the
specifics of the project itself. Consequently, the final iteration of the project has led to the
identification of the following action-possibilities and areas for further research.
5.2 Future directions
5.2.1 Technological focal areas The study elicits further possible focal areas in terms of technologically assisted
interdependencies. With regard to sonic dimensions, Dr Junji Watanabe (e-mail
correspondence October 15, 2006), points to the possibility of developing the Moving
Ultrasonic Speaker (MUS) system as a way to reflect sound from a performer’s body as a
form of “voice”. He suggests that if a performer wears a small microphone, vibrations or
frequencies directed to the microphone from the speaker may enhance the illusion that
sounds are emanating from the performer. Actual vocal possibilities could also be
explored as the MUS sound could be combined with a performer’s own voice, potentially
generating new polyphonic structures.
In terms of more tactile sensory connections between the performer and visual media,
further development of the XV3 imaging system could involve the added feature of a
“texture generator”. Here, for example, the brushstroke effect (mentioned previously in
Chapters 3 and 4) could include a capacity for various textures to be painted onto the
surfaces or “skins” of 3D objects in response to performer movement. Further study could
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more deeply address the concern of dancer/choreographer Elise May, namely, when
working with interactive devices whether to a) choreograph movement to engender
particular effects, or b) improvise movement to see what effects emerge. In such a
scenario, the performer is not simply the control component of the interactive environment
but is also subject to its influence. Two focal areas could address these concerns. Firstly,
the issue of control: at what point the dancer’s movement or positioning becomes
subservient to the effects of the media or vice versa. Secondly, the issue of perceptual
coherence: how relationships between the dancer and the audio-visual media become
perceptible or plausible to the viewer. The setting up of clear parameters for mutual
influence, with possibilities for the performer to affect the media environment and vice
versa, thus locates the performing body in new kinds of spatial and time-based generative
or “living” landscapes.
5.2.2 Adaptable clusters
The non-linear spatio-temporal approach of clustering was a useful compositional strategy
that emerged through this study. The adaptable nature of clustering has potential for
further exploration and adaptations. A future installation approach, open to variability,
might consider what would govern change. For example, whether change is motivated
internally from within the collaborative structure, or whether it occurs in response to
external stimuli, such as audience positioning and movement pathways. Opening up more
varied performative and viewing dimensions could involve a multi-chambered enclosure
that further reiterates the idea of “worlds within worlds” as separate yet connected
clusters. There is potential here to explore a more overlapping and rhizomatic immersive
experience as a web of interconnected spaces that could be entered from different points.
Alternatively, the installation could shift from an enclosed space to the more exposed
situation of public space, open to random presences of passers-by. In this way too, there is
potential for spontaneous, unexpected moments to emerge.
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5.2.1 Embodied visualisation processes
In terms of adaptable and variable approaches to creating movement material, further
investigation of embodied visualisation processes could examine other methods that use
poetic texts and pictorial images as a means of finding movement sources from within the
body or to break habitual movement pathways. A possible study might examine the
differences and connections of butoh-inspired approaches to somatic movement methods
(such as those related to or derived from Ideokinesis, Skinner Releasing or Authentic
Movement) that also employ image-based approaches. Alternatively, future work could
further investigate the way dancers and performers incorporate these image-based
methods, beyond workshop training to applications in live performance. Here embodied
perceptual practices (Riley, 2004) could examine working methods for a multilayered
approach drawing upon memories, bodily sensations and feelings, in interaction with other
performers and digital interactive media. Adapting the methods that emerged through this
particular study can thus be refined to create a range of possible tools for choreographic
development and movement pathways.
5.3 Summary Working from the premise of an experiential and emergent framework, Living Lens
focused attention on the interconnection of performers, moving images and sound, where
the development of compositional templates contributed to a shared basis for
collaboration. Whilst the final live performance only partially resolved its aims for shifting
visual dominance and fluidly integrating the elements, the study produced tangible
contributions by way of technological devices and performance methodologies, while also
contributing to the lineage of painterly practices within a contemporary arts setting. In
making a strong case for the personalised perspective of the practitioner voice, direct
insights were also gained into the nature of collaborative practice within the context of
mediated performance environments.
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APPENDIX 1: Credits for final performance Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk (66b/cell): visual source material, creative concept & project director Tetsutoshi Tabata (66b/cell): visual media & technical direction, DVD authoring Takahisa Sasaki (66b/cell): media programmer Tetsutoshi Tabata, Matt de Boer: screen object design Dr. Junji Watanabe, Tomofumi Yoshida: moving ultrasonic speaker devices Elise May: performer/co-choreographer Ko-Pei Lin: performer/co-choreographer Richard Causer: performer/co-choreographer I-Pin Lin: performer/co-choreographer Luke Lickfold: sound design, live sound manipulation Kim Hosugi: vocals, Living Lens original theme Mitsuru Kotaki: vocal arrangement & composition, Living Lens original theme Kirsten Fletcher: costume design Daniel Maddison: production coordinator Justin Marshman, David Murray: lighting realisation Tony Brumpton: technical sound support QUT technical production students: technical crew Polly Harrison: videography & editing
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APPENDIX 2: Biographies of participants (final performance) Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk (Netherlands-Australia) is a theatre studies graduate who based herself in Tokyo in the 1990s to study aikido and butoh. In 1994 she co-founded performance unit 66b as a result of work combining body movement and multimedia. Performances and presentations include Test-patches at media arts festival Ars Electronica (2002) and Seoul International Dance Festival (2003), Patchwork in Motion at BankArt Yokohama (2005), as well as various stage performances and installations in Japan, New York City and Europe. Awards include the RSA Encouragement of the Arts Award for visual and performative research on the Japanese art concept of ‘ma’ (1996) and the Peter Elkin Drama Prize for the Faust II Project (1997). She is visual media contributor and artistic adviser in the ongoing development of the imaging system XV3. Tetsutoshi Tabata, (Japan) is a visual artist who initially worked in editorial graphics and game design. In 1994 he co-founded performance unit 66b, setting up cell, the visual and sound component of the group in 1995. He has presented work at Ars Electronica (2002), The Japan Virtual Reality Society, the Adelaide Festival, All Korea Sports Festival, as well as stage performances and installations in New York City, Asia and Europe. In 2006-2007, he worked with Australian contemporary choreographer, Leigh Warren, on Wanderlust, a collaborative contemporary dance and visual installation project with participants from Australia and Japan. He is currently developing a user-friendly interface for the integrated imaging system XV3. Takahisa Sasaki (Japan) graduated in mechanical engineering from the University of Tokyo and studied 3D computer graphics animation at Digital Hollywood. In 2000 his real time 3D imaging software Johnny was awarded the graduation prize in the programming category. He works as an industry professional and is a member of 66b/cell where in collaboration with visual artists, performers and choreographers, he is developing an integrated system called XV3 that can be connected to sensor devices and be displayed on multiple screens. Dr. Junji Watanabe (Japan) received his PhD in Information Science and Technology from the University of Tokyo in 2005. He is currently a PRESTO researcher at Japan Science and Technology Agency in the area of cognitive science and communication devices using applied perception. He also collaborates in the area of stage design with 66b/cell. Collaborative works include Test-patches performed at Ars Electronica (2002) and the Seoul International Dance Festival (2003), Patchwork in Motion at BankArt Yokohama in 2005, and Living Lens at The Loft (QUT) in 2006. Elise May (Australia) is a graduate of Queensland University of Technology’s Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance). Elise’s recent work as an independent choreographer includes Elegance thy name…, Real Life Situation Failure for Critical Mass and knee deep in sunshine for QUT 2004 Dance Bytes season. In 2003 Elise joined Expressions Dance Company’s Education touring program and in 2004 performed in Chrissie Parrott’s interactive new media work Dispatch. In 2005 Elise performed in Brisbane and Canberra
134
in Clare Dyson’s Churchill’s Black Dog and in July represented Australia in the World Dance Alliance Young Asian Choreographer’s Project in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Richard Causer (Australia) is a graduate of Queensland University of Technology’s Bachelor Fine Arts (Dance) and has performed in works by Csaba Buday, Rosetta Cook, Ming-Shen Ku, Claire Marshall, Maggi Sietsma, Ricky Sim, Gavin Webber and Xiao Xiong Zhang. In 2004 Richard participated in a collaborative exchange for CORD/WDA-Asia Pacific International Festival in Taipei. Richard’s choreographic work Delirium opened the national design conference, 4um?Advertising and Design Asia Pacific, and toured to the 2005 Malaysian Dance Festival in Kuala Lumpur. Richard is currently performing with Brisbane-based Expressions Dance Company. Ko-Pei Lin (Taiwan) graduated from Queensland University of Technology with a BFA (Dance) in 1999 and a MFA (Dance) in 2002, the latter through the QUT Taiwan Dance Scholarship. In 2002 Ko-Pei performed in here/there/then/now and was voted “dancer to watch” in the Dance Australia Critics Survey 2003. She undertook secondments with Expressions Dance Company in 1999 and 2001. Ko-Pei has also performed in Korea, Indonesia, South Africa, Germany and France. During her time in Taiwan, she choreographed for the Scarecrow Contemporary Dance Company, Tsoying Senior High School and various independent projects. I-Pin Lin (Taiwan) started dancing when she was 5 years old. After graduating from Chia-Yi Girls’ High School in Taiwan, she enrolled at QUT where she completed the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (Dance) in 2005. During her time at QUT, she performed in several works by national and international choreographers including Jeffrey Tan, Keith Hawley, Csaba Buday, Shaaron Boughen, Gavin Webber, Ming-Shen Ku and Xing Liang. She also participated and performed in the 2005 Malaysian Dance Festival in Kuala Lumpur. In 2007, she completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in dance at QUT. Luke Lickfold (Australia) is a sound artist working across music production and performance as well as in experimental collaborations with artists of different mediums. Luke’s work includes sound design, live performance and interactive sound/multimedia systems in a number of projects including: Omon Ra (2006, Restaged Histories Project, Powerhouse); The Greater Plague (2005, Restaged Histories Project, Metro Arts); Living Lens (2005-2006, 66b/cell), ESP-Sound Through Movement, Movement Through Sound (2005, TOY, Judith Wright Centre), Escape (2005 and 20069, New Moves (2003), War of the Worlds (2003) and Graffiti (2002) for Queensland University of Technology.
135
APPENDIX 3: Flow Continuums (Laban)
136
APPENDIX 4: Excerpts of butoh-fu
Her
fing
ers
pinc
h th
e pe
tals
mad
e of
fine
ner
ves.
H
er n
erve
s cr
ack
a ti
ny w
hip
on h
er fi
nger
s…
Han
ds a
re to
uchi
ng th
e su
rfac
e of
a w
oode
n do
or in
fr
ont o
f you
. Th
e an
tenn
as s
tret
chin
g ou
t of y
our
fing
erti
ps
infi
nite
ly tr
ace
the
grai
ns o
f woo
d on
this
doo
r.
A n
euro
logy
war
d.
A m
ad w
oman
app
ears
. Th
e w
alls
and
air
of t
he r
oom
are
in
sane
. H
er b
ehav
iour
and
sen
siti
vity
hav
e be
com
e fr
ight
enin
gly
prec
ise…
fr
ight
enin
gly
beau
tifu
l…
Rea
lize
that
you
are
a g
igan
tic
king
dom
of n
erve
s…
Ner
ves
like
the
mes
cali
ne d
raw
ings
of H
enri
Mic
haux
ar
e ov
erla
id w
ith
nerv
es li
ke in
the
pain
ting
by
Edv
ard
Mun
ch.
Insi
de th
is o
verl
ay, n
erve
s st
art c
rack
ing
smal
l whi
ps th
at c
anno
t st
op…
H
e fe
els
the
very
tip
of th
e fa
raw
ay n
erve
s.
The
nerv
es a
re th
en w
ithd
raw
ing
into
the
body
…
You
are
trac
ing
the
nerv
es in
side
Mic
haux
’s in
k bo
ttle
, li
ke in
his
pai
ntin
g of
ink
dots
. Th
e fi
rst d
ance
is a
n an
alys
is o
f gra
cefu
lnes
s li
ke fi
ne je
wel
s on
the
coll
arbo
nes
of Q
ueen
Eli
zabe
th…
(M
icha
ux’s
ink
bott
le c
rash
es in
to y
our
righ
t for
ehea
d.
The
bott
le c
rack
s an
d in
k sp
ills
into
the
insi
de p
arts
of y
our
body
. Yo
ur n
erve
s tr
ace
the
spil
led
ink
insi
de y
our
body
: F
rom
the
righ
t tem
ple
thro
ugh
the
righ
t che
ek
and
to th
e tw
itch
ing
side
of t
he m
outh
and
to th
e ne
ck.
The
ink
is n
ow th
roug
h yo
ur n
eck
and
out o
n yo
ur b
ack.
It
then
re-
ente
rs y
our
back
and
com
es o
ut o
f you
r ch
est,
whi
ch th
en g
oes
up y
our
neck
aga
in.
The
nerv
e tr
acin
g th
e in
k co
min
g up
you
r ne
ck is
sud
denl
y se
vere
d.
The
nerv
es th
en b
ecom
e li
ke r
oots
pul
led
out o
f dir
t.)
A b
ranc
h of
a t
ree
beco
mes
a v
ery
stra
ight
ne
rve
insi
de y
our
body
and
gro
ws
out o
f it…
A
sec
ond
bran
ch g
row
s at
a d
iffe
rent
ang
le
from
insi
de y
our
body
and
out
of y
our
ches
t. Sh
owin
g th
e tw
o br
anch
es a
t the
sam
e ti
me
mea
ns s
how
ing
sepa
rate
incl
inat
ions
…
The
pers
on b
ecom
es li
ke b
arks
of t
rees
. Yo
ur b
ack
is fu
ll o
f ins
ects
.
Ther
e is
a fl
ower
of f
roze
n li
ght,
You
are
expr
essi
ng th
e co
ld, s
olid
sub
stan
ce o
f the
flow
er
and
at th
e sa
me
tim
e yo
u ar
e ex
pres
sing
the
flow
er a
s it
gr
ows
into
the
air.
Yo
u, th
e fl
ower
, are
wal
king
…
The
flow
er is
str
etch
ing
side
way
s be
caus
e a
peta
l has
cur
led
up fr
om b
elow
, A
nd a
noth
er h
as c
urle
d do
wn
from
abo
ve...
Th
e an
gles
of t
he c
urls
are
impo
rtan
t…
Dan
ce th
e di
men
sion
s of
flow
ers,
suc
h as
the
lotu
s fl
ower
. Yo
ur fa
ce is
cov
ered
wit
h pe
tals
. Th
e pe
tals
are
als
o cu
rlin
g ou
t fro
m w
ithi
n yo
ur b
ody…
Th
ere
are
stra
wbe
rrie
s in
you
r ey
es…
E
xcer
pts
rear
rang
ed f
rom
the
buto
h-fu
of
Tat
sum
i Hiji
kata
tr
ansc
ribe
d by
his
dis
cipl
e Y
ukio
Wag
uri.
Fr
om B
utoh
Kad
en b
y Y
ukio
Wag
uri &
Koh
zens
ha (
1998
)
137
APPENDIX 5: Excerpts of poems by Judith Wright
Put
you
r ha
nd o
ut, a
nd h
old
it st
ill, a
nd lo
ok.
Like
som
ethi
ng w
ild p
icke
d up
and
hel
d to
o lo
ng…
Th
e ha
nd is
dra
wn
from
the
flesh
by
its o
wn
uses
. P
ower
s un
chan
nelle
d, s
hape
s un
shap
ed a
wai
t it…
D
o no
t loo
k at
me,
the
hand
say
s, I
am
not
true
ex
cept
as
mea
ns. I
am
the
road
, the
bri
dge,
no
t sta
rtin
g-po
int n
or g
oal n
or tr
avel
ler.
I
am n
ot y
ou, t
he d
oer,
nor
wha
t you
do.
I
am e
xten
sion
; I
am y
our
fart
hest
edg
e.
I am
that
whi
ch s
trok
es th
e ch
ild’s
hai
r te
nder
ly-t
ende
rly-
A
nd d
rive
s th
e na
il in
to th
e ha
nd s
tret
ched
on
the
tree
. …
Look
aw
ay. D
o no
t loo
k at
me.
(F
rom
sec
tion
I. T
he H
and,
in F
lesh
, C
olle
cted
Poe
ms
1942
-197
0)
The
face
turn
s in
war
d an
d do
wn
on th
e he
ad’s
bud
; cu
rves
to it
s in
ner
wor
ld
of s
hapi
ng fl
esh
and
bloo
d…
Bir
th d
raw
s th
e st
alk
out s
trai
ght a
nd
the
face
wak
es.
Nak
ed in
a p
assi
on o
f lig
ht
its lo
ng c
ompo
sure
bre
aks.
It
wri
thes
to r
egai
n sl
eep;
bu
t life
has
stu
ng to
o de
ep…
an
d fle
sh h
as n
ow b
ecom
e
time’
s in
stru
men
t…
(Fro
m s
ectio
n II
I. T
he F
ace
in F
lesh
, C
olle
cted
Poe
ms
1942
-197
0)
She
hid
in h
er p
aint
ings
, cl
othe
d, c
loud
ed in
leav
es;
and
her
pian
o sc
atte
red
glitt
erin
g no
tes
of le
aves
in s
unlig
ht,
drum
med
with
win
ter
rain
s,
open
ed g
reen
dep
ths
like
gulli
es.
(Fro
m F
alls
Cou
ntry
, C
olle
cted
Poe
ms
1942
-198
5)
138
APPENDIX 6: Workshop excerpts: Interior & exterior space
Pai
ntin
g th
e sp
ace:
D
iffe
rent
par
ts o
f th
e bo
dy a
s pa
int
brus
hes.
Fin
gers
, toe
s, s
houl
der,
hip
s,
etc.
pai
ntin
g di
ffer
ent p
arts
of
the
spac
e.
Dif
fere
nt s
trok
es: t
hin,
wis
py, b
road
, lo
ops,
spi
rals
, cal
ligra
phy…
Spac
e as
vor
tex:
Sp
iral
ling
wat
er: t
he b
ody
at c
entr
e.
Spir
al o
rigi
nate
s at
bas
e of
bod
y an
d tr
avel
s up
war
ds
and
vice
ve
rsa.
Sp
iral
in
war
ds
to
core
. Spi
ral o
utw
ards
to e
xter
nal s
pace
. Se
nd
out
ripp
les
of
wat
er
into
su
rrou
ndin
g sp
ace.
Inte
rior
spa
ce:
“Inn
er la
ndsc
ape”
: oce
an, d
eser
t hor
izon
. C
hang
e fr
om d
eser
t spa
ce to
oce
an s
pace
. M
ovin
g di
ffer
ent m
ater
ials
thro
ugh
the
body
: Sa
nd, w
ater
, oil,
hon
ey…
Sh
ift
mat
eria
ls t
hrou
gh d
iffe
rent
par
ts o
f th
e bo
dy.
Let
mat
eria
ls f
low
out
into
ext
erna
l spa
ce.
Ext
erio
r sp
ace:
Sc
ulpt
ing
spac
e, c
arve
out
spa
ce w
ith th
e bo
dy.
Spac
e sc
ulpt
s bo
dy.
Spac
e en
fold
s bo
dy.
Spac
e pu
shes
you
in d
iffe
rent
dir
ectio
ns.
Rea
ct a
gain
st s
pace
.
‘Gra
inin
g’ (
Nik
olai
s 20
05)
Dir
ect
part
icle
s fr
om
with
in
the
body
an
d ra
diat
e to
war
ds
poin
t of
fo
cus.
In
teri
or
dire
ctio
n fl
ow:
eg.
from
th
e hi
p to
th
e ar
m/h
and.
Par
ticle
s ra
diat
e fr
om w
ithin
bod
y an
d st
ream
ou
twar
ds
from
ha
nd/f
oot/o
ther
bo
dy p
arts
to
poin
ts o
utsi
de t
he b
ody.
Cre
ate
dens
ities
of
pa
rtic
les
from
co
mpa
ct/
com
pres
sed
to lo
ose/
diff
used
. G
rain
with
dif
fere
nt b
ody
part
s le
adin
g: n
ose,
ch
est,
shou
lder
, hi
p, f
oot,
knee
, el
bow
, et
c.
Gra
in o
utw
ards
into
dee
p sp
ace.
G
rain
ver
tical
ly to
go
hori
zont
ally
, for
war
ds to
go
bac
kwar
ds, e
tc.
(Ada
pted
fro
m E
ric
Fran
klin
, 199
6)
139
APPENDIX 7: Texture: body/space
Bod
y te
xtur
e:
Surf
ace
text
ure
• C
obw
ebs
cove
ring
hal
f of
fac
e/bo
dy.
• M
ould
cov
erin
g ha
lf o
f fa
ce/n
eck,
dow
n on
e si
de o
f bo
dy.
• Fa
ce a
nd b
ody
cove
red
in c
rack
ing
whi
te c
lay.
•
Fibr
ous
root
s an
d br
anch
es c
omin
g ou
t of
your
he
ad, f
inge
rs a
nd to
es.
• T
he h
ead/
arm
s/ha
nds/
legs
/fee
t as
an
uncu
rlin
g fl
ower
bud
or
fern
tend
ril.
• Su
rfac
e of
the
bod
y as
a s
kin
scre
en p
roje
cted
w
ith v
isua
l tex
ture
s: s
kele
ton
leaf
, wat
er…
In
ner
text
ure
• In
ner
sand
mov
es th
roug
h di
ffer
ent p
arts
of
the
body
an
d st
ream
s ou
twar
ds
into
ex
tern
al
spac
e.
• Sa
nd s
trea
ms
dow
nwar
ds f
rom
und
ersi
de o
f ex
tend
ed li
mb.
•
Inne
r sp
aces
of
the
body
fill
ed w
ith h
oney
…
Ext
erna
l spa
ce a
s te
xtur
e:
Giv
e th
e ex
tern
al s
pace
lif
e. V
ary
the
dens
ity o
f th
e su
rrou
ndin
g sp
ace
from
den
se/c
ompa
ct to
loos
e/op
en.
• T
hink
of
sp
ace
as
resi
stan
t lik
e st
one,
in
crea
sing
ly le
ss r
esis
tant
like
jelly
, oil,
wat
er.
• Im
agin
e be
ing
in t
he d
epth
s of
the
oce
an:
feel
th
e pr
essu
re o
f th
e w
ater
. •
A s
pace
tha
t is
ful
l of
ele
ctri
c cu
rren
ts o
r sh
arp
need
les…
•
As
you
mov
e ac
ross
th
e sp
ace,
ch
ange
th
e te
xtur
e an
d no
tice
how
thi
s af
fect
s m
ovem
ents
an
d m
ovem
ent q
ualit
ies.
(Ada
pted
fro
m E
ric
Fran
klin
, 199
6)
140
APPENDIX 8: Energy/dynamics
Fou
r dy
nam
ics
(ada
pted
fr
om
Hum
phre
y,
1959
).
For
each
dy
nam
ic, m
ove
into
a d
iffe
rent
par
t of
the
spac
e. E
xplo
re th
is a
s a
“4-m
oon
exer
cise
” w
ith
the
wax
ing
and
wan
ing
of
each
m
ovem
ent p
hase
: •
Slow
and
sm
ooth
, lyr
ical
. •
Shar
p w
ith f
ast a
ccen
ts (
circ
ular
and
sta
ccat
o).
• A
ltern
atin
g sm
ooth
and
sha
rp.
• Si
mul
tane
ous
dyna
mic
s,
eg.
one
arm
do
es
sinu
ous
mov
emen
ts, t
he o
ther
arm
bea
ts a
rhy
thm
.
Dyn
amic
s:
From
Sa
batin
e’s
(199
5)
ener
gy
qual
ities
: E
xplo
re
com
bina
tions
an
d tr
ansf
orm
atio
ns
of
the
follo
win
g:
• Su
stai
ned
flow
, vis
cous
like
hon
ey.
• Pe
rcus
sive
, pu
lses
, sh
arp
shif
ts i
n dy
nam
ics,
re
gula
r an
d ir
regu
lar
inte
rval
s.
• V
ibra
tory
: bet
wee
n su
stai
ned
and
perc
ussi
ve.
• Su
spen
ded/
floa
ting:
han
ging
in s
pace
. •
Col
laps
ing
and
then
ris
ing
to s
uspe
nded
. •
Swin
ging
, co
llaps
ing
and
rebo
undi
ng
like
rubb
er o
r a
spri
ng.
Bre
akin
g up
the
con
tinu
ous
line:
C
ircu
lar
/ sin
uous
mov
emen
ts e
choi
ng c
ycle
s of
life
or
the
cree
ping
ten
dril
mov
emen
ts o
f pl
ants
, et
c.,
may
be
com
e m
onot
onou
s or
pre
dict
able
. It
is h
ard
to m
ake
them
loo
k sh
arp
beca
use
the
natu
re o
f th
e cu
rve
is
cont
inuo
us (
Hum
phre
y, 1
959,
p.9
8). W
e ne
ed to
bre
ak
up th
e co
ntin
uity
by
usin
g ac
cent
s:
• B
reak
up
th
e co
ntin
uous
lin
e by
st
acca
to
acce
nts
of h
ip,
quiv
erin
g of
thi
gh,
diff
eren
t fo
ot a
ngle
s.
• Sp
iral
tw
ists
/lung
es:
uppe
r an
d lo
wer
bod
y in
di
ffer
ent
dire
ctio
ns.
Rev
ersi
ng i
n an
d ou
t of
th
e sp
iral
: re
vers
e in
to
the
spir
al
to
mov
e ou
twar
ds a
nd v
ice
vers
a. F
or e
xam
ple,
rev
erse
ha
lfw
ay a
nd t
hen
rebo
und
back
int
o th
e sp
iral
to
initi
ate
a fu
ll bo
dy p
ivot
. M
icro
danc
e 3-
4 m
ins.
Im
prov
isat
ion/
Com
posi
tion
. L
et a
see
d ta
ke s
hape
. D
evis
e a
stru
ctur
e (u
sing
exp
lora
tions
ba
sed
on th
e po
etic
text
s or
oth
er e
xerc
ises
) em
anat
ing
from
a
seed
. Is
the
re s
ome
kind
of
iden
tity
emer
ging
her
e? C
an y
ou
go b
eyon
d th
e ex
plor
ator
y m
ovem
ents
to
acce
ss y
our
body
vo
cabu
lari
es?
Can
the
see
d be
a t
rans
ition
to
or b
etw
een
a pa
rtic
ular
dan
ce t
echn
ique
? T
hink
of
the
seed
com
ing
to l
ife,
its
ris
ing
pow
ers
and
ener
gy, e
xten
ding
into
ful
l blo
ssom
, and
th
en w
ither
ing
(doe
s it
lose
ene
rgy
here
or
is i
t a
diff
eren
t ki
nd o
f en
ergy
?)