VIRTUAL
INCARNATIONS:
This ground breaking initiative, launched at last years festival, continues
to explore the revolutions and evolutions of dance and digital technologies
and seeks to show a diverse range of experiments by choreographers and dancers
authoring their work alongside digital artists. Visions of the 'dancer' of
the future are put forward, as influenced by prevailing digitalisation, to
encourage debate around the shifting of preconceived notions about the body
in contemporary dance.
The use of digital tools enables artists and public alike to access and expand
perceptions of reality, to evolve consciousness of identity and to enlarge
the sense of embodiment. Virtual Incarnations examines the mediation of the
multi-sensory human being through technology and its virtual/physical effects,
and aims to extend the audiences experience, taking dance performance into
expanded levels of engagement.
INTERACTIVE/RESPONSE?
Some questions and issues raised by this years events and directly addressed
at the Live Chat room include:
· Are interactive systems fully developed or are we still at a response stage?
What are the creative possibilities for the users of the future and how may
this affect creative control?
· The use of the word "interactive " and terms such as relational and reactive
media.
· How much control of the environment created - whether staged or installed
in the space - do the original creators want to maintain?
· How much does a performer change when they know that they are affecting
and reacting to the environment around them?
· Are these interactive environments of any interest to the observer or are
they about the experience of "doing it"?
· How advanced are artists at addressing public needs? Are these needs too
demanding on the creator?
· Can artists vision methodologies which will release control and hand over
ownership to the user while still allowing artistic intent and communication?
· As an artist do you have to give up the idea of expressing yourself if you
want to work with interactive art?
· Can the user interface become the expressive arena of the work, enabled
through interactive humans to work together with interactive machines? What
visions of expression are there for these potential new forms?
· What happens to virtuosity - the skills of the experienced and trained dancer/performer?
