Dialogue: A Reply On PVL-Dance

Nathaniel Bobbitt & Phyllis Douglass

The text here is by Phyllis Douglass an active choreographer. Replies by Nathaniel Bobbitt are in red print. Your reply is welcomed too!

Dance Content


On Dance Content

On Dance Movement

On Audiences & Visual Accompaniment

Analysis


Eyewitness

Audience and Two Way Visual Systems

Dance Episodes


Dance Episodes

Graphism and Composition

Dance Content

On Dance Content

For me, dance develops through focus/vision.



Reply: On Dance Content

For me, dance develops through...
  • Performance Imaging

  • Tasking:

    • On Dance Movement



    Dance movement is the articulation of my response to:

    (1) visualization

    (2) my textural and architectural response to that visualization

    (3 ) my emotional and dynamic response

    (4) the ultimate kinetic response to the visualization.

    I build upon my kinetic response with the original focus in the forefront to maintain the purity of the movement within the finalized choreographic work.

    The result is a number of sequenced tasks.

    Reply: On Dance Movement



    Gestures have some external "cue" which guides the gesture . Also, there is an intuition in dance which is based on the "performer's readiness" to go from one gesture to another. These elements help take the visualization at work to be more physical yet internal. Other neighborhoods of visualization are to be found given this orientation?

    The next step is how the choreographer structures motor and articulatory resources in a dancer?

    This approach is valid only if it helps to free dance composition from occupying the same old neighborhood on the stage and regarding the quality of dance motion. There has to be more to dance orientations besides grace, contact, running, and acrobatics?

    Audience & Visual Accompaniment



    When the piece is performed for an audience, the original focus needs to be there as you execute the movement. Otherwise, the audience will "read dance as a series of visual objects", because that is all it will appear to be. But sometimes, the dance was meant to be exactly that.

    Reply On Audience & Visual Accompaniment


    As a flutist that circular breathes I see there is a physical (motor) approach to performance. As a technologist interested in visual accompaniment, human vision, and other visual systems "Dance" is attractive to me because it poses as the element for a visual literacy which is not pictorial and not cinematic. Dance is waiting to go beyond imagery (storytelling) and to address imaging: networks of human sensory resources.

    I am working with dancers as they provide visual resources which take aim in an environment. Dancers lead me to understand the musical notion of accompaniment in terms which are visual and work based.

    I could be looking at welders too as they take aim!

    Whatever, I am looking for "know-how" and physical responses to behavior which link the computer environment with real world scenarios.

    One example of a physical response to dance would be, imaging with "physical playback."

    Imaging of sense data needs to find alternatives to displays of data in numerical terms (tables, plots, graphs). I am proposing a representation of data as a "physical playback."

    Another example of imaging is the capability to show in parallel or sequentially several stages of a behavior as it gets refined, accentuated, etc.



    Analysis

    Audience as Eyewitness



    A person on the outside witnessing task realization, is incapable of mapping the mental and sensory components resultant to the task, unless the task is familiar.

    Reply: On Audience as Eyewitness


    This is a very important point yet I suspect an observer is always able to ascertain some aspects of the drama at work during a complex task realization? Besides the role of an imaging technology is to isolate, amplify, and capture behavior so that a viewer better understands human behavior.

    Counter-Reply: On Audience as Eyewitness


    If so, it is achieved through relational mapping of the representation and vision of the object (e.g. your example of holding and dropping the paper as you lose focus in sleep).

    Reply: Counter-Reply On Audience as Eyewitness


    "Physical playback" would offer an integrated representation of the parameters at work by using multimedia objects rather than a list of data.

    Also, paper is used because of the tactile experience which the dancer holding the paper has. The holding of the piece of paper is something that is readily evident to a viewer but needs some kind of amplification, some kind of a physical playback!

    From the capability of the physical playback motor behavior in the dancer's hand, fingers, and rhythmic sensibility could be exploited so that "physical playback" and dancer sensorimotor resources can be brought into an exchange.

    Audience and Two-Way Visual Systems


    This is difficult when viewing some dance, because the artists intent is not always apparent.

    In essence, the audience does not understand where the artist is coming from, or from where the movement derives. But, this "vision" is not always necessary for the audience to move beyond viewing dance as a series of visual objects.

    Reply: On Audience and Two-Way Visual Systems


    There are two reasons why a visual system would have 2-way broadcast:

    1. To create greater on-scene realism in remote distance instruction or image human behavior.

    2. A teacher ,remotely or otherwise, may need to see both what is evident and "intangible" in a student's motoric sensory behavior.

    Dance Episodes


    On Dance Episodes

    If I look suddenly in the opposite direction, and slash my arms through the air with fingers tensed in harsh, rapid, thrusting strokes that begin and end abruptly -- you would assume I was angry/frustrated.

  • If I covered my face and heaved my body -- you would assume tears or grief.

  • If I jumped in the air and flapped my arms-- you would assume I was flying.

  • If I leapt in the air, landed and rolled several times rapidly then stood and turned towards you with my hand over my mouth--what you assumed would largely be based upon how I executed the movement.



    Reply: On Dance Episodes



    Of your random examples only the last one has possibilities to explore excitation and control in dance behavior. Consider the acrobatics in the last example in terms of selection... selection of a landing spot and the transition from one landing spot or stopping point. Consider balance and the readiness of respiration in the case. There are some time variant and real time computing issues at work in this case, if we use "physical playback."

    Graphism & Composition

    However, PVL can be utilized as a creative tool for recognizing and utilizing the mental and sensory components of a movement (dance) to create and develop choreography.

    The groundwork on PVL started with how to develop a graphical syntax which works on paper as much as a computer program. This I see totally as a matter of a diagrammatic "shaping" tool. PVL is not so much a computer program as a set of rules and ways to notate "concept maps " and "flow charts."

    It can be used as an improvisational tool, with the dancer reacting to other elements within their environment. It can heighten the depth of understanding of dance through the definitive focus of the movement. PVL would change the representation of dance in performance through more cognitive visualization of the movement.

    Only if I can help dancers to think about environmental space and background scene description during a dance which challenges motoric resources and human vision.

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