November 5, 2007

How Can Dance-Tech Community Embrace the Internet?

This morning I posted the below message to the Dance-Tech discussion list. (Here is the link to the post I submitted).

Since I started my blog on Great Dance more than two years ago, I've hoped to learn about and cover the latest developments, research and works in the dance-tech field. Unfortunately, I haven't covered the intersection of dance and technology as they pertain to performance except occasionally.

The reason that my coverage has been sparse is because just about none of the academics, researchers and practitioners has been willing to share his/her work online in a comprehensible, accessible and meaningful manner.

To put simply, even when I do come across websites that are promoting upcoming performances/installations/demonstrations of dance-tech work, I can't for the life of me fathom what is being communicated. The design and layouts of the sites are not standard, the text is too small, the pictures are hard to see and there's often no video. But even more importantly, I can't get a grasp of what the work is about on the most basic level. So I can't blog about something that I can't understand. By the way, I've looked at hundreds upon hundreds of such websites and there are very, very few sites that do not fit into the pattern I just described.

So, I have to say that when I read Johannes Birringer's criticism of blogs, social networking, video sites and the distributed nature of the Internet in general, I was surprised.

As Tony Schultz (of Dance Machines and The Winger) points out, just about the only online conversation taking place dealing with dance-tech issues and developments is in the blogosphere and it's also on MySpace and YouTube.

So I do find it odd that Johannes does not have first hand experience with Mark Coniglio's online efforts and that he is so hostile to Mark's selected communications medium:

(last summer, Mark Coniglio invited feedback to his latest video/performance/site specific project, but I think the piece was shown/displayed on a blog site or YouTube and commentators left their viewpoints there-else,

And continues by sharing his contempt for blogs:

(I seldom read blogs any more as i have simply not time to follow up all the blig links i get sent),.

Just to clarify, Troika Ranch has a MySpace page. And a video channel on YouTube:

Mark and Dawn Stoppiello have used the included blogging functionality of MySpace to describe their work under development and share their thoughts and reactions. Plus, and what makes this initiative very important, is that Mark and Dawn have been open to getting public feedback about their work, both good and bad, and responding to these comments and questions. I posted a number of questions in response to one of Mark's posts that he was kind enough to respond to.

In addition, Troika Ranch has also posted five videos to their YouTube channel. The posting of these videos along with the blog posts raises a number of worthwhile questions and issues regarding how choreographers/dancers can communicate with audiences in new ways outside of the confines of the physical and time limitations of the performance stage.

So how can it be acceptable to disregard blogs, social networking sites and video sharing sites? These are among the three most important recent developments on the Internet. To not follow what happens in this space, is not to be on top of what is happening on the Internet, with digital technologies, online communities and distributed communications.

And by the way, it's easy to subscribe to RSS feeds and video channels to stay abreast of anything that you want to track. I read/monitor hundreds of feeds a day via a single application.

I would have always thought that the dance-tech community would have been at the forefront of embracing the Internet to share and discuss their work both with fellow practitioners and the general public. But this simply hasn't happened except in a very few cases. Why has this not happened? I think it's very important to consider possible answers to this question.

A Need for Larger Dance-Tech Voice

There's also a related downside to the dance-tech community having a very limited presence on the Internet: when you want to express your views and criticisms, very few people read what you have to say. Take the critique, which jump-started this thread, of the interview with Sandy Strallen.

So when Douglas Rosenberg offers the following critique that appears to be shared by Helene Lesterlin and Johannes

The article puts forth a view of dance film that is historically inaccurate, skewed toward a Hollywood model an[d] one that exhibits a complete lack of understanding about film and media art culture in general. In short it furthers an agenda that pits the commerce of art against the art of experimentation.

who is the intended audience? Just the dance-tech community? Or would you like to have a larger platform? As things stand now, you don't have meaningful distribution. If you want to reach a larger audience, this list is not the way to proceed.

Questions

- Why is it that Troika Ranch is one of the very few dance companies to document their dance-tech work online and respond to feedback?

- Why is Tony Schultz one of very few (only?) academics to host a blog for his dance-tech students to explore and discuss their research?

- Why is Matt Gough one of the very few academics in this space to share thoughts and reactions about dance-tech related issues (and other topics) via his Tumblr blog?

- Why does the dance-tech community appear to be so cut-off from many channels of discussion and exploration?

- And what is the best medium for communication for this group? It could be stronger moderation and guidance of this list as Matt suggested. It could be a social networking site as Marlon Barrios Solano recommended. Or it could be a distributed conversation via blogs/video sharing sites. There are many possibilities. But for any of these forums to work, participants in the dance-tech field need to contribute, need to be part of a larger conversation and need to be willing to listen and respond to diverse voices from both within and outside the field.

As Matt said at the end of a recent post:

one of the things i like about students is they ask or pose seemingly obvious questions. until you realise that no one has formally articulated them (or at least not in a single text).

this is an ongoing issue we have in dance, and a lack of new (critical) theory is not helping it. seeing tony's student ask a question made me resolve to bring it up with my students. but, if i'm going to talk about it with my students, i should also feed my perspective back to tony's students.

this could be an interesting strategy as tony pointed out. rather than just engaging with your class, you get (in)direct and distributed access to the dance-tech field. not a social network, but a learning and sharing network.

To me, this type of openness (to student questions, distributed collaboration and the contribution of new knowledge/insights back into the network/loop) is what the Internet ought to be about.

I look forward to thoughts, criticisms and reactions to my post.

Best,
Doug Fox
Great Dance
doug@greatdance.com
http://greatdance.com

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