Departed - Inscriptions in Time and Place; Movement 2 - In the Company of Strangers

This study is again, in direct collaboration with the composer/musician, Mike Beever, based in Nelson, NZ Aotearoa. Mike composed the sounds specifically for this video footage, giving me a range of short bursts of sound. I requested this to provide me with choices and flexibility within my matching/editing of sound to movement/intention. I am indebted to Mike for his generosity in working with me and giving me license to manipulate and edit his sound work. In this piece I was seeking to engage with a sound base that is more ambiguous than in the earlier versions of 'Departed' and both the sounds and the title reflect my curiosity about our ability to leave inscriptions or traces not just upon obvious surfaces like table tops in the station cafe, but upon one another through the myriad of languages that we use; movement, touch, sightlines, intent, imagination - all within the timeframe itself, wherein we inhabit and displace space within a given place.

This video is based around an urban myth I am creating; that all our engagements, meetings and relations with people and places are subject to the forces of indeterminacy which set the scene for movement - movement away; departure - we are always leaving ... I wanted to introduce a sense of small but strong drama; a tableau of clenched feeling which we can sometimes witness in public places; a sense of passion, of despair, of pathos at our fate which is to be swept up in this constant movement away from those places and people which sustain our sense of belonging. The work is interventionist in that it creates a moment of uncertainty for the busy commuters at rush-hour; what is taking place here? A quarrel? A passionate withdrawal? A charged parting? The event of leaving within the chosen day inexorably taking over ...

ADA Keynote Conversation 27.6.09

Last week (25.6.09) Clare Atkins was IM`d by Eric Kluitenberg aka Ze Moo in SL about my station build. Clare passed this on to me and after I made contact with Eric he enquired if I was interested in being involved in the ADA (Aotearoa Digital Arts) 2009 Critical Digital Matter event. A Keynote Conversation distributed through RL and SL, as a live broadcast between London, Amsterdam and Wellington with projections screened at 'debalie' in the centre of Amsterdam, a screen at Goldsmiths College in London and Victoria University in Wellington. Also one in the centre of the city. (Interesting to note here that Victoria University leases space at Wellington Railway Station, looking down upon the space in which I have been carrying out my dance work for the last two years).

Please see the ADA website for full information on this event:
http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?articleid=324196































The initiators of this event were Eric Kluitenberg (Amsterdam) , Su Ballard (Wellington) and Mathew Fuller (London) with additional guests.






















After learning that the organizers wanted Koru to host this event, I accepted and referred Eric/Ze Moo to Clare Atkins, the manager of Koru. Eric had communicated his appreciation of my station to me and I suggested the possibilities of his running this event next to my build and bringing his cameras in to the station at the end of the discussion and this is what happened. Clare facilitated this in her usual pro-active, supportive manner and I am excited for Koru and NMIT that we were able to bring this event to a successful conclusion.
















Biographical Information:

Matthew Fuller is David Gee Reader in Digital Media at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture (MIT Press, 2005) and Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (Autonomedia, 2003). He has worked closely with the artists collective Mongrel, and was a member of the speculative software group I/O/D from 1994-1997 and most recently initiated the 'Digger Barley' project shown at Futuresonic and Manifesta 7. Along with architect Usman Haque he is author of 'Concurrent Versioning City' a FLOSS-inspired quasi-licence for urban construction. He is particularly interested in the cultural effects of technology.
















Su Ballard is Academic Leader, and Principal Lecturer in Electronic Arts in the School of Art. Her research centres around digital aesthetics, experimental sound and video, visual culture, and media ecologies. She completed her PhD through the the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics, Universty of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Her PhD examined materialist tendancies in digital art installation by New Zealand and Australian artists working in international contexts. She recently edited The Aotearoa Digital Arts Reader, published by Clouds.
















Eric Kluitenberg is an independent media theorist, writer and organiser on culture, media and technology. He is head of the media deprtment of De Balie, centre for culture and politics in Amsterdam. Recent publications of his include the Book of Imaginary Media (2006), Hybrid Space (2006), and Delusive Spaces (2008).

I would like to thank Eric Kluitenberg for his kind offer to be involved and show my station and videos of my work as part of this event.

PSI#15 Zagreb 24-28 June 2009

This is a post of my paper presentation to the audiences in Zagreb at this year`s - the 15th Performance Studies International conference in Zagreb, Croatia. Once again, this was carried out in my SL station so I made a dual presentation to two audiences in both locations. I had 15 mins to present my paper with question time following some 45 mins later, after the last presentation had been made. During the interim, I had another question time from the Second Life audience in the station.

PSI#15 Zagreb, Croatia
Misperformance: Misfiring, Misfitting, Misreading

Abstract Title:
In the Company of Strangers - Negotiating the parameters of Departure in Urban Spaces; a study of Indeterminacy and the Roaming Body

Abstract:
This paper scrutinizes Indeterminacy as a mediating force impinging upon our behaviour and its subsequent impact on the nature and constituency of engagements and dialogue between people in urban spaces. Concepts centering on the dynamics of departure are being investigated through my research-practice, which posits the formation of a new Urban Myth: Experienced through the vehicle of the Roaming Body, our meetings and encounters with people frequently manifest as truncated or disjunct, mis-communiqués and dis-engagements. I am asserting that this is due to the inevitability in our existence of indeterminacy acting as a significant
governing factor in the articulation of our relations with others and that this is evidenced in us through the occurrence of a continual, pre-emptive state of departure. Indeterminacy implies motion and emerges, as Massumi so ably asserts, through ‘… an unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary …’. We, as humans, are constantly being drawn away – always either approaching or embracing involuntarily, a state of ‘Leaving’ which co-mingles with and unerringly erodes our efforts to engage with another in the here and now.

















In my dance and video practice, which underpins the concepts in this paper, interventionist dance strategies are being used to prompt and interrogate the constituents of encounters and departures in designated public places.

Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation Duke University Press, Durham & London, (p.5). Def: 'The Roaming Body' - the body as entity which can never be fully committed to a set position or location in space and time (Mike Baker Feb 09)

This paper examines and seeks to link two principal issues: Indeterminacy and Mis-engagements. My first task is to illuminate certain forces which give rise to the concept of the human body witnessed in the context of contemporary, urban environments, as a roaming entity. This particular description of the body which I would like to present defines as a reality for us as humans, an involuntary movement away from people and places with which we come into contact. We are always partially missing from 'this' moment in the everyday. Our Roaming/leaving body I maintain, is responsible for the existence of the second issue: Our predilection as humans for obfuscation, tangential connections and the involuntary pursuit of the next moment; mis-communication, mis-engagements, missing in short, from 'now' which in turn, makes our shared communications at best, problematic. Our roaming/leaving body initiates pre-emptive departure - an inexorable, unfolding momentum into the omnipresent future, now past.

Both, past and present descriptions of the body`s temporal identity have inevitably been swept by that uneasy beat of dark wings; I am suggesting that a climate of indeterminacy has always existed in the terrain which we, as humans have had to negotiate, evident in the ways in which our choices are made, in our actions which appear to prevail, in our relations with others, in the spaces we displace and in the times which we traverse. Through indeterminacy, despite possible desires to stay put, in life, the notion of our leaving is central to our existence.

Henri Bergson is perhaps most widely known for his treatises on the concepts of time and becoming. A process philosopher, he pursued the often intangible qualities binding content, concentrating on the unfolding process of the event itself. Significantly, for this paper, the state of ‘Becoming’, describes movement - an action rather than a static state. Bergson asserts that,‘ … the qualities of matter are so many stable views that we take of its instability’. He puts this very succinctly another way: '… rather than there being things which change', more accurately speaking, there is, '…change provisionally grasped as a thing'.

This realignment of perspective may allow us to witness indeterminacy in-the-making, made visible in mis-matched meetings between people on the street, governed in their actions by the phenomenon of leaving. Indeterminacy occurring through premature departure ensures that we are often led away by our Roaming/Becoming body before all of our attention is ready to leave ...

A definition of the term, 'Indeterminacy':
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which is founded in quantum mechanics, asserts that both the position and momentum of a given particle cannot be determined simultaneously.'The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant and vice versa'. (Heisenberg,1927)

Video 1 - the Roaming Body - ICS

In other words it could be said that one is unable to record scientifically, evidence of a given body that is both static and moving at the same time. If one cannot measure something, does this make the non-finding absolute? Given that we register the activity, is it possible perhaps to measure empirically, through the senses, this activity in one body taking place in two situations at once? Despite the scientific, physical non-finding, does this mean that one`s 'attention' cannot be in two places at once? Or one`s desires, intent, perception? I suspect that this is not the case. I am suggesting that through acknowledging and assuming in ourselves a state of 'the being-in-change' or our Roaming Body, it is possible to transfer ones presence in the form of intent, from 'here' to 'there' simultaneously and that there is physical, visible evidence for this in scenarios involving mis-engagements between people on the street.

To illustrate dual presence, mis-engagement and pre-emptive departure through an indeterminate intent; in the first video clip shown here, the couple in the spotlight conduct an animated conversation in the street. In the last minute prior to their separating, although the woman eventually says goodbye, physically walks away and leaves the engagement, the man appears to have already departed from the conversation. He shuffles, he checks his cell phone, he hides behind his hands, he waves his arms uncertainly and looks around. He checks his watch. Eye contact decreases. No longer is he fully present. When she does finally leave, his reaction is marginally interested – because his roaming self has already left. His ‘Leaving’ has crept into and hijacked the meeting, while ostensibly, they were still engaged. Indeterminacy and resulting slippage is embedded here. Can this constitute evidence of a simultaneity of presence? Here, yet not here? Both people left. Movement away occurred in both parties, even though ironically, the person who left first, stayed behind. Is this occurrence actual or merely a point of perception? (Is a point of perception no less actual?)

Let us examine human communication as an adhesive which only partially binds us to the moment in this continuity of change. Not only does speech aid our functioning in social situations and locates us in time and given space, but more candidly, the ability to converse and to be heard ignites, expands and affirms the map of the human heart, consolidating engagement.

















‘Rudimentary engagements, communication at its most basic, the prototype of all human interaction …’ such are the descriptors for the term, ‘Protoconversation’ in Daniel Goleman`s, Social Intelligence, The New Science of Human Relationships. Protoconversations have a certain elasticity in meaning and application. Not only does it refer to the very earliest development of our powers of communication as infants (mostly non-verbal), but in adulthood, protoconversations remain as our most fundamental template for mapping, matching or missing in meetings with others.

The template is tacit, a subtle awareness through feeling and the senses which allows us when we meet to quietly proceed, in step, with a stranger or acquaintance, friend or family member. Protoconversation is a silent dialogue – Goleman uses the term, ‘substrate’ upon which all encounters or engagements are built. Goleman assures us that it is, ‘… the hidden agenda in every interaction’. A silent go-between if you will, which underpins and as a mode of communicating, often outlasts the manifestation of speech. One could extend this to say that protoconversation is a silent, neurokinetic conversation supported by mutual empathy - assisting a curiosity about the path ahead. Theoretically, this is a human given - a strategic baseline which ensures that once we do engage with another, we can communicate.

In Tricks of the Mind, Derren Brown writes, ‘ Most people when they are getting on well, will be in a state of unconscious ‘rapport’. They will tend to mirror each other`s body language and so on without realizing it …’ At the same time, ‘… there is the odd sensation we have all experienced (though we never think to mention it) of knowing when the other person is about to get up and leave. Suddenly there is something in the air, a moment or a shift and then you know the other person is about to say they should ‘make a move’. And if they don`t you have that feeling that they are outstaying their welcome’. Brown maintains that studies carried out on rapport have shown an array of mirrored behaviours where conversants tend to breathe at the same rate, adopt similar facial expressions, blink at the same rate and use one another`s language. I would describe these responses as somatically based. A hidden dialogue beneath speech and vision through which we are more overtly governed. The hidden message which is about when and how to leave an engagement is articulated through speech-prompts but also through body language, an underlying empathetic cue to move on and here is the rub - with this decision coming from a place ‘of ‘ and in the body – a place though, from which in a manner of speaking, we have already departed. Indeterminacy surfacing through departure and perceived through the lens of our Roaming body, ensures that the sophistication of these systemic communication modes ultimately achieves only temporary purchase in the moment. But there are reasons to be hopeful I hear you say?

Here we have at our fingertips, so to speak, a very specific skillset which is available to us on a subliminal level during our interaction with another; a transponder of sorts, fashioned to assist us in the process of counteracting our tendency toward our disfunctional, mis-matched connections, lost-in-translation through our predisposition for departure. Yet it seems that we cannot control this movement away. Brian Massumi states that a body in motion is held within an ever-changing process of movement relative to its own already non-static position in space. Massumi, (in a vein which is similar to Bergson`s sense of 'becoming') maintains that the only 'real' relation is that of a body to its own indeterminacy, (... its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise that it is, in any here and now.') Somehow, either sooner or later, (or, in the light of what we have just seen - sooner and later), without always recognizing it our Roaming body ensures that we are always leaving. Allowing for the variables within which we carry out our departure, the only non-variable is that we will actually depart.

Video 2 - Departed - Movement 1 - ICS

The video playing here is an expression of both matching and missing - an intimate, small-conversation between dancers who, as cinematic simulacra dislocated from their original performing context/moment, possess avatar properties. I wanted to introduce a sense of small but strong drama - a tableau of clenched feeling which we can easily recognise and sometimes witness in public places; a sense of passion, of despair, of pathos at our fate which is to be swept up in this constant movement away from those places and people which sustain our sense of belonging. Our conversation through movement is compressed by time - impending departure often narrows our sensibilities and where we had hours to talk, to smile, to share empathy, thoughts, hopes and aspirations, suddenly there is no time and our dialogue becomes erratic, our thoughts unspoken, the spoken word itself, stymied. Is this why touch is so eloquent in moments of parting when no words can be found? Private, personal dialogue which largely remains invisible in public spaces becomes larger than life for us - illuminated with undisguised feeling. A tableau between two people made public, a virtual, half-witnessed-half-remembered-later moment, representative of the myriad of disjunct dialogues and discreet micro-dramas within scenes of departure which may occur in these kinds of public spaces.

In this Urban Myth I am creating, the interconnections which exist between indeterminacy manifesting through lived departures, ensures that there is no surcease for the Roaming body in this obdurate, dislocated continuity of the Real we call life. The Roaming body ensures that no secure position may be attained and held indefinitely. In this context we may find that we are interconnected through our mutual estrangements and that our engagements, conversations and connections will always be at hazard.

I suspect from my observations that ultimately, as indeterminants, we are always ‘Leaving’ and that this is a true descriptor of our condition in that business of being a becoming human. There is real pathos to be found in a lifetime of leaving engagements and this state will keep us forever defined as being incommunicado because we have already left, missing from our own present tense in the everyday.

2236

References:
Allen, J. (2000). Negotiating difference or being with strangers. Thinking Space Crang and Thrift (eds). Routledge, Taylor and Francics Group, New York, (p:57)

Bergson, H. (2005). Visualizing Experience. Henri Bergson on memory in Middleton, D and Brown, S. D. 2005, (p. 61)
Brown, D. (2007). Tricks of the Mind. Channel 4 Books, (p.186).

Goleman, D. (2007) Social Intelligence, Recipe for Rapport, Bantam Dell, (p.30)

Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation Duke University Press, Durham & London, (p.5).

Middleton D and Brown S. (2005) (The Social Psychology of Experience: Studies in Remembering and Forgetting, (p.62).

Retrieved from: Quantum Mechanics 1925-1927 THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08.htm

Mike Baker Nelson, NZ Aotearoa 26.6.09

Critique:

This conference was the first that I applied for last year, so I had, theoretically, a surfeit of time to prepare. This did not quite eventuate due to the other conferences that I needed to prepare for which preceded this one, but I was still able to prepare in good time. I had a number of meetings with my technician in Zagreb, who like Emily at Stanford, came in to the SL station so that we could discuss issues and develop strategies for the presentation. This all went well until the last week, when I could not get in touch with Lovro at all - until 20 mins before my presentation was due to begin. So a list of points that I had emailed to him did not get resolved, eg: confirming his camera angles for the Zagreb audience, organizing a camera to record my presentation in the space there, last minute communication aspects ... when we did meet, he informed me that his headset had broken so he could hear me but I could not hear him. So he typed his replies back to me and we ran the presentation like that. This was acceptable, but slow and some things were missed. So this phase of this conference for me was very stressful and unhelpful.

The conference format had organized that question times only occurred after all the presentations (4) had been made, which I found very unsatisfactory. It meant that this time was not sufficiently focussed upon one presentation at a time, so the feedback quality was questionable. One plus to this format was that I had questions from the Second Life audience while we were waiting and this was very constructive. It also meant that I could show 7 of my videos to the waiting crowd, although unfortunately, the Zagreb audience did not see these.

The questions from the SL audience dealt with death, leaving, dual presence, the autobiographical nature of my project, arrival v departure.

My presentation was delivered without any problems and I finished inside 14 mins, while changing the videos playing. When it came time for questions from the Zagreb audience apart from queries about the nature of leaving there were not others and I was asked to continue with my concepts, so I read one of my coverages of protoconversation/mis-engagement as applied to Contact Improvisation Dance practice - the experience of dueting and this was well accepted.

SDHS2009 at Stanford University, California, USA

The 2009 conference of SDHS (Society of Dance History Scholars) Topographies, Site, Bodies, Technologies was held at Stanford University, California, USA this year.

I presented two papers: The first was an individual paper presentation delivered from my Second Life Wellington Railway Station - In the Company of Strangers - Negotiating the parameters of Indeterminacy; a study of the Roaming Body and Departure in Urban Spaces.

The second paper was entitled: The Human Analogue in Mixed-Reality. This paper was delivered at a Weltec location on the island of Koru - the sphere.

I include both papers here , just as I delivered them, together with a post-presentation critique.
















Lecture podium in Wellington Railway Station with SDHS 2009 conference logo and abstract

Paper 1: Individual Paper Presentation

Video1 : Departed - Movement 1 - In the Company of Strangers

Welcome to the SDHS audience at Stanford University in California and welcome to the audience at this Second Life Wellington Railway Station. Thank you all for coming to this presentation. The full abstract for my Masters project is available on my website and from the bilboards here, at the station.

The title of this Paper Abstract is: In the Company of Strangers - Negotiating the parameters of Indeterminacy; a study of the Roaming Body and Departure in Urban Spaces

Abstract:
This paper scrutinizes Indeterminacy as a mediating force impinging upon our behaviour and its subsequent impact on the nature and constituency of engagements and dialogue between people in selected urban spaces. Concepts centering on the dynamics of departure, temporality and embodiment are being investigated in both Real Life and the Multi User Virtual Environment, Second Life.

In my research/practice, which underpins the concepts in this paper, interventionist dance strategies are being used to prompt and interrogate the constituents of encounters and departures in designated public places. Experimental movement frameworks employed are informed by the discipline of Contact Improvisation Dance and Authentic Movement. The working process is being documented using a range of video narrative.


Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation Duke University Press, Durham & London, (p.5).
Def: 'The Roaming Body' - the body as entity which can never be fully committed to a set position or location in space and time (Mike Baker Feb 09)














Rollo presenting at SDHS 2009 c/o Johnnie Wendt
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------














Embodying Surfaces 1

Certain forces are examined here, which give rise to a description of the human body witnessed in the context of contemporary, urban environments, as a roaming entity. This particular description of the body defines as a reality for us as humans a compelling, involuntary movement away from people and places with which we come into contact. Our roaming I maintain, is responsible in our behaviours for pre-emptive departure and the involuntary pursuit of the next moment - an inexorable, unfolding momentum into the omnipresent future, now past. I am reminded of a sign on the wall of a dance studio in Melbourne, Australia in 2008 during a Contact Improvisation Dance performance of, 'Excavate: A two-man dig' by David Corbet and Jacob Lehrer which stated enigmatically, 'The missing are here, the gone and the taken are with us’. Within the context of my work this becomes reversible and suggests the presence of the aforementioned pre-emptive state of departure; 'Those still here have left, the present and the given have departed and are no longer with us'. This notion is supported in Brian Massumi`s exploration of the ‘‘indeterminacy’ of the body – the realities facing the body which are incomplete without the recognition of another, constantly simultaneously-generated virtual description of ‘now’.’ Massumi posits that ‘this body’ is here, but also, ‘this presence and essentially when in motion, they are no longer with us, here, but ‘over there’, now ...'

As vitally as food, a life feeds upon such insubstantial yet potent ephemera as habits, memories and tropisms - movement in response to a stimulus. Could it be that an unconscious skillset of which we are largely unaware, exercised through the event of departure is one of those stimuli? Our leaving. Perhaps today, as never before, is this unconscious predilection to locate ourselves in the onward surge of movement away from that previous moment, so relevant to our search for both, our collective and individual sense of belonging ... as if we had a choice and were not swept on, regardless ...

Our sense of identity is founded in our ability to belong, to adhere to those places and people in our world which bring a sense of worth into our lives - social interactions; the indicators of our allegiance to particular communities or groups through shared beliefs, values or practices. Yet ultimately, we reside within and our personal cartographies are traversed and reconciled alone. Perhaps never before has the issue of belonging been so under siege in relation to that perception of our Self as a lost locus, a place from which once having made forays in the wider pursuit of a sense-of-place, among people and spaces of meaning with our autonomy intact, we sometimes cannot find our way back.














Embodying Surfaces 2

Despite the frequent dislocation of our time in spaces, has the apparently successful pursuit of our personal freedoms; our ability to navigate inter-personal terrain with fluency and authority, our sense of autonomy in selfhood, robbed us of that cherished sense of belonging to ourSelf and is there still a more subtle, insidious force acting upon us? A climate of indeterminacy - that uneasy beat of dark wings, has always dominated the terrain which we, as humans have had to negotiate, evident in the ways in which our choices are made, in our actions which appear to prevail, in our relations with others, in the spaces we displace and in the times which we traverse. Despite possible desires to stay put, in life the notion of our leaving is central to our existence.

In my research practice I am positing a new Urban Myth. My contention is that all our exchanges, whether they be either apparently resolved engagements, casual encounters or by-passed conversations with people and places, are governed by the agency of departure, evident in these exchanges through the presence of indeterminacy. That is departure experienced by all. Leaving as a phenomenon. The act of leaving as it unfolds together with arrival, is an indeterminant, yet these are uneasy twins in one another`s company and in their location of binary status, both departure and arrival can be defined as events which are central to that process we call change. For us, as time-based creatures, movement away ensures that there are constantly present, small, overlooked dramas with their attendant poignancies expressed within the simplest, most mundane, everyday dynamics between people and places. One could say that the surface or ‘stage’ for my work that you see here, together with the two descriptions of Wellington Railway Station at rush-hour, is also the moving body itself; my own and that of my partner - the body as a roaming transformative surface or screen - the human as Analogue. This body identity travels and transits in place and time from one description of the Real to another. 'Place' can be defined here, as simply a point of temporary purchase within change. When I teach CI Dance I interpret or voice this state as 'looking for ledges' - places of momentary pause, stillness or balance - a traveller in temporary residence locating on or against his or her partner for a heartbeat or two.

















Embodying Surfaces 3

In my movement enquiry, I am concerned with the investigation of what I will call the spaces 'between recognized content’ in our lived experience. I am interested how indeterminacy via the Roaming/Leaving Body may influence or to a significant extent, mediate the nature of exchanges between people in urban contexts.

The video playing here is an expression of an intimate, small-conversation between enabled surfaces or screens - both, Real Life dancers bodies and avatars (indeed, as simulacra I believe that they both possess avatar virtuality) perceived as surfaces upon which the human analogue can write and overwrite layers of feeling, present intent and dialogue now past. I wanted to introduce a sense of small but strong drama - a tableau of clenched feeling which we can sometimes witness in public places; a sense of passion, of despair, of pathos at our fate which is to be swept up in this constant movement away from those places and people which sustain our sense of belonging. Our conversation through movement is compressed by time - impending departure often narrows our sensibilities and where we had hours to talk, to smile, to share empathy, thoughts, hopes and aspirations, suddenly there is no time. Private, personal dialogue which largely remains invisible in public spaces becomes larger than life for us - illuminated with undisguised feeling.

The work is mildly interventionist in terms of how it is inserted in the flow of commuters and how this catalyses a response – creating for the people walking past, a private tableau between two people made public, a virtual, half-witnessed-half-remembered-later moment, representative of the myriad of disjunct dialogues and discreet micro-dramas within scenes of departure which may occur in these kinds of public spaces. I am interested in suggesting to the perceptions of those people who notice us, through traces of naturally-occurring incongruity in our behaviour, the opportunity for our bodies and activity to be moving surfaces, redolent with questions, with meaning which may be just out of reach. Equally, the crowd is a moving screen upon which through my movement, I may make marks and leave traces - subtly intervene in the flood of crowd-intent with questions which for them, may outlive the journey home, to be recalled over the evening meal, or perhaps next year in a reflective moment. I am pursuing some participation on the part of the viewer without necessarily, any overt interaction. A witnessing. As witnessed and witnesser we both of us leave traces of our presence which are inscribed on the surfaces of the present at this point in this place.

Video 2: Embodying Surfaces - the Human Analogue - ICS

When we take these traces into Second Life our human analogue takes this corporeal activity and transforms the performative present into cyber configurations of now-past avatar embodiment, across real-digital interfaces. In 'Networked Performance' on Turbulence.org, Ashley Ferro-Murray comments on Erin Manning`s assertion that: '... where technology is less a tool than an active assemblage of potential techniques that feed from and move with a becoming-body.”

This is an accurate description of how I perceive, both, my Real station video work and my avatar and station build in Second Life, not so much as tools for my ideas, but an assemblage of past feeling and perception informed by my present desires and intentions. This Second Life station, this Facet of the Real becomes an apt, living record of the past traversed by our Roaming Bodies from which we may depart through the present in that pursuit of the next, future moment. Through this video-work - these multiple surfaces - runs another strand of our analogue propensity for transformative embodiment. Here, my Second Life avatar is in discussion with another, Sonja Scorbal. Together as manifestations of the Roaming Body, we comprise the projection of our surrogate selves - a vicarious embodiment which moves in space and time paradoxically with my past videoed dancing body. Our conversation is intentionally one-sided with Sonja`s comments and queries truncated by my silence and the onrush of the next moment. Even her farewell is cut short.

















Embodying Surfaces 4

Mark Hansen, in Bodies in Code, (2006) sees the embodiment of function manifesting through the human body, acting as a kind of seismographic wand - Hansen, (2006:p5-6). He maintains that: ‘… all reality is mixed reality’, Hansen quotes Brian Massumi who maintains the existence of the analogue manifests as a transformative entity: Always on arrival a transformative feeling of the outside, a feeling of thought sensation is the being of the analog(sic). This is the analog(sic) in a sense close to the technical meaning, as a continuously variable impulse or momentum that can cross from one qualitatively different medium into another. Like electricity into sound waves. Or heat into pain, Or light waves into vision. Or vision into imagination. Or noise in the ear into music in the heart. Or outside coming in. Variable continuity across the qualitatively different: continuity of transformation. (Massumi, Parables for the Virtual ... 2002:p.135)

We, as humans, are all movement practitioners and as such through our internal analogue we possess the innate capacity to map and transform continuously, the many real and virtual realities of which our existence is comprised. Hansen maintains that the reason why so many of us now operate in so-called virtual, metaverse worlds with apparent ease, is because we have always done so - we encounter without comment, a myriad of moments which we could describe as virtual every day in our 'real life' existence. The shift for us as 'analogue' where the process within us as humans which brings metaverse technologies like Second Life together with our natural perceptions, supports a function which expands the scope of our natural perception and integrates real-world and virtual realities to arrive at a more homogeonous blended-reality. I am working in Second Life because my Roaming Body has taken me there and under the auspices of my analogue potential, I can perhaps more easily explore the interplay within Real Life where Second Life becomes a facet of the Real. Here I can converse, witness and belong as analogue, while making critical commentary upon yet another field of departure.














SL station audience with Rollo Presenting at SDHS 2009 c/o Johnnie Wendt

To use Massumi`s phrase, the body`s 'potential to vary' suggests an alignment which juxtaposes, yet does not necessarily subordinate the Realbody to the Cyberbody, while analogue capabilites are present in both. Massumi suggests that the body in movement means accepting the body in its occupation of space and time as a paradox: that there is an incorporeal dimension of the body itself. Of it, but not it. Indeterminate, coincident, but real and material. Something apart yet intrinsic and inseparable. Massumi calls this echo a, ‘Fellow-travelling dimension of the same reality’. I call this echo the Roaming Body. Zimmerman tells us that, 'Humans are not entities, but the clearings in which entities appear'. Here lies affirmation of analogue potential in the Roaming Body. Yet perhaps analogue and Roaming Body are one and the same? In this time-based context, it could be said that the body is present but within its indeterminacy, the time-based embodiment of ‘body’ has already moved on. In qualifying his argument, Massumi paraphrases Deleuze in saying that the problem with dominant modes of cultural and literary theory is not that they are too abstract to grasp the solidity or corporeal fabric of the real. The problem is that these modes are not abstract enough to grasp the real incorporeality of what we take to be real. Through lived states of indeterminacy and leaving, analogue potential through transformative embodiment in the Roaming Body perceptual register, re-inforces our description of the virtual incorporeality of the real that surrounds us everyday.

Finish here 2179 words

Mike Baker 21.6.09

Critique:

I have for the last two months been in contact with Emily Roehl, the technician designated to liaise with me during the Stanford conference. Emily was immensely helpful and despite the fact that she had never been in SL before, she very quickly became acclimatised and put a significant amount of time into developing those skills necessary to facilitate a smooth running of Second Life projection at the conference. I am indebted to her. We had a number of meetings at which I introduced her to the basic methods of communication, movement and camera controls in-life. We also discussed a broad range of my needs which were required to be met at the conference. I think the frequency and nature of our connection in life was just right and very positive in its outcome.

In preparation for the presentation in the station, I updated my abstract in the station and created four notecard dispensers from which could be taken information about my presentation for any visitors to the station/guests to the presentation. Clare Atkins (SLENZ) provided some scripted bench seats for the audience very kindly and I also attempted to prep a 'button' shortcut next to the lecture podium which controlled my videos. This eventually proved to be too unreliable and on the day I went back to bringing in the videos from YouTube in the usual manner. Grateful thanks to Todd Cochrane and Aaron Griffiths of SLENZ for their assistance with the abstract bilboards and the notecard dispensers. Also to John Waugh (SLENZ) for his write- up of my part in this event on the SLENZ blog.

I had 15 minutes to read my paper followed by 20 minutes of question time. My presentation began well with visuals and sound functioning clearly, but unfortunately after 10 minutes, Second Life crashed without warning. This was a general crash which brought down 30,000 users for about an hour. This is the first time this has happened for some months which was most unfortunate and very frustrating. I immediately went to Plan B which was to use Skype to finish my presentation. I managed to complete this without further trouble and responded to some interesting questions concerning sudden, unforeseen departures, longing and memory! After my initial disappointment, I adopted a philosophical stance and saw the appropriateness of this occurring - pre-emptive departure is, after all, one of the aspects that I am investigating. Both, the SL and Stanford audiences were very supportive and fortunately everyone had seen the videos at least once before the system crash.

I subsequently found out that because the previous presenters had taken longer than their 15 minutes, I had only ten minutes with less question time. I found this a highly questionable practice where the facilitators responsible should have been more vigilant. However, this is all very real practice and experience for me and not uncommon at conference events and I feel grateful that I actually had good audiences in both venues. Often at these large conference events only a few people show up due to the broad range of presentations going on at once.

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Paper 2:

Topographies Sites, Bodies, and Technologies - SDHS Conference June 19-22, 2009 Stanford University, San Francisco, California

1) Envisioning virtual cartographies for corporeal interaction: dance and performance convergent applications of Second Life 3D Metaverse social environment. (Isabel Valverde, Mike Baker)

2) Real Dance and Dancing in metaverse : from the activity by INETDANCE Japan

3) The Human Analogue in Mixed-Reality by Mike Baker

















Image from Roundtable Discussion Panel introducing Mike - live broadcast from Stanford University, California, USA. Image c/o Yukihiko Yoshinada

I would like to discuss possibilities for investigation into transformative embodiment through human analogue potential.

At the end of my presentation, I would like to hear any questions, feelings and observations from the floor on the following: What do people understand about analogue capabilities and the existence of enabled or embodied surfaces or 'living screens' which become the receptacles for present and past inscriptions? How might these reflect/transpose human desires or interpretative potential in the generation of dance work? Also please ask any questions or pursue trains of thought that you might have.

Video 1 - Embodying surfaces - the Human Analogue - In the Company of Strangers

The theorist Jacques Ranciere describes 'surface' as a paratactical space - a site of exchange, where language, images and actions collide and transform one another - a place of slippage between spaces. Stephane Mallarmé has defined dance as a form of writing on the surface of the floor with the intent to transpose this mark-making to the written page - transformative embodiment across surfaces. Post-modern thinking has sought to erode the paradigm in the modernist separation of surface worlds by challenging the sturdiness of the boundaries between these surfaces. In my current Masters in dance and video project, 'In the Company of Strangers', one of the strands of my work has been to explore that the concept of spaces and their content be perceived as surfaces, which possess the potential to be enabled, inscribed or embodied.

I have been investigating this concept in Real Life through structured improvisation movement modes in commuter rush-hour crowds, in Wellington Railway Station in New Zealand, Aotearoa. I have also constructed a simulacrum of this station on the NZ eduisland of Koru in the Multi User Virtual Environment of Second Life and I am bringing the videos of my Real Life dance into this Second Life railway station - at one level of perception an enabled, embodied surface meeting another, equally enabled, embodied surface. When I began this project, I began to investigate the basic premise that the 'real' is influenced by the virtual, all the time and everywhere - in Real Life; that we experience moments which could be described as 'virtual' every day which, through our human analogue properties, we either remain oblivious to, ignore, or assimilate and transform, rendering those virtual moments as real. Within this context, Second Life as a fully-immersive environment manifests as an extended 'virtual' event in which we may reside for a longer period of time; an extended layer of the Real. This means that Second Life itself, like so many aspects of Real Life, becomes another screen - not only literally, but a surface construct which may be encountered, left and re-encountered, manipulated and inscribed, ignored or selectively dismissed by our analogue facility in the pursuit of transformative embodiment.

Mark Hansen, in Bodies in Code, (2006) sees the embodiment of function manifesting through the human body, acting as a kind of seismographic wand - Hansen, (p5-6). He maintains that: ‘… all reality is mixed reality’, Hansen talks about the existence of the analogue as a transformative entity: Always on arrival a transformative feeling of the outside, a feeling of thought sensation is the being of the analog(sic). This is the analog(sic) in a sense close to the technical meaning, as a continuously variable impulse or momentum that can cross from one qualitatively different medium into another. Like electricity into sound waves. Or heat into pain, Or light waves into vision. Or vision into imagination. Or noise in the ear into music in the heart. Or outside coming in. Variable continuity across the qualitatively different: continuity of transformation. (p.135)

We are all movement practitioners subject to time and as such, through our internal analogue we possess the innate capacity to perceive, transform and combine continuously, the many real and virtual realities of which our existence is comprised. Hansen maintains that the reason why so many of us now operate in so-called virtual worlds with apparent ease, is because we have always done so. Davin Heckman in empyre - undocumented worker, turbulence.org, has this to say of issues relating to capturing the present:
I think of the question of "presence." Whenever we enter into the problem of representing a particular event, we take the "present" and repackage for a different or deferred experience ... It's like taking a drug to have the experience of dreaming while awake, of looking at a snapshot to have the experience of being with someone who is absent, etc. ...

For me, Heckman is voicing here the very transformation process to which I am referring - the analogue transformation of snapshot into remembered experience ... it is the analogue`s role to bridge that gap of difference between present and past, event and representation.

















Image from Roundtable Discussion panel - c/o Yukihiko Yoshinada

My intention through my analogue being-in-change (Henri Bergson) where resides an embodied 'becoming' between worlds, is to explore how this dual identity - this 'difference' may evolve into a single, blended reality. To use Brian Massumi`s phrase, the body`s 'potential to vary' suggests an alignment which juxtaposes, yet does not necessarily subordinate the Cyberbody to the Realbody while analogue capabilites are present in both. When we take these video traces into Second Life, our Human Analogue assimilates this corporeal activity and transforms it into cyber configurations of avatar embodiment, across real-digital interfaces.

With the aid of my avatar, Rollo Kohime, I have constructed screens which have evolved into a simulacra of commuter crowds flowing through the Second Life station. A crowd-screen or surface with its subjective associations. One could say that the surface or ‘stage’ for my work, rather than two descriptions of Wellington Railway Station at rush-hour, is equally accurately, the moving body itself - the body as a roaming transformative screen - the human as Analogue. This body identity travels and transits in place and time from one description of the Real to another. In my dance enquiry, I am concerned with the investigation of what I will call the spaces 'between recognized content’ in our lived experience. Within the video playing here is an expression of an intimate, small-conversation between the Real Life dancers, Mike and Fiona, these same dancers (due to their videoed separation from their original present-tense performative context) perceived as temporally-based Real Life avatars and then the Second Life avatars, Rollo and Sonja - these personna in their different descriptions perceived as surfaces, upon which can be written and overwritten layers of feeling, present and future intent, dialogue, past traces or residue. Equally, the Real Life crowd is a moving screen upon which through my movement, I may make marks - subtly intervene in the rushing flood of crowd-intent with unsettling movement and interaction, with questions which for them, may outlive the journey home, to be recalled over the evening meal, or perhaps next year in a reflective moment.

















Embodying Surfaces 5

In 'Maintaining the Digital Embodiment Link to Performance', Andrew Bucksbarg suggests a positive extension, rich with possibilites inherent in metaverse environments like Second Life; 'Are networked simulated worlds much more similar to our dreams and imaginings than to the clunking improbability of a physical world? Unlike traditional media forms, do video games, simulations and other newer media perform the opposite of the suspension of disbelief? Do they encourage an extension of the imaginable? If the utopic promise of humanity is creative imagination, then it makes sense that methodologies for communication and content creation, which form a blank screen onto which this imagination can occur, are the ideal medium- the metaverse or meta design system.'

Potentially, then, imagination itself becomes a screen and if we recognize a process of surface activation and embodiment through the medium or surface of imagination in Real Life, we have a meld of what once were descriptions of Real and Virtual screens existing in this Blended Reality that we inhabit, everyday. For Susanne Langer, a dancer`s body must transcend the energetic, physical body while performing - the performing body must project the illusion of 'virtual force' to fully constitute a work of art. For me this force is not virtual and it is not an illusion. I am seeking in my own work, to bring together various embodied aspects of the Real which may ultimately constitute a composite description of this force.

10mins reading time (1378 words)

Mike Baker 21.6.09

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Critique:

I had been invited to present at this Roundtable discussion group by Isabel Valverde last year. I am grateful to Isabel to have had this opportunity but in hindsight, preparing and presenting two papers for one event is extremely challenging, particularly when one of the presentations is collaborative with people who are not in the same country/time-zone. We all suffered from poor communication, confusion in trying to arrive at consistent meeting times and then once meeting, to be able to achieve our aims when none of us had the technical skills necessary to coordinate a menu of videos, images and powerpoint presentations without outside assistance. This was most marked for me at this event, where in my individual presentation, I was able to do almost everything myself and therefore to plan my time accordingly, making my aims achievable. But this is to be expected in collaborative works. It takes enormous energy, time and patience just communicating sometimes. This was good experience for me, though - I have done a lot of collaborative work over the years but not with other artists who are so far away. This development goes with the digital territory that we are occupying, with the attendant problems and frustrations. My main issue was that the two presentations were quite different so I had to prepare two separate abstracts/objectives. I do have sufficient breadth in my body of work to be able to carry this out but it has been demanding wearing different conceptual hats - and becoming excited about both directions.

As technical assistant for the event I was able to secure Emily who so efficiently facilitated for me in my individual presentation earlier in the day. In the days immediately preceding the presentation there had been problems bringing in the videos to the screen using a sensitized texture on a 'button', rather than streaming Mp4s from YouTube into the actual land location (which is what I have been doing all along). On the day this proved to be a major issue. I had arrived early to get my video playing because I was first up and this was running well. This had to stop to bring in a live broadcast from Stanford and when it came time to play again, it would not play in our Second Life location, so Emily played it straight from YouTube to the Stanford audience. I presented my paper without problems, with good sound clarity. Unfortunately, when it came to Yukihiko`s and Isabel`s presentations I had very poor network capabilities and failed to hear their delivery clearly. I filmed sections of both of these presentations using SnapzPro on my Mac and I will be sending copies to Isabel and Yukihiko. These examples are actually interesting for their mis-communication, their disfunctional activity, representing the other side of Second Life; the digital anomaly, the truncated signal, the unrezzed narrative.

To sum up, There was some good content and solid commitment to making these presentations work, despite the difficulties. We all presented on the day and we were all heard by the respective audiences. The work was affected to different degrees by the unpredictability of the technologies that we were using and there was failure in our primary, followed by success in our secondary technology strategies for back-up.

Once again, I am indebted to Isabel Valverde, Yukihiko Yoshida, Todd Cochrane, Emily Roehl for their roles in this endeavour. I will be trying to learn from this event to make sure as far as possible, that my next conference presentation on Friday 26th June at PSI#15 at Zagreb, Croatia, will be as smooth as possible.

Embodying Surfaces - A Facet of the Real 3

file:///Users/mike/Desktop/http-::movetheframe.wordpress.com:2009:04:07:notes-from-the-march-25th-artist-salon-dance-for-web-an-emerging-genre:.webloc

Embodying Surfaces - the Human Analogue in the Company of Strangers

Departed - Movement 1

This video is the latest study in my AUT (NZ) Masters in dance and video. Departed - Movement 1 - differs from my first version of Departed - In the Company of Strangers. This study is in direct collaboration with the composer/musician, Mike Beever, based in Nelson, NZ Aotearoa. Mike composed this sound, 'Movement 1' specifically for this video footage. I have explored and edited his sound for this piece and I will be continuing this development process with Mike in subsequent edits. I am indebted to Mike for this opportunity to work with him. Here, I was seeking to engage with a sound base that is a little more ambivalent than the first version of Departed. There is a movement into layers of feeling which perhaps are less literal, if no less arresting. I will be continuing to develop my concepts in this direction, particularly with a view to exploring the existence of surfaces or screens which may be embodied, activated or inscribed.