Joana's Chapters

ONE

PART 1.

The Common Ground

The common structures: Composition (time and space) Design and Performance both rely on compositional decisions on how to organize and distribute elements in space, how these elements relate to each other and to the whole. How they inherently set a specific rhythm and flow to the outcome, which is then perceived in the moment in which is accessed/performed.

Composition is often used interchangeably with various terms such as design, form, visual ordering, or formal structure, depending on the context. Choreography is a specific type of composition. I understand choreography as a creative and structural tool, which uses a combination of written languages to describe movement. The term has also been applied to different contexts, as a metaphor, acknowledging movement as a strong intervening factor in different fields of study and of operation.

“The term ‘choreography has gone viral. In the last five years it has suddenly mobilized as a general referent for any structuring movement, not necessarily the movement of human beings. Choreography can stipulate both the kinds of actions performed and their sequence or progression. (…) Sometimes designating minute aspects of movement, or alternatively, sketching out the broad contours of action within which variation might occur, choreography constitutes a plan or score according to which movement unfolds. Building choreograph space and people’s movement throughout them. (…) Web services choreograph interfaces; and even existence is choreographed. Choreography, then would seem to apply to the structuring of movement in highly diverse diverse occasion, yet always where some kind of order ir desired to regulate that movement,“ - Susan Leigh Foster 2

The common languages: Design and Performance pieces are a product of a process, by which general rules and concepts are represented by means of abstract structures. When describing a concept or a phenomenon, both mathematics (geometry) and linguistics are commonly used at communicating the position of elements, properties of space, and time attributes. bodies and movements can be organized by means of abstract and geometric principles.

The choreographic scores developed by these different dance performers to communicate movement, use an extensive use of language such as - graphic / numeric / alphabetic complex systems. = Design Language/Tools/ Methods. For eg. to combine mathematics (geometry) and linguistics for communicating the position and relations between different elements, the properties of space, and time attributes. An exercise of code and decoding, writers (designers/ programmers/ choreographers) and readers (public /computer programs/ dancers).

In graphic design history, composition has been tied to grid systems, which have been the main structural design tool to establish order within the elements to be displayed. A grid is a two-dimensional structure, an intersection of vertical, horizontal lines, or even angular lines, which are used as reference to apply the real content in it.

Grids are perceived as fixed structures, but in fact these structures can be scaled based in defined proportions. By using relative units, like percentages, instead of absolute units such as pixels or points, turning the design into a responsive layout. Often modular scale is used for the same purpose, in which multiple subdivision to page is made to best adapt the form to the content.

( *By page I mean both the webpage and the print one. Desktop/ hybrid publishing. )

The first successful and widely spread form of dance notation was invented by Pierre Beauchamps, in the late 17th century. It was also defined by a horizontal grid, which positioned the body as a vertical and singular entity traveling across the grid.

Later in the 60’s and 70’s, it was a time for re-defining choreography as methodology, as well as for questioning the fundamentals of movement and the expression of the body. Choreographers from the late twentieth century of this post-modern movement in dance carried radical and highly experimental performance practices, bringing new formal and aesthetic innovation to the dance field.

The choreographer Wiiliam Foresythe´s notion that choreography is a ‘class of ideas’, with the idea being ‘a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action’, somehow deconstructs the previous standardized vocabulary of movements from Feuillet notation, bringing a new form of speech to choreography. “Everyday movements became dance, and dance became everyday;” 2 , essentially non-technical movement was primarily explored, as opposed to the former dance standards.

The american dancer, choreographer and film-maker Yvonne Rainner would emphasize the simplicity of movements, and its proximity to everyday moves, leading to spontaneous and unpretentious choreographies. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, the belgium choreographer, followed similar principles, only focussing further on repetition: In the dance piece Rosas Danst Rosas “the movements seem to be very personal, private , idiosyncratic, (..) seemingly endless repetition. This is a play of surfaces rather than an expression of depth. The minimalist monotony of the repetition of mundane gestures suggest compulsion to conform prescribed behavior.“ 3

A difference between the two choreographer could be that Rainner not only added minimalistic movements to her choreographies, but also an anti-spectacale approach to dance. She would avoid the exhibitionism typical from other dance modes: “the body - its actual weight, mass, and unenhanced physicality” 3 Rainer’s intention seems to be to have reduced movement to the simple phenomenological experience of mundane physical activity. This reduction of movement, is related to a the concept of economy of movement brought by Rainer's '60s rhetoric is about an economy of energy. She is concerned with the body's "energy resources"; with "conserving (actual) energy."

Choreographic thought seems to be in parallel to the design pursuit of shape driven by its functional role, and operating within an economic stance. In the words of the japanese designer Kenya Hara “Design is not the act of amazing an audience with the novelty of forms or materials, it is the originality that repeatedly extract astounding ideas the crevices of the very commonness of everyday life.”

Merce Cunningham, the america choreographer, who often collaborated with John Cage, developed compositional processes which challenged the modern conception of dance in a different way, as “an inner subjectivity by using chance procedures for devising movement and sequencing events.” 2 Yvonne Rainer would write dance tasks for dancers to follow and perform. This mode of choreographing as short instructions, is very similar to scripts give to computers to read and perform the task. Around the same time, coincidentally Karl Gestner, a swiss a graphic designer who created a new method and approach to design, similar to computational systems, a design method based on a set of conditions, hypothesis for designing. Cunningham, Rainner and Gestner embraced ‘operational’ thought just as later on the computer machines did.

Later on experiments constructing movement together with different media genres and technology, a truly interdisciplinary approach emerged from dance. William Forsythe used scripts but this time applied to technology to generate a choreography out of a list of 135 movements, a vocabulary built in connection with the kinesphere (— the total volume of a body’s potential movement.). “It’s like rapidly scrolling through a list of names in a computer program.” Forsythe’s methods of choreography are strikingly algorithmic and give rise to a style of movement and interaction that is distinctively his own. The same convergence of design and technology can be seen evolving in different ways in design practices, to mention again Kenya Hara “Design is not subordinate to media, design explores the essence of media.”

Movement in common: “…choreographing our gestures, habits, language, thoughts, tastes and desires.” (…) “By moving (or by opting to remain still) dance demonstrates how its decodings are not mere conceptual propositions but actual possibilities for action.” 2 Choreography doesn’t imply the presence of the body, it is prior to that encounter. It is a visual grammatical formulation which presents a potential movement sequence, a potential scenario for a body to be in space. I believe also design can be driven by the same principles of the potentiality of movement and the presence of the body. A user of a design object, being a page of book or a webpage, will be presented to a space, being physical or digital, and over through the information it contains.

Even if I am not considering the movement of the body, as choreography does, I understand it can be applied in different ways either conceptually and practically. The dynamics of new media and networked spaces, conventionalized versus natural movement applied to a series of micro body movements. If these movement are almost inperceptible, our perception is on the other hand being highly stimulated. The idea that there is such a thing as fixed form is actually as much an assumption about perception as it is an assumption about art. It assumes that vision is not dynamic – that it is a passive, transparent registering of something that is just there, simply and inertly. If vision is stable, then to make art dynamic you have to add movement. But if vision is already dynamic, the question changes. It’s not an issue of movement or no movement. The movement is always there in any case. So you have to make distinctions between kinds of movement, kinds of experiential dynamics, and then ask what difference they make. (pp.3) - ...all visual perception is “virtual.” It’s a point Alva Noë makes. (...) ..without the actual action -- action appearing in potential. (...) we abstractly see potential, we implicitly see a life dynamic, we virtually live relation. An object’s appearance is an event, full of all sorts of virtual movement. It’s real movement, because something has happened: the body has been capacitated. ( >>> Virtual/ Potentiality) The action of vision, the kind of event it is, the virtual dimension it always has, is highlighted. It’s a kind of perception of the event of perception in the perception. ( pp.6)

The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens, Brian Massumi - wiki https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Personal_Research_-_Notes#Interview_-_Alva_No.C3.AB_.22Dance_As_A_Way_Of_Knowing.22_part_of_the_Embodied_Techne_Series_.282012.29

For Rainer once described her dance project as "thinking of oneself in dancing as a neutral purveyor of information." (mediating Trio A text) Designing and Choreographing are both formal structures, which deal with the concepts of time and space, like holding devices for something yet to be seen, or experienced.

Could it be the same to discuss composition principles in design and dance, when one is composing graphic or visual elements and the other one movement for the body? Is it possible though to exclude the body from design, when the design is addressed to a user / an audience as well?

List of References

1. http://www.wired.com/1996/10/schiphorst-2/ Thecla Shiphorst - Life Forms 2. MOVE. Choreographing you. Art and Dance since the 1960’s. 3. Of the presence of the body - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_dance

Key Concepts

Choreographic Thinking / Intensify perception / Organic Functionalism / Corporeality / Presence

// Perception as Action (maybe the difference between my approach and Kenya Hara’s) - to re integrate visual perception with the body as a whole. “The body (…) is a cause of sensations. It is more than an instrument for action: it contributes to the life of consciousness and memory in a psyco-phisical parallelism of processes that assume meaning and relief only when they are connected.” - Lea Vergine “Body Art and Performance - the Body as Language”.

TWO

PART 2.

“As Michael Klien writes: ‘Choreography is everywhere, always in everything. i no longer see pictures, I see movement and interrelation, exchange and communication between bodies and ideas.” (2 - dance.rtf)

Choreographing Design (!?)

trans-disciplinary 
a prefix occurring in loanwords from Latin (transcend; transfix); on this model, used with the meanings “across,” “beyond,” “through,” “changing thoroughly,” “transverse,” in combination with elements of any origin.



inter-disciplinary 
1. a prefix occurring in loanwords from Latin, where it meant “between,” “among,” “in the midst of,” “mutually,” “reciprocally,” “together,” “during” (intercept; interest); on this model, used in the formation of compound words (intercom; interdepartmental). 
 2.combining or involving two or more academic disciplines or fields of study. 



meta-phor 
1. from Latin, from Greek metaphora, from metapherein to transfer, from meta- + pherein to bear. 
2. a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action that it does not literally denote in order to imply a resemblance. at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/

“Because the metaphors are transfer devices conduits for meaning from one frame of reference to another, metaphor may itself offer a discourse of translation between the traditions, debates, and objects of study of separate disciplinary domains. (…) In the culture of interface, we live in the realm of metaphor. An interrogation of the cultural valences of metaphor may build ‘bridges’ (another metaphor) between the disciplines of philosophy, art history, film studies, and new media studies..” The Virtual Window - from Alberti to Microsoft - Anne Friedberg.

“fusions” // relational “compositions” // cross-referencing // hybrid // transcend boundaries // “trans” (across, or dynamic movement of crossing)

A new piece emerges out of a new composition.

WHAT ARE THE NEW CONDITIONS FOR DESIGNING?

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has termed this type of quasi-automatic knowledge 'sens pratique' a practical sense, describing everyday situations as 'structured improvisation' or social choroegraphies. (pp.29) The concept of knowledge society emphasizes the close link between modernization and mechanization. Thus, information and communication technologies have not only been the motor behind accelerated knowledge production and globe knowledge dissemination, they have also fostered the transformation of knowledge: knowledge in knowledge-based societies is fast-moving transient- just like dance. It is generated and it disappears rapidly; we only need to think of websites. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman described transience as the key metaphor for our times. Everything previously stable and reliable dissolves in this 'liquid modernity'. It floats by, as Bauman says: Fluid travel easily. They flow, spill, run out, splash, pour over, leak, flood, spray, drip, seep, ooze (...) The extraordinary mobility of fluids makes us associate them with the idea of lightness. (...) We associate lightness or weightiness with mobility and inconstancy. (Dance in Knowledge Society - Gabriele Klein - wiki)

ephemera phenomena movement (and its absence) evoke the political dimension of the ephemeral. minimal and decorative ecology and technology physical features of the body and physical features of technology.

qualities of technology: immediacy / instantaneity

body relating to its own conditions. assuming unexpected circumstance, which also requires the intensification of energy flows, so that aesthetics, politics, and corporeality may fuse in the formation of more potent subjectivities. articulation with the body as unit. “The body remains the enduring reality (..) by enduring , it can resist normative social and aesthetic ideologies”, towards a transformation of bodies into sites of resistance? - from dance essay - (ref.3) Basic concepts of body movement

“Hyper accelerated” and regimented modes of experiencing temporality take over and determine our individual rhythm of life. Time becomes essential. How can we respond with other modes of extending, compressing, and distorting temporality? Transform our experience of time/ presence of the body? Digital space and time. The speed of speed. Digitalized time. Network time.

What is our own acceleration, our own movement, vector, line, link?

Current society as being embedded in ever growing abstract and alienated communication structures.

What if the world and the bodies in it operate according to this logic? What if perceiver and perceived are mutually defining?

…incorporating temporality / ephemerality / … in the design vocabulary

To propose a re-articulation, at a much more fundamental level: choreo-design. co-formation of compositional and thematic concerns. Make invisible forces (elements of choreography) appear as physical manifestations of design / kinetic assemblage of body and matters.

Designing as choreographic decisions. // construction or deconstruction of choreographic and performative strategies’?

a fluid, distributed, indeterminate interaction between human and nonhuman actors in a dynamic, emerging ecology. (in)corporeality, virtuality, creativity and technicity

temporal processes - - - - -

Design and choreography as formal structures, the frameworks, Ultimately it deals with empty space interlaced with information, or movement with pause, black and white, silence and noise, like a binary system.

List of References

1. Designing Design - Kenya Hara

2. Typorama, The Graphic Work of Philippe Apeloig - Thames & Hudson, 2013

3. http://www.internetagemedia.com/manifesto/

4. What we do is secret: Paul Virilio Planetary, and data visualization. http://www.bratton.info/projects/texts/what-we-do-is-secrete/

5. The Virtual Window - from Alberti to Microsoft - Anne Friedberg.

6.PZI