douter de sa perception d’autrui / doubting the presence of the other

(FR) A la suite de la session Distant Movements #9, Muriel Piqué, dans son texte Entre Imaginaire et empathie / Between the Imaginary and Empathy, parle du doute de sa perception d’autrui, d’une altérité qui lui, en tant que danseuse et chorégraphe, était jusqu’alors inconnue.

(ENG) After the session Distant Movements # 9 Muriel Piqué, in her text Entre Imaginaire et empathie / Between the Imaginary and Empathy, speaks of her doubting perception of the others, of an otherness which to her, as a dancer and choreographer, was previously unknown.

(FR) Non seulement je perds toute notion du temps, mais je perds également toute représentation de moi-même.

(ENG) Not only do I lose all sense of time, but I also lose all representation of myself. I no longer clearly distinguish reality, I enter a mental space between the imaginary and feeling.

(FR) Lorsque je ressens ou crois ressentir le flux du mouvement de l’autre : est-ce que je ressens réellement de l’empathie pour cet autre corps en mouvement ou bien est-ce que je l’imagine ?

(ENG) When I feel or think I feel the flow of the other’s movement: do I really feel empathy for this other moving body or do I imagine it?

(FR) Je ne distingue plus clairement la réalité, j’entre dans un espace mental entre imaginaire et ressenti. Je sais que je ne suis pas seule dans cet espace mental …

(ENG) I no longer clearly distinguish reality, I enter a mental space between the imaginary and feeling. I know that I am not alone in this mental space …

(FR) Les yeux fermés, je suis à l’écoute du prolongement de la guidance partagée. Et je pressens parfois même le prolongement de notre danse, à moins que je ne l’imagine…

(ENG) With my eyes closed, I am listening to the extension of the shared guidance. And I sometimes sense the extension of our dance, unless I imagine it …

Est-ce qu’elle répond à Célia Bonnet-Ligeon, qui dans son article En VR, on reconnaît son corps dans celui de l’autre, parle de Distant Movements ? Célia y visite des projets VR et se demande:

Alors que manque-t-il à la réalité virtuelle pour qu’elle soit autre chose qu’un divertissement, qu’une sensation renouvelée de notre propre corps ? …. Pourquoi associer la commensalité à la réalité virtuelle ?

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Filed under: networked performance, Performance, research, Virtual Reality, altérité, Célia Bonnet-Ligeon, commensalité, distant movements, empathie, imaginaire, Muriel Piqué, VR

Avant. Il y avait encore tout à construire.

Du 29/10 au 3/11 2018 Ariane Cassimiro et moi, nous avons pu travailler au laboNRV à Lyon. Une courte résidence autour de la VR (Virtual Reality), la performance et la danse. Pour lire nos intentions c’est ici.
Presque tout de suite, après quelques tests de déplacement et danse dans Google Earth nous avons changé le titre. C’était avant la glace et les montagnes … est devenu Avant. Il y avait encore tout à construire. La VR, la terra incognita, demandait de se pencher sur sa technologie, les réglages par défaut du casque, des capteurs, mais aussi des logiciels à utiliser. Tout à construire. Ariane et moi, toutes les deux des immigrées en France l’ont abordé en tant qu’étrangères. En tant que corps non adaptés.

Nous avons testé d’autres outils, comme la composition de paysage live avec unity, le jeu dans une visite du The Lab et même les traceurs aux pieds dans un univers zombie multi-joueur.

Le déclic est venu quand nous avons commencé à tracer/dessiner nos corps dans le 3D avec Tiltbrush, quand nous avons utilisé les manettes pour dessiner nos mouvements pendant qu’on dansait seule ou à deux. Le corps se multipliait. Il y avait celui qu’on ressentait, celui dessiné dans l’espace 3D – autre, mais réel, à découvrir, à contourner, celui à regarder dans la projection en mouvement, celui présent en tant qu’ombre devant la projection et celui que parfois on touchait, qu’on entendait avec lequel on dansait, ou qu’on regardait danser/mouvoir.
Le trait, produit dans un mélange d’intérieur et extérieur VR, était magnifique, naturel, traduisant l’hésitation, le rythme, l’interaction. Il était aussi personnel. 

Plus d’images (15) sur flickr.
La terra incognita domptée.
I would love to do workshops danser / tracer/ dessiner.

Vous pouvez manipuler nos univers sauvegardé en 3D ici :
Encapsulées : https://poly.google.com/view/3ahW9Veu1Lg
L’astronaute : https://poly.google.com/u/2/view/cQCt9mnF711
àDeux : https://poly.google.com/u/2/view/3q5-Yznjapc
Si vous avez un casque HTCVive vous pouvez aussi revisiter nos traits.

Filed under: Of interest, Performance, Ariane Cassimiro, corps, danse, dessin, laboNRV, résidence, recherche, VR

Distant Movements

In Distant Movements we close our eyes. Thus we immerse ourselves in the imagination of our own space and we can not control how we appear on the screen. We are guided through this space, at the same time real, virtual and imaginary, by a voice. It is this voice that creates a shared mental space.

In this shared space our bodies dance and interpret, each in their own way, the words coming in two different languages. It is clear that in the immediacy of our interpretations, our smallest differences occur, revealing an unsuspected value. So many bodies, so many dances: in-reproducible, inimitable. And each one gets in tune with the other and dances with the other, imagining the dance of the other in his own inner space.

In July 2018 Daniel Pinheiro, a performer and visual artist based in Porto, Muriel Piqué, a choreographic artist, researcher and performer from Montpellier and I started working on a new project called Distant Movements. In this project the intense presence of and attention for the unseen other, experienced in another online networked project called Distant Feelings*, is extended with an exploration of our bodies in motion and the imagination of the other who also moves, who also dances.

Distant Movements wants
– to give an intimate access to a danced, dancing body
– to reveal the body to poetry / to acces a poetic body
– to activate a body at a distance
– to research – the relation body-machine, their interdependence, their entanglement, the connection, the constraints – meeting at a distance mediated by cables, the voice, our imagination, our sensations – the relation between the real space / virtual space / imagined space.
– to share the magic of dancing together over distance

Distant Movements uses performance as a tool.

Distant Movements manifests itself as
– a research web site; an anarchive** : traces intended to be potential carriers, that can be reactivated.
– a series of online experiments
– online participatory performances accessible via zoom.us
– performances / installations in situ
– video traces some of which will have the status of a stand-alone art work.

Distant Movements can be followed here : distantmovements.tumblr.com
So far we had 7 sessions. In the future we will invite more people to assist in our experiments.

———-

* Distant Feelings is an ongoing project by Annie Abrahams, Daniel Pinheiro and Lisa Parra – an online ritual of contemplation on our situation of being together while being separated. Eyes closed, no talking.

** For a concise definition of the anarchive visit senselab.ca.

Filed under: networked performance, Performance, artistic research, body-computer, dance, Daniel Pinheiro, distant movements, Muriel Piqué, webcam

#nfcdab

I want / Je veux / Ik wil – net art
Watch, misschien zie je wel iets – protocol
Two pieces for

Near Enough? – 3rd near-field communication digital art biennale, #nfcdab
5-12 August,
Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam.
Opening: Sunday 2pm on 05-08-2018

#nfcdab is a do-it-youself or do-it-with-others? digital art biennale that travels on wireless technologies, light waves and electromagnetic fields to access content. The idea of the biennale is to take advantage of the potential of near-field (mis)communication and other sharing technologies for making web-based digital art accessible in outdoors settings to slack-keep presence.

Filed under: Net art, Performance, #nfcdab, browserbased, net art, protocol, Tolhuistuin

Distant Movement(s) #1

June 30th 19:10 Distant Movement(s) #1 test (30′)
Distributed performance with audience participation.
On online togetherness and movement without movement.

In the frame of /Prolegòmeni e Gómene/ *
Performing Art 3Days, Teatro Rossi Aperto, Pisa (It).

by
Ad Hoc Group: Annie Abrahams, Daniel Pinheiro and Muriel Piqué.
With Ivana Gherbaz for the French-Italian translation.

Muriel, a choreographer from Montpellier, will guide a 12 minutes long choreographic gesture only using her voice in front of her webcam. She will describe, eyes closed, the bodily sensations she experienced during a choreographic sequence she developed based on simple daily activities in her private environment. Annie in Montpellier and Daniel in Lisbon will listen with their eyes closed in front of their webcams. All three will be united in one interface, that will be projected in Pisa in front of an audience. People in Pisa can watch the projection but also join the experience on the spot.
There will be no online audience.

Can we read this imaginary movement in people far away on the surface of a screen?
Can we share something as intimate as feeling a dance?
And does this sharing over time via machines connect us?

When we look at a projection of a face in close-up we enter an intimate space, an intimate space of looking closely into the subtle changes that occur. When we listen to someone sharing the feelings provoked by a dance, we sort of dream this dance, we think and feel it and this will open up to an interior of hitherto unexplored paths, the body shifting through careful guidance.

screencapture during the performance – more information soon.

*Prolegòmeni – explanatory dissertations introducing a theory, the subject of a study, a doctrine. Gómene – twisted hemp hawsers, mooring ropes for boats.
Hence: a line of words meant to validate other words, to unite or divide; a material line supported by gestures, to leave or land.

Filed under: networked performance, Performance, dance, Daniel Pinheiro, movement, Muriel Piqué, public participation

distributed intelligence on the fly?

It felt as closely observing a test tube in an internet ecology experiment.

I finally watched the video of our performance Online En-semble – Entanglement Training. It was so nice and touching to hear the voices, to listen to the the different soundqualities and latencies, to see the changing pixelations and environments. It was interesting to observe how the performers act, react, respond, with objects, sounds and words and find ways to co-create with each other and the machines.

Near the end we had 5 minutes of silently being together online. Helen didn’t get the sign for the end and continued alone.

It was also very engaging to see the audience chatting life during the performance. Randal Packer called this a non-stop flow of online viewer commentary: a simultaneous litany of questions, responses, digressions, and interjections in Power to the Viewer, the article he wrote after his Art of the Networked Practice symposium, where this performance was a part of.

Here are some citations of the chat log that particularly stroke me today:

Alan Sondheim: There’s an odd calmness here, as if they’re dream images or freud’s magic slate at work

Jessica Laraine Williams: I almost feel as if we are neural nets being trained with various iterants of standard objects, as a reference library. The repetitive verbal cues sound like training signals

Martina Ruhsam: as if they would imagine this performance that just happened in their mind

ximena: what are they listening to?
Maria Chatzichristodoulou: silence?
Jessica Laraine Williams: the space in between
Jessica Laraine Williams: white noise
Randall Packer: silence
Jan R 2: they are listening to us
…..
Ng Wen Lei: 4’33
Johannes Birringer: lovely, a telematic re-performance

Maria Chatzichristodoulou: it is interesting that Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz were also talking about experiments rather than performances as such, and considered training, rehearsal and performance to be the same

I would love to do a follow-up, to continue this entanglement training. I propose to keep this messy never ending unperfect strange conversation going …. it would be an example, a test tube for developping our empathy muscles over distance, to exercice in distributed intelligence.

Entanglement Training Online performance by Annie Abrahams with Antye Greie, Helen Varley Jamieson, Soyung Lee, Huong Ngô, Daniel Pinheiro, Igor Stromajer. Thursday 29 of March 2018 in the frame of Art of the Networked Practice symposium.
All project info (photos, protocol, collected phrases, reactions etc.)  bram.org/en-semble/

Filed under: networked performance, Performance, Alan Sondheim, Antye Greie, Art of the Networked Practice, Daniel Pinheiro, entanglement, Helen Varley Jamieson, Huong Ngo, Igor Stromajer, Jessica Laraine Williams, Johannes Birringer, Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Martina Ruhsam, Ng Wen Lei, Randall Packer, Soyung Lee, training

… building an empathy muscle …

Online-en-semble – Entanglement Training.

Huong Ngô: I really liked how the score was based on everyday movements, so close to those incidental images we make everyday when we are on Skype etc, but having us do it together really made it into something poetic and more like dance. I thought of Yvonne Rainer’s work. Also, I was thinking a lot about this promise of internationalist utopia that Maria talked about, and where we are in the world today – people becoming more extreme despite or because of technology. The distance that technology affords is something that we now must train our bodies against. I felt like the act of listening, patience, and trying to be present was a way to build that empathy muscle.

Rob Wittig : a wonderful performance today — tactile and musical and spooky and friendly and distant and close!

Images and photos on flickr
Performance protocol.pdf
Video :

From the chatlog (Complete Chat log 64 pages):
-Johannes Birringer: Karina, i learnt much from Corpos Informaticos, they used a whole different set of simple tools that i began to appreciate in many ways
-Daniel Perseguim: yes, Beatriz Medeiros from corpos informáticos are changing the ways of performing, learning expressing… the tools are the simple language, the failures, the “gambiarras”
-Alan Sondheim: there’s an odd calmness here, as if they’re dream images or freud’s magic slate at work
-Maria Chatzichristodoulou: yes Alan, i was thinking it’s a calming experience watching this
-Alan Sondheim: Calming in the midst of potential revolution, disturbance –
-Jessica Laraine Williams: I almost feel as if we are neural nets being trained with various iterants of standard objects, as a reference library. The repetitive verbal cues sound like training signals
-Alan Sondheim: there’s an economics at work
-Marc Garrett: It’s DIWO in realtime!
-Maria Chatzichristodoulou: it is interesting that Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz were also talking about experiments rather than performances as such, and considered training, rehearsal and performance to be the same

Filed under: networked performance, Performance, Antye Greie, Daniel Pinheiro, entanglement, Helen Varley Jamieson, Huong Ngo, Igor Stromajer, networked performance, protocol, Randall Packer, Soyung Lee, symposium

Training Entanglement with whom?

With amazing artists and machines, cables and you.

With Igor Stromajer, the pseudo-artist, who inspired me when in 2001 he started his famous Ballettikka Internettikka online performance series. We met in 2006, when he came to Montpellier to perform an Oppera Internettikka with me and a mezzo-soprano in the Opéra National de Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon. Over time we continued to collaborate actively in projects as The Big Kiss, Angry Women, HuisClos/No Exit and Beyond (spectacle) among others.

With Antye Greie (also known as AGF), a renowned composer, music producer, sound artist & curator, poet, feminist and activist, that I respect deeply. I performed 13 short performative conversational meetings online with her. We talked about html, wind, pixels, law, mothers, key frame, snow, philosophies, fruits, thinking and islands, humans and words, nuts, recording quality, law, shopping, wind, patriotism, love, ocean space, sound rate, communism, dancing, languages and salad, family and future. She also was a very active participant in the Angry Women project. We never met for real.

With Soyung Lee from South Korea who I never met for real neither, and with whom I never performed before. In 2016 I discovered her enchanting work Displaced when researching language practices and art. I tried to write about this hybrid performance and asked her some questions that are published here. Now she participates. Yes!

With Huong Ngô, an American artist, who I first met when I was in New York in 2010 for a Rhizome event and The Big Kiss performance with Mark River in OTO. Accidentally we met again some years later in Paris at an opening. We share an interest in the entanglement of language, identity and power relations and I admire the way she connects personal and political histories using a conceptual, interdisciplinary, and often collaborative approach. See for instance The Voice is an Archive or The Silent Period. Now we collaborate for the first time. Yes!

With Daniel Pinheiro, a Portugese video artist interested in telematics performance, who I met last summer in Porto where he participated in my ELO keynote performance Ours Lingages as singer, dancer and computer operator.  We had been collaborating before in the Distant Feeling(s), a tele-shared experience project (with also Lisa Parra), after I once participated in their LAND project. I especially appreciate the always very interesting observations and analyses he writes down. We will continue collaborating for sure.

With Helen Varley Jamieson, who coined the word cyberformance. I share a project called unaussprechbarlich and a book called Cyposium – the book with her. We had numerous online encounters in different online venues as for instance the Upstage platform, that she co-initiated. Helen is a feminist and a very fierce defender of the use of open-source software.

Many thanks to Randall Packer the symposium chair who made this possible!

Online En-semble – Entanglement Training
Live Online Performance Thursday, 29 March 2018, 7am-10am CDT / 8am-11am EDT / 2pm-5pm CEDT / 8pm-11pm SGT
In the frame of Art of the Networked Practice | Online Symposium – Social Broadcasting: an Unfinished Communications Revolution, School of Art, Design & Media, Nanyang University, Singapore (29 – 31 March 2018, a collaboration between the School of Art, Design & Media, Singapore; LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore; and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Performance, USA).

Filed under: Conference / lecture, Event, Performance, Antye Greie, Daniel Pinheiro, Helen Varley Jamieson, Huong Ngo, Igor Stromajer, Randall Packer, Soyung Lee

Online En-semble – Entanglement Training

Online En-semble – Entanglement Training.
Online performance with Annie Abrahams (NL/FR), Antye Greie (DE/FI), Helen Varley Jamieson (NZ/DE), Soyung Lee (KR), Huong Ngô (HK/USA), Daniel Pinheiro (VE/PT) and Igor Stromajer (SLO/DE)
In the frame of Art of the Networked Practice symposium, School of Art, Design & Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Chair by Randall Packer.

In this new work we investigate how to be together in a connected world, where machines and humans have to communicate accepting partial overviews, glitches, time-lags, disrupting audience participation and ensuing disorientations. Abrahams considers the intra-active webcam performance situation a good apparatus to train and demonstrate entanglement. She wrote a script for seven performers with different cultural backgrounds. They will defy their own and the others’ ideas on performance and online politics in a conversational performance. In order to avoid chit-chat and to get rid of the distracting images of the faces she proposes to converse using objects, prepared phrases and voices. During the performance they create together a changing composition with the objects and improvise a sound environment with their voices and phrases. Because they share the responsibility for the performances’ acoustic and visual appearance it will be interesting to see how they negotiate their individuality and personal thoughts in this environment where they all have equal power. Contradictions, maybe even oppositions, as well as poetry can emerge in this collectively created complexity, where machines facilitate but also prevent. The performers research the limits and possibilities of their own agency in an attempt to be “with” while being separated.

Program of the day:
8 pm SGT Introduction by Randall Packer.
8.15 pm SGT Maria Chatzichristodoulou keynote Live Art and Telematics: The Promise of Internationalism
9.30 pm SGT Online En-semble – Entanglement Training Live networked performance
10 pm SGT Post performance roundtable
This is Singapore time. Find your own time here.

How to connect for the performance (you will need 5 min to prepare).

Disentangling the Entanglements article on our preparations by Randall Packer

Web page with information about preparations, protocols, text, video, images and later the archives.

Latency Training.

Filed under: Performance, Antye Greie, Daniel Pinheiro, entanglement, Helen Varley Jamieson, Huong Ngo, Igor Stromajer, networked performance, Randall Packer, Soyung Lee, symposium

VR – performance – residency.

Wh(o/at) arranges When. / Qu(o)i agence Quand.

I had the lucky occasion to discover VR during a residency December 4-9 2017 and January 30 – February 10 2018 in the Labo NRV, invited by Les Subsistances, Lyon.

More images on flickr.
Information en français.

I had never used a VR headset and so in the first week Olivier Bienz, a student, showed and brought me into different universes as The Lab (Steam), Google Earth, VRchat, Tilt Brush as well as some he or his fellow students made himself. He also showed me Unity 3D, a game development platform, used to create VR worlds and thus we created my first VR landscape together. At the same time Célia Bonnet-Ligeon, the lab’s coordinator organised meetings for me with local organisations like UrbanLab (ERASME), Eydolon and Nucléus, who all generously showed me their expertise.
I also met the researchers of the laboNRV and students of ENSBA Lyon. We talked, tested the VR headset while carrying the wearer, putting her upside down. It was and hilarious, and energizing and inspiring for all of us and so I decided to continue to work with them.
I was impressed by how simple it was to create an illusion of a landscape in the headset by using Unity’s basic terrain and drawing tools and how that influenced my imagination. I remembered David Markson’s book Wittgenstein’s Mistress and started to write some text that I could use in between the short modules (4 – 5) of what should become a collective performance, developed in the last week of the residency.

Video trailer by Guillaume Seyller. 6.58 min.

Wh(o/at) arranges When. / Qu(o)i agence Quand. A performance by Annie Abrahams with Valentin Godard, Guillaume Seyller, Johanne Mortgat, Keywa Henri, Arthur Jamon, Laetitia Dangelade and Elisa Baron.

– a stage – a computer – a VR headset – unity + steam – a video projector + large screen – two joysticks – two sensors – a standing microphone – 50 chairs – two tables – a blindfold – sound amplification – diffuse light + a spot –

We had no repetition, only tests and trainings. I have spend two days with the students to familiarize them with the tool, and to have them explore its limits and possibilities. To discover what kind of relationship with the body and the imagination, it can produce.
We worked with and in VR, not for VR.
We explored VR space from the inside and from the outside, and discovered an in-between.

Protocol .pdf + notes and text. (in French)
How it was announced.  (in French)

Vide – ligne – paysage – couleur – éclair. Sound by Jan de Weille. (command)

This is what I formulated as a starting point for this artistic research in Oct. 2017 :
Where are we in VR space? In what is called Third Space? or in a liminal space? and is it important to know where we are?
Is the “I” still important in there, and how do we meet an other? What other ? How far are we giving up control? How far do we dissolve, get lost? Who arranges what? And what relationship to our body can we have, do we have?
Could a VR experience become like an intractive entanglement training?

“It is.”, I can answer now, as long as you search for what it is build of, how it is experienced from the inside as well as from the outside, together and with others.

Filed under: Event, Performance, Virtual Reality, agency, body, intraction, laboNRV, Les Subsistances, unity, VR