Docudancing

Digital media in performing & documenting choreography

Thorsnes: In the slippery land inbetween [mpeg4, 24min]

Overview

Docudance is an experimental research and design project into the medley of choreography, documentary and research documentaion. The project is a collaboration with Per Roar Thorsnes (KHiO) and his project Life and Death - Choreography in Context. This project is part of the new  doctoral levels awards under the artistic research programme. InterMedia provides development, design and research support for the project, principally in the form of building multimodal, multimediational blogging about the creative and performative processes involved making works for the Life and Death project. Our main focus in on the second of these works. The piece is based on choreography which contains mediated material on the relations between the interior and exterior of the human body and the processes of decay and dying. The personal and the collective are seen as interrelated in these processes as is documented in the project website in which a multilogue is created on the creative processes from both choreography and interaction design. InterMedia collaborates on digital media in dance performance and on documenting the creative and choreographic design process. The project also contributes to the documentation of the choreographic process and the generation of resources on dance design, peformance and reflective review for new master’s levels students at KhiO.

Aims

Docudancing has the following main aims:

• to contribute digital media to a dance project on the general themes of documentary
• to document the creative processes of choreographing, rehearsing and performing a dance work involving digital media
• to research the roles of digital media in a dance project on documentary
• to study the role of screen based mediation and articulation of the creative processes involved in dance design and performance, especially blogging
• to investigate the conceptualand practical intersections of interaction/communication design and choreography
• to create a platform for the follow through of the research and development into 2005
  to contribute a concrete, yet emergent project type as part of the Akers Elve Innovation strategic domain to which InterMedia and KHiO are partners.
  

Concepts

Docudancing uses contemporary research into blogging. The concept of the multimediational multilogue is central. We refer to the distinction between live and mediatised in dance design and performance. The reflexive design and research character of the blog is also constructed collaboratively, drawing on participatory design princicples in a situated learning and design context. The project draws together key notions from choreography and interaction/communication design.

Methods

Mixed and collaborative methods are used in Docudancing. Particpatory design is linked with a mutlimediational, collaborative, ethnographic style reporting via the blog. Collaborative design and workshopping are used in designing the intersecting creative processes involved and in the shaping and articulating of the blog. Processes of choreographic design, rehearsing and field work in sourcing content and expressive material for the dance work are also part of shared methods and their expression online. Where possible InterMedia will support the inclusion of documentary material in the dance work itself.

Analysis

The project presents a form of reflection and analysis in and as emergence in the form of the project website and the blog. This provides both an academic and a popular mediation of the project. The uses of digital media within the dance design and performance will be analysed in relation to documentary and performance theory. The project website and its innovative blog will be analysed as multimodal discourse and the multilogue, drawing on research in the expanding field of blogging. Reflexive research rhetorics are also included as part of the mediation of this process-oriented project. Attention will also be given to the design and uses of digital media documentary elements within the dance work itself.

Outcomes

The project as having the following outcomes:

• a collaborative, creative Docudancing blog, rich in still images and video and sustainable by the participants
  
• resources for new master’s students in dance at KhiO
• resources for new digital media masters students at UiO
• inputs to Designing Design seminars on dance and technology
• loint research publications by  Per Roar Thorsnes, Even Westvang and Andrew Morrison
• one dance work may be included in full in the Docudancing blog
• possible collaboration on the third work in the Life & Death project.
  

Publications & presentations

Thorsnes, P. 2004. 'In the slippery land inbetween'. Designing Design Seminar Series. Electronic arts: Dance and Technology. InterMedia, University of Oslo. 7 December.

Website