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.
Docudancing has the following main aims:
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.
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.
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.
The project as having the following outcomes:
Docudancing: a weblog documenting the project Life & Death - Choreography in Context
Thorsnes, P. 2004. 'In the slippery land inbetween'. Designing Design Seminar Series. Electronic arts: Dance and Technology. InterMedia, University of Oslo. 7 December.