Interruption! In which our protagonist makes a case 4 hypermedia.

HI.

brief intro for those who don't know me. my name's I'Nasah (say it eye-NAH-sah) and i'm a big mess (read: writer (fiction poetry nonfiction) , dancer/dancer?, choreographer/choreographer?, former/soon to be once more filmmaker, budding vocalist, social commentator, and sometimes cook). i plan on blogging on.......oh, who knows. mostly my work. i promise i'll try and keep it interesting. for now, i want to respond to some of the responses that Sarah has been getting as she guides us through the hypermedia highway. if it sounds jumbled, please forgive me, i tend to do that when i'm impassioned. let me know if anything is unclear. i'll do this like 1, 2, 3.


1. CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING.
from where i'm sitting (Sarah please correct me if i'm wrong) one of the purposes of hypermedia is to facilitate in the audience a deeper understanding of the artist's work (we've been talking about dance, but i'm interested in whether hypermedia can be applied to other artforms......more on that later). in fact, it is one of the primary purposes.
i am a firm believer that context facilitates not only only understanding, but engagement (keep reading to find out why i believe this). as artists, do we not want our audience to engage with our work? they don't have to like it, well that's one thing, and we have our own ways of dealing with that. but i find it hard to believe that as people who invest an enormous amount of energy in the creation in a 5 minute dance, a 1 minute song, a blog that takes an hour to write, etc., we supposedly don't care about whether or not they will engage. just to be clear, i'm not talking about if we care whether audience will like or dislike the piece. after the curtain closes, i'd rather someone come up to me and say, "i absolutely hated it," than someone coming up to me and saying......nothing. or not even remembering which piece was mine. that's what i'm terrified of. lack of engagement.
now, how do we achieve engagement? for the sake of argument, let's assuming that all of us want our art to be accepted on its' own terms. for example, if i'm covering a song by Jessie Mae Hemphill, i wouldn't want to be judged by the same standards that someone would judge, sayyyyy.........a beyonce song. you see how that's comparing apples to cheetos? not to say that a beyonce fan couldn't also enjoy Jessie Mae Hemphill (i think audiences are much more diverse and intelligent than our various industries - music, dance, and otherwise - give them/us credit for), but if that bey fan has never listened to Delta blues and knows little to nothing about the history and standards of that music (where did it come from, what makes a song "good" or "bad," etc.), i wouldn't want them to judge me based on their more familiar context (beyonce/what makes a contemporary r&b song good or bad). because they are, more likely than not, going to think that my song is bad. it will bore them. and they will disengage.
i think this is the problem facing post/post-modern dance (from here on i'll just say pomodance) that Sarah has identified. pomodance audiences are made up of mostly pomodancers and pomodance people because they/we are the ones who "get it," - i.e. understand the context. we are the ones who created it, negotiate and re-negotiate its boundaries, work with it, know where it comes from, and most importantly, we know how to engage.
and why do we know these things? well, that question just so happens to lea me to my second point........


2. DECONSTRUCT THE AUDIENCE, AND MAYBE WE CAN CONSTRUCT WHERE TO GO FROM HERE.
in one of sarah's earlier blogs, a respondant said:

I learned how to appreciate dance through dance history and then through seeing many many pieces after that. I don't know if I really buy that a person gets a dance explained to them and then all of a sudden understands it. If a person wants to understand dance, they can watch a lot of dance.

that's fine, but let's break that down for a second. WHO takes dance history? mostly dance majors/dance minors/performing arts majors/and their ilk. please correct me if i'm wrong, but for the most part you don't have accounting and biochem majors just thirsting to learn about isadora duncan, nor is it required a required course for people outside of dance. but let's back that up even further - WHERE is dance history taught? in colleges, for the most part (also in conservatories and maybe in a summer dance intensive, but i would say colleges is the big home base here). and WHO goes to college? the same things that restrict people's access to college also restrict their access to watching dances, live dances at least. sure, one can spend upwards of $25 or $50 for an evening of pomodance, which one may or may not be engaged with/entertained by/understand/"get." OR one could go to the movies, which, where i live, is about $10 for an evening show.
then, even outside of academia, WHO has access to art? who has money to visit museums, plays, performance art, etc.? and let's talk about location. i think sometimes new yorkers (of course, no everyone who reads this blog is from NY) have a tendency to take for granted the amazing arts community that has established itself within the city. i'm currently blogging from ATL, my hometown, and out dance community here........yeah. it's not horrible by any means, but it's unsupported and small. you have your established companies, like Atlanta Ballet and Ballethnic, and they're the ones that tourists get pointed towards. Then you have the newer, modern/modern-based dance companies like brooks and company dance or Several Dancers Core. but unless you know where to look, which a lot of people outside of the dance community don't, you're not going to see these performances or even really know they exist. thus, outside of the occasional annual outing/school field trip to The Nutcracker, many people are going to have limited experiences with live dance. instead, they're going to stay at home and turn on the tv to So You Think You Can Dance. how is that going to help them to engage with pomodance upon first encounter?


3. HYPERMEDIA IS A TOOL/CONFESSIONS OF AN AVERAGE JOE
and that's really the real reason why i dropped my dance third/major sophomore year. i am a former average joe. in some ways i am still an average joe. nine times out of ten i am more likely to stay at home and watch a movie, go out barhopping with friends, or even watch some live music before i see pomodance. i've been dancing since i was 4, but my context was africanist movement, ballet, and modern, but more along the lines of Horton and Limon technique than Judson-like. so upon my arrival at sarah lawrence college and subsequent immersion into the dance program, i was completely out of my context. i was overwhelmed. i was frustrated. and i was BORED. i was used to sweating and straining during dance, and i felt like all we were doing was flopping around and playing pretend. i didn't know HOW to engage with all this pomo stuff. why were people eating tostito chips on stage and shaking their limbs for twenty minutes? it all seemed like a colossal waste of time. more so than that, i didn't see any REASON to engage. i wasn't motivated to, i didn't particularly want to.
i think the primary reason that i ultimately came back to my dance third is because of that thing that makes us all dancers - i had to dance. and i was happier dancing in ways i wasn't always interested in than in not dancing at all. plus, all the 9am dance history lessons started to pay off. i began to understand the what and why of pomodance, and i learned to look at the movement on its own terms, instead of constantly comparing it to the movement i was more familiar with.
thus, i completely get why this - hypermedia - is necessary as a tool if we want pomo dance to continue to grow and flourish and reach a wider audience. i also think that Sarah has hit the nail on the head: MEDIA is the way to do this because we live in a very media-satuated world. and people GET media, they GET technology (youtube mp3 internets ipod iphone etc.,) and if you have a handle on something familiar when going into the unknown, it can help you grasp the unknown that much better.
and it's a completely optional tool. there's nothing wrong with creating and putting it out there for those who get it to get it. but that's exactly how pomodnce has gotten to this predictament that we've identified. and if the artist sincerely doesn't care about engaging her/his/zir audience, than that's fine. artist's perogative. but..........in my opinion, someone's got to care. otherwise, why do it? why create? creation devolves into masturbation. feels great, but it's someone unproductive. pomodance devolves into a huge circle-jerk. and after awhile, everyone's had everyone else. it's time for something new.


in the end, i guess this is plea for folks to consider their context when considering hypermedia and it's possibilities. bad art/bad pomodance exists independent of hypermedia (obvi, since hypermedia is still in the process of being created), as does excuses for bad art. hypermedia is not an excuse. i ultimately can't see the downside of creating new ways to engage pomodance audiences (or audiences for any art form). we can't force people to take a more active interest in our creations. but we can try. is it our responsibility? maybe not. not inherently, anyway. but if it interests us, i think it's worth a shot.

Day F/ix (five + six) - Hypermedia in Action!

Hi All,
First, apologies for my lack of posting yesterday - I thought that i would have time either before of after work, but alas i did not. Such is life.
However, i did spend a good chunk of time uploading a bunch of media to post for you today. As i mentioned in the last post, my thesis work this year ended in the sudden realization that we were not, in fact going to be able to make what i wanted to make, leaving us with an excellent framework and lots of material, but no physical hypermedia. So what i can do, while i can't send you a DVD in the mail - much as i would like to, is to lay out video samples and walk you through what your options and course of action/viewing/navigation might be, were you to be playing with the hypermedia yourself.

And so we jump!
I'm not going to post the full film of The What's Left Over After yet, first because i'm not 100% done editing (it still needs to be color and sound corrected), second because i'm hoping to eventually sell it to fundraise, and third because there's no way i could concisely show the hypermedia structure by looking at the whole piece. So instead i've selected a short sample clip from which to work from. This clip comes about a third into the piece (which runs about 18min live and 19min on film). It is the very end of the lovers duet, which we've also referred to throughout the process/hypermedia as "the letter duet" and "LD2". As you watch it, try to watch it once as you would normally watch any type of media or art.



Now watch it a second time, this time posing the question to yourself - if i wanted to learn more about anything in this clip, and had been told that anything i clicked on would lead to more information and footage, what would i click on?

The visceral outline of this 2:23 long section of the piece is as follows:

1. Larissa Handstand over

XI. Sarah’s Phrase (Rowan + Larissa)

1. Hard fall
2. Pelvis up
3. Venn Diagram Spots
4. Ungulate
5. Sweep Around
6. Connecting Fingers
7. Hand to Face
8. Sweep Forward
9. Hard fall back
10. Pelvis arch
11. Hand to face

XII. Summer Section (Rowan + Larissa)

1. Run Around
2. Sweep around
3. Connecting Fingers
4. Hinge back
5. Tilted lift
6. Arch to floor
7. Awkward thing
8. Walk down
9. Thumb to forehead
10. Giving the letter 2
11. Long slide back

with the bold movements/phrases being the ones that are live links in the hypermedia system (and thus deemed "important" by me in the sense that i decided there was additional information that we could share about them via the hypermedia).

So out of that 2:32 of the piece, there are are eight unique main links (1 section: LD2, 2 phrase: Sarah's Phrase and the Summer Section, and five movements: venn diagram spots, hand to face, the awkward thing, thumb to forehead, and the long slide back). It also should be noted that, had i the time and space (or, hypothetical space, as our predicted lack of space on the DVD is now voided by our lack of actual hypermedia system) that i would have created links for additional movements: hard fall, pelvis up, hard fall back, connecting fingers, walk down, and giving the letter.
ANYWAY.
For the purposes of this seminar, I'm going to focus on a few specific links, as each link has a multitude of videos that goes along with it. They are: (Section) LD2, (Phrase) Sarah's Phrase, and (Movements), and the Awkward Thing and the Long Slide Back.

Let's say you were interested in the Awkward Thing (which is that still moment when Larissa is awkwardly positioned against Rowan so that her shoulders and upper body are against the ground, with her legs braced on Rowan's upright shoulders) and you clicked on it, unknowing what you would find. First (in my ideal world of worlds) the video would freeze, and the item that you clicked (in this case, the awkward thing) would stay in color and illuminated as the rest of the screen went gray and darker. Then a flash animated menu would drop down from the still image of the movement, listing those five categories that i talked about yesterday (1. Evolution/Process, 2. Insights, 3. Meanings, 4. Questions, and 5. Media). Of course this is my fancy in-mind version. But isn't it beautiful?
In this case, because the Awkward Thing only links to three videos, the menu would appear like this:

1. Evolution/Process (2)

• the Awkward Thing's Evolution
• Rehearsal Footage from the Awkward Thing

5. Media (1)

• Connection to Sarah A.O.'s piece "Haunt"

From that menu, you could decide to watch any of the three videos. Here they are:







In much the same way, here's what the menu would be if you clicked on the movement of the Long Slide Back, which to me sticks out as the most iconic image from the piece.

1. Evolution/Process

• Evolution of the Long Slide Back

2. Insights

• Vivi
• Mrs. Sharp
• I.B.
• W.C.
• Rowan

5. Media

• The Music of the Long Slide Back

And here they are:
















From both of these movements, after watching some, none, or all of these videos, you could go back to watching the piece, or navigate through the media web. You could navigate to the phrase (Summer Section) or section (LD2) that these movements came from, investigate specific music or lighting details, or click on one of the "related videos" that came up during one of the videos that you watched (much like a YouTube setup). For example, Vivi mentions making the movement for the Long Slide Back in the first day of rehearsal over the summer, so a link would come up in the related shorts for the short that shows that day's improvisations and rehearsal. Additionally, in the rehearsal footage from the awkward thing, i mention that it's a moment of stillness. While I don't make a direct reference to other moments of stillness in the piece, the link to a movement we called "Lift 1/2/3 Underwater" would come up under related shorts, because it is the other important moment of stillness in the duet.

Now let's say you were interested in something earlier on in the clip, something that wasn't linked, such as the hard fall or the sweep around from Sarah's Phrase. If you clicked on one of these movements, because the movement isn't linked, it would take you directly to the phrase. Phrases are different from movements, in that they would each have a separate "page" - think like a small pop-up web page that would have the shorts for the phrase, as well as a list of all the movements in the phrase, so that you could look at information for the phrase as a whole, or for the individual movements therein. If you clicked on Sarah's Phrase, you would find two videos:





Last, let's say you wanted to find out more about the overall section of the piece. You could navigate backwards from the phrase page, or any of the movements, to get to the larger section page. If you wanted to find out about LD2, you would have the option of choosing from a bunch of videos (only about half of which i'm showing here, as only about half of them pertain to the short clip of the film you saw.
The menu would be:

2. Insights

• Rowan's Experience
• Rowan and Larissa's Relationship
• LD2's Importance to Sarah
• LD2's accessibility

3. Meanings

• Sarah's about

I hope this gives a good example of the type of information that would be offered with the Hypermedia. As you can see - each linked movement/section/or phrase offers a wealth of information, and this is (unbelievably) only about two thirds of everything offered for this 2:32 clip. Let me remind you that the film is NINETEEN MINUTES LONG!!! Fantastic.
I'll offer more insight and analysis on how one might navigate this structure, as well as a discussion of how things could be linked as "related" - which is where the hypermedia really takes off in my mind and stops being about "explaining" and starts being a whole new art form in itself - tomorrow. I think this is probably (more than) enough info for today.
Also, i'm sure parts of it are less than clear - questions?

Day Four - The Hypermedia System for "The What's Left Over After"

A note written at the end: This is LONG. I'm sorry. It's as much for me to have a record and reflect on the process as for you, but for both of us i wanted to be thurough. Read at will.

Hello from New York!
It's so beautiful today, and nice to be back among the hipsters, artists, strangers, and SLCers.
(But i digress.)

SO. I made my claims for why Hypermedia was not only valid, but nessecary for those who wish to adopt it as a format, and I designed the theoretical components of what a hypermedia system might entail. Then it was time to actually put my money where my mouth was and make the damn thing.

To give a quick background on the timeline: I had started work on what eventually became "The What's Left Over After" the summer before my senior year with the A.O. Movement Collective in DC. From the bat, i labled the summer as "research" for the next semster's piece, working on material, ideas, and exercizes through the summer to eventually come up with five short pieces. These pieces were presented seperately throughout our program (which featured three other pieces) but accmopanied by a program note that described their "research" nature and how they would be used the following semester. While i had proposed and outlined a skeleton of my hypermedia thesis weeks before i had left SLC for the summer, I didn't start really developing the theoey, researching, and designing the components until i returned to Sarah Lawrence my senior year. We began work on the new (SLC) version of the piece right away. This is all to say: becuase i was making the piece as i was making the hypermedia (in fact, always a little bit ahead of the hypermedia) sometimes designs or advances in the hypermedia were not created in time to incorperate them into this hypermedia system. For example, one of the ideas of the project was to film everything associated with the making of the dance. However, over the summer i didn't have my camera yet, so i only have footage from three or four out of the forty or so rehearsals we had.

SO.
Starting last fall (my senior year) we filmed everything associated with the dance. Studio times where i would work alone, the audition, rehearsals, showings, feedback, etc. Everything. Working with my tireless film crew (the amazing Rafi Gamboa and Dylan Morgan) we were able to cover just about everything, missing only about 10% (my estimation - just the making of the Venn Diagrams section) of the rehearsals.

We made sure that the AV department was filming both performances (so that we would have historical records of the performance from a still tripod) and then also orchestrated a few shoots to get the footage we needed for the film. We filmed the dress rehearsal with two cameras - one from the bridge/catwalk directly above and in front of the stage, and one from the top left diagonal of the upper level of the PAC (by the sound booth for those of you who are familiar). We additionally blocked off a six hour shoot the day after the performances (when everyne was, of course, exhausted) to shoot the rest of the footage - a still camera in front and from either diagonal (so 3 seperate cameras total) and then an extensive list of close, medium, and moving shots from a number of different perspecitves. Editing the film of the piece together (in a first rough cut) took somewhere around 30 hours, and i was able to have it done by the time we got back from winter break. Damani (one of my two advisors, a teacher in the film department and all around genius) and i continued to edit it for the rest of the year. This was the extent of the movement footage that we took.

Additionally, at the time of the performance, we had set up an "audience talkback" interface to get impressions and questions for audience members after they exited the performance. This interface contained four mac laptops (the kind with the isight camera built in) each with a prompt for the audience member to respond to, as well as directions about how to record your video clip. Questions:
- What images did you see in the peice? Did they remind you of anything you have seen before?"
- Ask the dancers or the choreogrpaher a question
- Was the piece "about" anything to you? If so, what?
- If you have seen showings or versions of this piece before, how did your previous veiwings affect your veiwing of the performance, and your understanding of the piece as a whole?
Audience members were also instructed (i had some wonderful volunteers helping me at each show) that they could disregard the questions and say whatever they wanted. This system proved an interesting expirement, if not 100% sucessful. Problems with the setup included that only about 10% of the audience felt inclined to (or comfortable enough to) leave a video, as well as the fact that the questions themselves still need much tinkering, in terms of finding questions that give the audience member enough of an impulse to speak, but aren't too leading or limiting. I think the crafting of these questions was one of the hardest parts of the process for me.

Moving on. We then got into the interview process, where i filmed interviews with each of my dancers (Michael Charles Foote, Rowan Magee, Larissa Sheldon, Ilona Bito, and Emily Sharp, and from the summer Connor Voss, Vivi Amranand, and Lillie DeArmon) and collaborators (Theo Wilson and Gabe Aronson), as well as had Rafi film an interview of myself (questions written by me, submitted via Audience Talkback, and posed by my dancers, namley Larissa who offered the most interesting questions of the entire project). These interviews ranged in length from 20 minutes to 2 hours. Each dancer and collaborator respectievly were asked the same questions, but with follow up questions of course leading in different directions. Editing these down took a combined total of somewhere around 50 or 60 hours. So that was all the interview footage.

I then spent a short time gathering artifacts - scanning my journals and notebooks from other classes with doodles pertaining to the piece in the margins, video of other pieces, etc. About five hours there - easy brezzy.

The next big step was outlining the dance and the hypermedia. Let me (for a breif moment) describe how hard this was. I remember reading a book that talked about how humankind's biggest evolution wasn't moving to being bipedal, but making the transfer from storing all of one's knowladge in thier head to writing it down and forming a collective human knowladge. The hypermedia, in many ways, feels like the same thing. It would be impossible to hold, at the front of one's attention, ALL the information about the piece (the steps, the choreography, the music, notes for each dance, how each movement was made, what an audience member said about it, what the dancer said about it, where it was made from, what studio we were in etc etc) all the time, all at the same time. The hypermedia is a tool that can contain all of that information, so that the veiwer and the choreographer can look specifically and with great detail at any of these singular aspects of the dance, and the ways that they link up. HOWEVER. To build the system, i did have to reckon with as many of these things as possible at once, holding as much as i could in my head in order to reason out what the clearest way to program it would be. I really do believe that, in working on this project, i've expanded my ability to hold information at least threefold. It's really amazing, but was extrely excruciating at the time - Darla and Ej can attest to finding me with my head in my hands, yelling at the computer screen, muttering that i just couldn't think about everything at the same time.

That being said, outlining it consisted of notating (in my own outline-like way) every movement that happened in the piece (in order, from each dancer) and then priortizing which of these movements were "important" in terms of the meaning or narrative associated with them (meaning that they would, in the hypermedia, be the ones that were "linked"). I ended up breaking down the piece into "Sections" (such as the letter duet "LD2" or "Beekeeper Solo"), "Phrases" (such as "Sarah's Phrase", "Ilona's Exhaustion Phrase", or "Venn Diagrams Accumulation") and "Movements" (such as "Antique", "hard fall", and "the awkard thing"). From this outline, I then cross referenced, seeing how many of these "important" sections, phrases, and movements we had - basically, how many links there would be.

I then went through ALL the footage (rehearsals, studio time, showings, talkback, performances, interviews, other pieces, etc.) and pulled relevant material for each link, crafting them into short films. Some of these films were short little nuggets of a rehearsal interaction or idea, and others were longer "shorts" that combined different types of footage to make a longer exposition of the idea or point at hand.

We then set it up (the outline/framework, i mean. None of this was actually being programed yet) so that each "link" (ie: important movement, phrase, or section that one could click on in the film) to lead to a screen with five sections:

1. Process/Evolution (clips that showed how something was made, the way it changed, the moment we found it, etc.)
2. Interpretations (clips with audience, dancers, collaborators, and myself talking about our interpretations of the final product)
3. Meaning(s) (the plural is important - interviews where myself and dancers revealed the origonal - often conflicting - sources and ideas of where the base material started from)
4. Questions (from audience, dancers,collaborators, etc.)
5. Media (relevant media such as an earlier version of the music or another piece that was influential to the link at hand)

and sorted all the films that we had into one of these five sections. Exceptions to the sections were material that we decided (due to the small size of a DVD and fear that all the material wouldn't fit on one) would be "bonus material" offered on a seperate DVD. This included information about the lights, set, and score, as well as shorts about general topics, such as my creative process, or typical rehearsals.

SO.
At the end, we were left with a mass of material: outlined, organized, and waiting to be linked.
We had (and i'm sorry, these are aproximations, becuase i'm working off of a friend's computer):

One twenty-minute dance film which contained:
9 linked Sections
25 linked Phrases
29 linked Movements
a whopping 234 Shorts, ranging from twenty seconds to seven minutes
232 Artifacts (journal pages, photos, interviews, etc.) and
27 pieces of additional media (including audio files, films of other dances, and films of this piece's performance and summer performances)

This, my friends, is a lot of material.

So then, the downfall.

Initally, we knew that we wouldn't be able to create a real hypermedia system, in the sense that my ideal program is both structured in a unique way (much like the internet with each link linking to a location rather than each having a unique file) utilizing yet-to-be-programed structures, as well as flash animation, which is expensive. So instead we had set out to make a mock-up of this system, a DVD which would look to the used like it functioned in the way we wanted it to, but instead of actually being programed correctly, would utilize lots of tricks and shortcuts - more of a sample to gereate interest and support than the actual media itself.

However, when we began programing, it became clear that (for some reason) DVD Maker Pro (the program we intended to use) wasn't going to work as it would not accept the amount of files. We then moved on to attempting this through iMovie, where we found we could place the links, but not time when they showed up, the result being that every one of the 100+ links would be onscreen - overlaping and in the way of other links - the whole film. Not acceptable.
So we came to a standstill.

I know what i want to do is possible and logically feasible. As Damani put it - when big move execs understand that they can start to make DVDs where, as the kid sits at home watching Transformers, he can click on Shai LeBouf's shoes and immediatly buy them, that's when the techonolgy will start getting developed. So i have to wait for them to make something to further their sweatshop labor before i can use it for my art. How frustrating.
But it is actually possible (and i mean without the sweatshop labor - i don't have time to wait for them anways).
All it takes is a team of programers, a flash designer, and a ton of grant money.

So that's where i stand and, coincidentally, why I was always working this year.
That is a (very) detailed account of the first hypermedia project to come out of A.O. PRO(+ductions) - i'm sure i've missed things and i'm sure parts are unclear, but questions and reminders are always welcome.

Once i'm home i'll start posting vids as samples of these sections and types of media - the good stuff.
Thanks for bearing with me!

Day Three - Ta Da! Hypermedia!

So! Here we go.
Today i'm going to outline actual features possible (and thus far designed) in a hypermedia system, as well as detail what my specific hypermedia that i was building as my thesis project this year entailed. I'll also try to give my reasoning for why these specific features are useful/important. I urge you (especially if you're someone who disagrees with my theory or feeling of need for the hypermedia) to look at what i'm describing just as a tool for dance. Is it interesting? Could it be helpful? I'm not trying to overthrow dance here, just invent something new.

With that being said, possible components of hypermedia system include:

• Footage of all performances of the piece from a stationary far shot still tripod (as to maintain a historical record of the performance(s).)
• A dancefilm version of the piece at hand. Because the aforementioned wide still shot captures so little of what the actual performance is like (many people, including myself, find these types of recordings uninteresting and hard to watch) it becomes necessary to create a version specifically made for the screen. This version could be as literal (in terms of being a representation of the original piece) or take as many liberties as the artist desires. Doug Fox has been leading an interesting discussion of what makes dance videos (specifically internet videos) "successful" on his Great Dance blog here.
  
• Footage from rehearsals, showings, studio time, and any other relevant work on the piece. The hypermedia could use footage as a historical record (including ALL footage that has been captured over the course of making the piece) or just specific clips that the artist deems "important" or "interesting" (to be used to direct the viewers attention to certain points in the dance and enrich their knowledge of the process). Additionally, the way that the artist chooses to gather this footage is up to them. While one artist might deem it important to have every rehearsal fully captured, others might only want to record the phrases that have been made or the sections that have been worked on - opting for more of the "final product" of each rehearsal than the rehearsal itself.
  
• Footage from collaborators working on their respective aspects of the piece. For example, a composer in his studio working out specific parts of the music, or a lighting designer hanging specific lights for the piece.
  
• Interviews (and lots of 'em). While interviews of every and anyone could be included in the hypermedia here are some obvious options: the dancers, the choreographer, the collaborators, the tech crew, anyone who has seen the piece before it has been performed/while it was being made, etc. It is important to note that what the interviews cover, the questions that the persons being interviewed are being asked is not really the most important factor here, insomuch as they are represented and have a voice on the hypermedia. While it might be important for one artist to know what meanings and interpretations interviewees attributed to certain movements, it might be important to a different artist to hear the dancers understanding of their anatomy while dancing, or the ways in which they had to physically prepare for the piece. Yet another might be interested in the social interactions (and possible drama - a la the style of reality shows) that formed in the making of the piece. Another could ask interviewees to place it within their understanding of modern dance and art, and draw parallels to other works. Do you see? It's not what is being asked, but that asking and recording is occurring.
• Some version of an audience talk-back system can also be included. There are a few (a million) different ways to accomplish this, but again, the representation of their voice is more important than the specific format of the talkback or the questions posed. One method (which is what i ended up using for my project) is setting up a computer interface. As audience members leave the performance, they can go over to a table of computers, each of which could have a different question for the audience member to consider and answer (or no question at all). Audience members can then record short videos of themselves either answering these prompts or just saying what they have to say. Another option would be to have a camera person going around the lobby post- (and maybe even pre-) performance, asking audience members for feedback. As i said - a million different formats, tones, and questions possible. What works best for YOUR piece? Additionally, the artist could decide whether s/he wanted just initial reactions from audience members, or if they wanted to later follow up with some or all of them and ask further questions.
  
• Footage of other dances, choreographed both by the and other artists, that the artist sees as in conversation with the piece at hand, influential to the piece's creation or sensibility, or somehow important to an understanding of this piece. These would all of course need to be obtained with express permission of the respective choreographers. Additionally, the hypermedia would be a platform through which choreographers could include films or performance footage of their previous work that they saw as related to the piece at hand.
• Footage, Files, Images, and multiple other formats of any type of other art that the artist (or for that matter, anyone interviewed) sees as relating to or important for the piece at hand.
  
• Artifacts such as journal pages, blog posts, news reports, newspaper clippings, photos, sketches, and fabric samples to name a few that give insight to any part of the piece and its creation.
• Notation of the piece's viscera/choreography. This could be anything ranging from Labon or LifeForms to a choreographer simply recording a verbal account of what is happening in each movement. Through diagrams, film, animation, or more, choreographers would have the option to somehow historically preserve the movement of the piece.
  
• Hypermedia could also develop interaction between the audience and the piece via instructional videos or manuals. These could be as literal as a dancer teaching the steps to a certain phrase for the viewer to follow along with, or more creative and open ended for the viewer - for example leading them through an exercise that the dancers used during the process of making the piece to make their own original movement.
  

There are millions upon millions more ideas and modifications for what could go into a hypermedia system. This of course is the main feature of hypermedia - each system is modular, customizable, and built to fit the piece at hand. So, for example, if you're me, you might want to make a system that focuses more on the narrative and meanings at play within the piece - the subviscera - and base your system more on the interviews and artifacts, not including notation of the actual movement. If you care more about the physical movement of the piece - the viscera - you might make a system that focuses mainly on notation and instructional video, opting to have little to no discussion of "meaning" in the system. If you want to display that everyone has a voice within the process, you might strive to represent as many different views as possible. If you want to keep the precess a secret (well...first off, you might not opt to pursue hypermedia, BUT if it did intrigue you) you could only include the film of the piece and audience reactions. Bill T. Jones can add (the incredibly moving) documentary footage of his work with terminally ill patients, Merce Cunningham can insert info about his work with Cage, and Balanchine can show diagrams of amazing spatial patterns.
See kids, something for everyone!!!

These are the BASICS. This is generation one. Hypermedia will and must evolve as time passes, and must incorporate new functions, facets, and revisions. These aspects are the ones that i see as necessary and obvious in terms of my invention of them, but i welcome more and more as people begin to develop an interest in having systems made for them. The point is not for me to propagate my own views over and over again, but to present a new option for choreographers to show their work.

A note for today: I was planning to also breifly blog about the specifics of my system today, and then post samples of each category tomorrow, but i've been offered two interviews for jobs in NYC, so i'm hopping on the train from Union Station in just a few hours and booking it up to the city. I'll do my best to post tomorrow, but I won't have my hard drive with me, so i'm going to blog about my system tomorrow, and then post samples on Friday.
As always, thanks for checking it out, and keep the comments coming!

Day Two - uses and needs, uses and needs

So what's the logical next step to solve these problems?

Almost two years ago, i began to accumulate some ideas under the general heading of "hypermedia" and proposed and exploration of these ideas as a senior thesis to the powers that be at Sarah Lawrence. Having been a student in Tony Schultz's dance technology class for one semester my junior year, and then returning to it for the entirety of my senior year (you can check out our class blog from this year - Dance Machines - here) i was extremly impressed by the new way of thinking that Tony presented us with.

Rather than using programs that already existed to express artistic ideas and projects (for example: using Final Cut Express to edit a dancefilm or using a time lapse program to capture footage over the span of a few days), we were suddenly being asked to think about the intended final project first, and then design our perfect machine that would help us create and capture it.

To me, this seemed like a drastic shift in my thought and creative process; it was like someone had suddenly made me a very small god. As a creative artist, my understanding of my "job description" has always been somewhere along the lines of creating the "best" piece of art that i can (whatever that means) within (and sometimes breaking with, but always in relation to) the "rules" of a stage or film setting. Suddenly i was no longer asking myself how to create the "best" piece i could for stage or film, but how i could create and engineer a completely new system that would best support and showcase the work that i was making. Do you see how exciting this is? It's reinventing the wheel so that your Chevy Impala (that for some reason truly is unique, has immense unknown value, and is vastly Important to you) runs like a charm. It's reinventing the wheel so much so that (by the time you're done) people will look at your car, and declare it's value somewhere near to that of a jaguar becuase you've engineered it to be that valuable.

Anyways, the question becomes: what do you include to make the perfect dance showing machine? Well, what is it's purpose - what is is being used for? As stated before, this machine addresses multiple problems and therefore has multiple uses. Here are a few possible uses:

• as a teaching tool for potential/current audiences (teach: ways to look at dance, analytical vocabulary, the foundations of the craft that we choreographers use such as time and space, the way the specific piece fits into the larger dance cannon, the way this piece relates to other contemporary pieces, etc. etc.)
• as a teaching tool for teaching choreographers and dancers (teach: specific creative processes, a comparison between choreographers, "background" information in the study of specific dances, etc.)
• as a marketing tool (grab the attention of potential audience members by giving them a "sneak preview" of the piece they' can buy tickets for, educate them on the piece's creation so that they might further enjoy seeing the final product in performance, impress donors with an inside look into the creative process, reach out to people who wouldn't usually want to see a dance performance etc.)
• as a revenue source (sell the final product to interested audience members/company supporters at performances or online)
  
• present a representation of the dance (as identified yesterday as so so so much more than just the performance) that is more holistic, encompassing, and truthful than presenting pieces that are solely performative might feel to certain choreographers (read: me.)
• as a historical artifact of the dance that was created and performed
  
• etc. etc. etc. etc. The possibilities are endless.
  

So what, then are the specific aspects of the dance (according to me) that the hypermedia would need to capture and represent? Of course, this is a small and incomplete list, but it's a start:

• ALL rehearsals, showings, performances, studio times, etc. - anything that shows the physical time spent in the making of the piece
• the performance(s)
  
• references and usage of other works of art within the piece
• references to other dances, both from the choreographer and other artists
• the context (both artistic and cultural) that the piece was made in
  
• the dancer's experience of being a part of the process, understanding of the piece, etc.
• the choreographer's experience of making the piece
• comments from dancers and choreographer at different times throughout the process
• comments and questions from audience members
• the work of any and all collaborators on the piece
• interpretations of the piece from the choreographer, dancer(s), collaborator(s), and audience members
  
• that THERE IS NO WRONG WAY TO VIEW OR INTERPRET THE PIECE!

Tomorrow: Hypermedia Revealed! I'll let you know (and show examples of) everything that they hypermedia is made of. How excited are you??!?! Very.
Stay tunned!

Day 1 - Identify the Probem(s)

So here we go - day one of my Kloster-woman mini tirade/educational exposition of hypermedia.

Before we get into the technology, bodies, or theory of what hypermedia consists of, it's important to understand where my perceived need for it comes from. Why does PMD (postmodern dance - i'll use this here to represent the time period that i'm referring to, not necessarily the specific values or artists) need it? What is this new technology attempting to save us from? What problems does it attempt to address?

Ultimately, from status and stagnancy in our work, and from the eventual unspeakable:
having to stop making work.

1. People don't know what to do with PMD.

People don’t know where to place postmodern dance. While we as a dance community existing in academia may have taken classes in dance history, or at least been educated through asides in dance classes about lineage and styles, people outside the dance community who find themselves viewing dance may not have ever been exposed to this.
New choreographers attempt to redefine what postmodern dance is at a very rapid pace through the self-proclaimed authenticity of their own new work; even if choreographers don’t acknowledge that their work is in response to work in their near historical proximity, postmodern dance is founded on the tenet of breaking with what came before and defining one’s own unique style and outlook. The dance community may be aware of how to contextually view new work, but a non-dancer would have trouble tracking the constant evolution and re-definition of the genre. This leads to problem #2:

2. We make dances primarily for an audience of "dance people".

While i don't think that there's anything particularly criminal about this - why not make art for the specific niche of people that will understand it to the fullest extent? - i think that staying in this place as an entire arts community is actually really hurting us, an inherent weakness that we've yet to address. Many people who are not writers read books, many people who can’t act see theater, and many people who can’t operate a camera or write a screenplay see movies. When non-dance people continually feel that they “don’t get” what they are seeing in a dance performance, thy begin to lose interest with why PMD is important or interesting. Why is this?

3. Ephemerality and permanence.

How many times have we herd the phrase "dance is ephemeral"? Since January, nine. I counted. Ephemerality becomes the excuse for why dance can't be studied, becomes the reason why it's hard to pin down, becomes the nail in dance's economic coffin. Why? Because it actually is. While there are certainly aspects of the ephemeral nature of dance that are extremly positive and exciting, dance's ephemeral nature is the major roadblock for the majority of "non-dance-people" who "don't get it". The audience member is put in the position of not only having to come to terms with an entirely new foreign vocabulary and mode of thought, but also to remember as much as they can about what they are seeing, in the time span of a single piece, sometimes only minutes long. "Some postmodern dance is emotionally resonant with many viewers but some, like a movement equivalent of Joyce’s cryptic Ulysses, requires investigation and study... [audiences then] flat out feel like they “don’t get it” and are provided no way to work towards their idea of what “getting it” might entail. They think that they are supposed to take something from the performance that they have never been told how to understand or appreciate, and feel lost, overwhelmed, and put out by something that they would have, at one point, been excited to be a part of. We then get the view of postmodern dance as cryptic and self-indulgent because we as choreographers are uninterested in or unwilling to teach the audience how to watch what we give them. Additionally, we have yet to create a way to convey to our audiences everything that we are able to see in it as its creators...It is not only interesting, but crucial, to involve the audience beyond the performance and in so doing, create some sort of support system so that the audience has evidence and consciousness of the ongoing process of watching, processing, and understanding a dance piece." (Thesis, 4-5)

3. "as long as the audience can connect to something – one movement – anything, that’s fine with me.”

NO.
WRONG WRONG WRONG.
This is killing modern dance. While the sentiment is on target (that the audience doesn't have to understand or feel attachment to every thing that happens, but hopefully moments will feel important, clear, and moving to them even if the whole is cryptic or dense) the widespread adoption of this tenet is (and i'll say it again) KILLING us. Think about it: if you went to see a dance piece, and you took one thing away from the entire (let's say hour long) performance, wouldn't you want your money back? I would.
Why are we as choreographers settling for “one thing”? It seems inherently compromising to our work, and even more unfair to our audiences. It is a cop out to say that we are satisfied with a singular thing resonating with our audiences. What we really want is for our audiences to understand that there are many things at play in each performance, in each piece, and even in each singular movement, and that any one or combination of those meanings or understandings that they see is inherently right. So perhaps the problem isn’t that audiences aren’t able to “see one thing” in a performance - perhaps out problem is that, as choreographers, this is all we’ve asked them to do. Theo and i were talking about how a characteristic of postmodern work (of many forms) is a lack of caring. He writes:

"The post-modern mindset (identical to hipster mindset) finds caring to be the greatest human weakness, as it renders one victim to heartbreak. The result is a body of work, or a culture of individuals, containing no heart, who care about nothing, and who's pieces are merely illustrations of aloofness. After all, how can anything fail in a world where all rules are meaningless constructs?"

Let's just put it out there: i Care about my work. i Care about the meaning(s) emotions(s) interpretation(s) and ideologies that are present in my work. And i, the choreographer, CARE that you, the audience, see and connect as many of them as humanly possible.

4. "If we tell people how to look at our work, it cheapens the work and makes it less artistic"

again my friends,
NO.
WRONG WRONG WRONG.
When we educate our audiences in how to look at dance, how to understand connections between visceral movement and subvisceral components (subvisc = “The implicit meanings and themes inherent in the viscera of a dance performance.” just like subtext = “The implicit meaning or theme of a literary text”), we simply give them tools to work harder as viewers with. As we give our audiences tools to work harder, we set the standard for ourselves as choreographers higher and higher. If our audiences are working harder, then we better damn well be making work that takes more and more ability, more and more understanding and craft at watching, to watch.

5. For PMD, Product is not equal to Process.
So looking back today (6/10) i realized that this was the one point that this post was missing, so i'm adding it in in hindsight. In dance (and i have always felt this way) performance, to me, is not an acceptable (or at least highly problematic) translation or representation of the process to the audience. Now, i know that the point of performance isn't really to show the audience the process; the point is to show the final cumulation of what you've been making. However, it's always seemed so unfair, un-encompassing, and simply untruthful that the performance never really shows all the gems and excitement of the process, which to me (and i would argue many other dancers) is always the
best part. The dance isn't the performance. The dance is the preparation, invention, audition, context, rehearsal, revision, interaction, showing, reworking, performance, feedback, reaction, and all the emotions and logic associated with those steps of the process. So why are we showing the audience the dance instead of the dance?

and last,
6. The PMD economy is failing, in free fall, kaputz, dead, done, dying.

"I am always surprised at the number of dancers and choreographers I talk to who seem to feel no need to rebel against this system in hopes of changing it. I have often felt the pull of multiple jobs, and my desire to make dance a livable profession comes from my desire to have more time to devote to the work that I love and find important – the making of dances. If dance artists were able to devote their entire work life to dance making rather than downwards of 15 hours a week, then the subtleties and sophistication of the work at hand would increase dramatically. It is important for me to express that this goal then seems to be not entirely an economic one, but an effort to make a shift in the was that artists are able to produce and enrich their work and themselves as artists. By talking about it economically, we are not invalidating the artistic and invaluable nature of our work, only looking at our creative processes realistically within the system in which they function." (Thesis, 9)

The DTW blog recently had a discussion about the need for artists to embrace marketing here, and it's exciting to know that (even while some artists remain adamantly opposed to letting marketing have a place in their artistic vision) many artists are beginning to look into both mainstream and alternative methods with which to propagate and support their art.

SO.
These are the main problems that my "hypermedia solution" is attempting to address.
In the coming days, I'll lay down some of the theory that the program is built on, talk about the process of making and programing it, and post some samples of the program here as well. I would love as many comments and challenges as you care to leave - the only way that i keep developing this work is through the constant evolution of it via feedback of other creative artists and audience members.

More tomorrow!