New Mission.

In Chuck Klosterman's 2006 Esquire article "I wanna get free" he discusses the (non) possibility of any type of American revolution. It isn't depressing to hear him reason that no revolution is possible due to our culture's non-interest, non-unification, and non-participation, it's depressing to read that statement and not feel like arguing against it because there's really no part of that statement i don't agree with. But that's besides the point.

What drew my attention was a passage where Klosterman points out that he's "not really a rock-throwing kind of guy." He writes:

"Modernity has created a cosmic difference between intellect and action, even when both are driven by the same motives; as such, the only people qualified to lead a present-day revolution would never actually do so. Contemporary leaders are not rock-throwing guys. And this is a problem, because it's the rock-throwers who get things done."

Now, he also concedes that "moreover, I assume the type of person who hurls rocks in public is not the type of person i would agree with about anything", but i'm going to put that (as well as my undying love of Chuck Klosterman and nonsensical need for him to perceive me as intelligent) aside for the moment. While part of what he's speaking of is American lethargy and political "manners", he's also speaking to the mind-body schism that i find to be so pervasive in our culture. The thinkers are thinkers and the doers (read: movers) are doers.

So this has caused me to take on a Klosterman-like project: for two weeks i'm going to post on hypermedia every day. I will try to be as clear and concise as possible and, in fourteen days, provide an overview and simple exposition of what the hypermedia is, how it can be used, and where it might be going. I'll also try to get a bunch of the footage and shorts that i've shot posted as well.

Over this last semester i've felt a lot of opposition (from both dancers and non-dancers) regarding the my work trying to redefine/revolutionize the politics and economy of the dance world via hypermedia. Reading this essay, i was reminded who we as the intellectual dance community are: the artist intellectual mover yeller provocateurs of our generation. Therefore: here comes the brick through the window - unapologetic hypermedia.

Introducing...(sneak preview #2)

here's another sneak peak out of the "bonus footage" section of the hypermedia - enjoy!

Sneak Preview...

Welcome to the Urgent Artist/Hypermedia!

Hi all!

Welcome to the Urgent Artist - one of my (as in me, Sarah A.O. + as in me, the A.O. Movement collective) blogs. This blog is designed to facilitate discussions between artists about the theory and ideas behind their work. I'll be posting most of my work about hypermedia here, so you can follow me as it evolves.

This is also a great place for questions -
both so you can get answers and i can get feedback. Feel free to ask anything or start discussions, my goal is to be as active as possible on here this summer.

I've posted a little in the past (both re: hypermedia and other parts of my art) so feel free to scroll through. I'll try to post more so you get the meat of the hypermedia project in the coming days!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Semaphore your enjoyment!

Hey guys,
here's a project that we've been working on in Tony's dancetech class at SLC.
Semaphore is that flag-alphabet where every pose equals a letter of the alphabet.
(we had to get creative on our punctuation)
get it? get it?
it's funny kind of.
Tell me what you think!

Okay. So here it is:
I've been developing ideas about this new way to be making work, and while i'm no where near finalized on any of this, i've gotten to the point of being able to be somewhat coherent about it. For the sake of simplicity, let's call this the "pomogenerate" system. Po-mo = post modern, generate = to make,"pomogenerate" sounds like "pomegranate" = a juicy fruit that you eat by pulling apart all the little compartments and layers.

To throw some vocab at you (from the introduction to my thesis):

"Subtext as we know it in a literary sense is defined as:

“The implicit meaning or theme of a literary text”

with ‘implicit’ being defined as “contained in the nature of something though not readily apparent” and theme being defined as “a unifying or dominant idea, motif, etc., as in a work of art.” Subtext is why life is interesting. Subtext is the meat of everything that happens, no matter how visible it is, and subtext is what initially drew me in to a love of literature in high school. One of the beautiful things about literature, which I grew up with, fell in love with, and am now attempting to reinvent for dance, is that the reader can really dig into the hidden world of the piece to their heart’s content. Just as themes can underlie a line of text, meanings and subtleties likewise haunt the works of theatre, visual art, and dance. If we use the dance term ‘viscera’ to talk about the movement within a dance piece – specifically the body’s anatomical relation to itself, as well as its relation to space and time during the event of performance, then we can define what I’ve begun to call “subviscera” as

“The implicit meanings and themes inherent in the viscera of a dance performance.”

This subviscera, or “subvisc” for short, is inherent in every piece of postmodern dance, regardless of the choreographer’s intensions or desires, and can be subdivided into the two categories of Inherent Subvisc and Accumulated Subvisc. The Inherent subvisc can be divided into three sections that deal with the accumulation of meaning in the performance of the dance:
1. Meanings the choreographer brings to the viscera during its creation via his or her own understanding of its significance, history, and/or intension
2. Meanings the dancers bring to the viscera in performance, via the accumulation of both their own and the choreographer’s understanding of the intension, story line, or significance behind specific viscera.
3. Meanings that the audience brings to the viscera via their own perception and relation to the viscera during the event of performance
The Accumulated Subvisc can also be divided into three sections, and deals with the dance piece’s post-performance life:
1. The reactions and interpretations of the audience after the piece (which includes both the viscera and the subviscera, as well as set, music, costumes, etc.) is performed
2. The reactions and interpretations of persons deemed “critics” after the piece is performed
3. The accumulation of a judgment (or rather, a multiplicity of judgments) that gather around the piece via the reactions and interpretations of the audience and critics."
So. We begin:

This is a new way of making work. It hinges on the idea that performance, or even the dance itself, isn't the important part of a dance. Not the dancing, not the costumes, not the way it's performed - at some level none of that matters to me any more. For right now, what matters is:
-the process of making
-the ideas that are behind the making, movement, final product
While clearly you can't have these things without a final piece (and so the piece and the performance and all of that really IS important) i want to restructure the way we think for a second.

I'm thinking that with this new hypermedia (my thesis project), performance becomes functional only in the excitement and rush of live-ness, and the savoryness of getting to be (as a viewer who has already investigated the piece) a few steps ahead of the dancers in anticipation. So ideally, a viewer would see the piece, play with the hypermedia, see the piece, play with the hypermedia, see the piece etc until they're a "scholar" on the particular work. BUT this means that the piece itself (as performed) when first performed probably doesn't make full sense. Maybe it's not even interesting for the audience. Maybe it's frustrating. So how can a performance be uninteresting for one veiwer and thrilling for the other? This i am interested in (and excited by). Because, i think, this gives us freedom as choreographers to:
1.) make more complex pieces
2.) make pieces free of having to be "interesting" or "engaging" on the first go round, and
3.) creates a way to work that simultaneously fundraises and frees us from the bind of having to make "good" sellable pieces at the same time

What i'm saying is that this is important to me. It seems like a way of making the system work for us. And it seems like a way of sparking an evolution of work. Into what i'm not quite sure, but that's what i'm working on for now.

Comments?