I have been quiet on the list for ages -- busy. First report from the 10 day
'machines and migratory bodies' workshop here in Chichester, UK. Began with
Johannes Birringer (facilitator/ director) leading physical warmup from 9-11
am. Followed by introductions -- we have participants from Barcelona,
Amsterdam, NYC, Houston, London, Chichester, Vienna, Oslo. 14 in all. 11.15
am to lunch, discussions on the primary theme of the workshop which is to be
'migrations'. Also on how to just get started... how to get material to
sample/ capture, making up small teams of like interest, complementary
expertise, etc. After lunch, introductions were given to the technology
available. LCD projectors, powermacs, PCs, intranet, 2 mg internet
connection, printers, scanners, digi-cameras (video/still), two dance
studios (white and black box), lots of software, etc.
This afternoon people started loading and reconfiguring software, playing
with robots (Amanda and Per brought), starting to make some choreography,
discussing projection materials, etc. Then more discussion on the theme --
expanding it... migration/ mediation/ degradation/ transport/ translation, etc.
Now it's 9 pm and some are working on the website which, ideally, will track
some of the activity. No promises there -- those of you who have attempted
to have simultaneous sites up during projects know the difficulties. But
there at least will be something with a list of names and some information.
I'll send the URL to this list.
This is an interesting format for a 'workshop' -- pretty open. Different
from Digital Dancing (no. 4 is coming up in October) where 'teams' and
projects are formed beforehand. This is more collaborative I guess, but
seems a lot of freedom to explore individual tastes, etc. in the context of
the whole thing. On the other hand, I think our results will be much less
'developed'.
Each day will be the same with a physical warmup followed by working
sessions. Every day runs from 9 am to about 10 pm. There will be a 'showing'
on the 18 July -- I'm looking forward to the next 9 days up to then.
Incidently -- we used a free email discussion list service on the web
(www.makelist.com) to have a VERY useful pre-project email exchange between
most members. Really helped to prepare us -- the list was called
migratory-bodies and if you go to the www.makelist.com site and create a
login name for yourself I do believe you can access the archives for our
discussions.
Best, Scott
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Scott deLahunta and Susan Rethorst
Writing Research Associates, NL
http://huizen.dds.nl/~sdela/wra
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