The November 2014 Choreography of Attention and Control round table is an open discussion at ISEA 2014 in Dubai amongst round table members including chair Ian Winters and fellow round table members Mark Coniglio, John Macallum, Teoma Naccaroto, and Kirk Woolford  about the opportunities and difficulties presented by using sensors to generate compositional material.

A follow-up presentation will happen Nov. 14th, 2014 at Sussex University, along with forthcoming publication of conference proceedings in 2015.

Using the idea of choreography and scores as a point of departure our roundtable hopes to open an informal discussion between practitioners, scholars, and researchers working in the rich intersections of emerging technological possibility and performance / embodiment practices of how this intersection of sensor, network and body can expand ideas of embodiment and composition.

The round table’s discussion focuses on a number of points centered on ideas of the body, location and differences between high / low data and questions including:

  • What implications does the ability to transform, re-record, and re-present, across many media, the data extracted from an embodied practice such as dance, performance or music have on the compositional process? How do you model and represent your work as it spans software, algorithm, choreography, sound and visual?
  • Are there ways you use sensor information as part of more complex compositional structures rather than a tool to read or trigger simpler “reactive” or “interactive” events?
  • Compared to the history of fields such as motion capture for dance and animation, the growth of inexpensive sensors located in mobile devices opens up a terrain between what one might call “high data” and “low data”. How does extensive, low-quality (compared to a motion-capture system) single point data (such as from a mobile phone) compare with more sophisticated methods of data collection?
  • Is the mobile phone sensor a special case in terms of embodiment?
  • If motion, location and bio sensor data is being stored and transformed as part of a project – especially with large scale participation – how does this inflect authorship? If underlying compositional patterns or structures are being derived from crowd movements or patterns, who is the ‘author’?
  • How can sensor information used as part of complex compositional structures – not to trigger “reactive” or “interactive” events but to open up the expressively and sensitivity of the body?
  • What implications does the ability to transform, re-record, and re-present, across many media, the data extracted from an embodied practice such as dance, performance or music have on the compositional process?
  •  Are there ways of making this data visceral through the body of performers and the audience?
  • Where in the system does the choreographic act reside? Who controls that data? And who is the author?