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Techno-choreography and the embodiment of Chineseness
No full textThis thesis explores the embodiment of Chineseness in digital performance through the methodology of techno-choreography. In this practice-based research, I have created three full-length dance works: X-Body (2018), Mourning for a dead moon (2019) and Unexpected Bodies (2020). These three performances involve professionally trained dancing bodies in Chinese dance, cultural objects, scenography, software tools, real-time interactivity, virtual reality and immersion. The specific choreographing of cultural objects, including chopsticks, gaoqiao, handkerchiefs, fans and red silks, contributes to the research on dance and technology as well as current debates on cultural transexperience. The methodology of techno-choreography in this research draws on the theories of interactivity and immersion developed by Johannes Birringer, Steve Dixon, Scott deLahunta and David Rokeby. This methodology focuses on dancing bodies and objects as interfaces during the process of dance composition within computational system environments. The theories of Chineseness considered in this research are based on Xu Rui and Emily Wilcox’s studies of Chinese dance. This thesis investigates the research questions of how Chineseness contributes to the process of techno-choreography, how technology affects the embodiment of Chineseness, and what Chineseness might be in the context of techno-choreography. The methodology of technochoreography incorporates methods of improvisation, codified movements, motion tracking, programming, immersive design and scenography to explore and demonstrate Chineseness through interactions between dancing bodies and objects in the digital space. For instance, in X-Body, I create sonic chopsticks, a real-time interactive dance exploring chopsticks as interfaces performed by four dancers collaborating with live musician Dee Egan. In Mourning for a dead moon, I demonstrate body memories of Chinese classical dance working with CryptogamicLightCape designed by fashion designer Michèle Danjoux. In Unexpected Bodies, I experiment with red silks in virtual reality and develop writing Chinese characters through a dancing body, working with Oculus Quest 2. The outcome of the research is the generation of interactive performance frameworks which enable embodiments of Chineseness in digital performance. Dancing bodies trained in Chinese dance and cultural objects contribute to the methodology of techno-choreography, contesting to some extent an overly technological gadget driven discursive and performative practice encountered in the West. This thesis is the first to investigate the embodiment of Chineseness in digital performance through interfaces between dancing bodies and cultural objects in digital environments
Sandline
No full textSandline is the second screendance in the series that plays with the idea of life’s journey as a line. Shot over two days on a beach in Somerset England, the film is a collaboration between AllouAqui Dance Theatre and friends
'They’re not there just to fuck': sensibility, cultural provocation and 1970s American hard core pornography
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Starting the conversation: an introduction to the Women, Family, Crime and Justice network
No full text‘ave a look!
No full textThis exhibition aims to undo the identity of both physical and digital objects. Dunseath and Squires are interested in the human negotiation of objects: gherkins; J-Cloths; frankfurters; insoles; pomegranates become ‘part objects’, their identity undermined and their place in the world called into question.
The exhibition presents an exploration of physical and digital objects operating in the world of use and consumerism, and through the materiality of sculptural practice. Spatial relationships and our negotiation with representation and signification are highlighted through perceptual tactility and relational aspects which move through the immediate surroundings and the unknown journeys of the digital.
These subject-object encounters are explored through physical and digital mediation within the not quite fixed space of Six Second Gallery. As studio space it allows an environment that is changeable, from process to presentation allowing an oscillation of the sculptural object to the quotidian. Outside the space is Ridley Road market. The title comes from an often used call to shoppers to the many fruit n’ veg, mobile phone, clothes, household items and textiles stalls that jostle and call to the eye.
‘av a look! sits itself in this context and borrows from the possibilities of the display mechanisms used in the market, to open a space between the allure of objects and the instability of perception
The window seat: notes from a life in motion
No full textThis is an elegantly rendered, thought-provoking collection of new and previously published essays. In this wide-ranging collection, Forna writes intimately about displacement, trauma and memory, love, and how we coexist and encroach on the non-human world.
In “Obama and the Renaissance Generation,” she documents how, despite the narrative of Obama’s exceptionalism, his father, like her own, was one of a generation of gifted young Africans who came to the United Kingdom and the United States for education and were expected to build their home countries anew after colonialism. In “The Last Vet,” time spent shadowing Dr. Jalloh, the only veterinarian in Sierra Leone, as he works with the street dogs of Freetown, becomes a meditation on what a society’s treatment of animals tells us about its principles. In “Crossroads,” she examines race in America from an African perspective, and in “Power Walking” she describes what it means to walk in the world in a Black woman’s body
Cornflower
No full textCornflower is an iOS app designed for real-time music composition and improvisation. It is founded on the idea of working with simple lists and with the power of phase shift when decoupling musical parameter events