External research projects

A Transmedia Knowledge Base for contemporary dance (TKB), Universidade Nova of Lisboa, Portugal

In the interstices between linguistics and contemporary dance studies TKB, a research project conducted by Carla Fernandes, is a transdisciplinary project that aims at the design and construction of an open-ended multimodal knowledge base to document, annotate and support the creation of contemporary dance pieces.

The TKB project is planned to run from 2009 to 2012 and seeks to provide a research space for rigorous, critical exploration of the relationship between linguistics, dance studies, new digital media and thought/consciousness. Its main targets are: to extend the scope and application of the “documentation” concept to contemporary dance in different ways; to develop a strong link between the recent dance-research community and the well-established communities in cognitive linguistics and computer science, by taking a closer look at the cognitive process of “choreographic thinking” and therefore contribute to the domains of multimodal corpora, terminological ontologies, cognition and verbal-nonverbal relations.

Bertha Bermúdez is associate researcher within TKB and different methodologies and results of the TKB project will be shared to develop the outcomes of the pre-choreographic research project within the Accademia Mobile Dance Notation research line.
 

Movement and Action Research Project, MARCS Auditory Laboratories, Sydney, Australia

Since 2009 MARCS Auditory Laboratories, University of Western Sydney have developed a systematic investigation of movement and action from their interest in music, dance, non-verbal communication and gesture. Using experimental, motion tracking, and interactive techniques they investigate links between perception, attention, movement and action in music and movement contexts, cognitive processes and interaction in creating dance, and short- and long-term memory for complex human movement in novice and expert observers. Tools to record continuous response to live dance works and music, and to sonify realtime data have been developed.

Since 2010, the Interactive Installation Double Skin/Double Mind installation has been one of the focal points of a behavioural experiment conducted by professor Kate Stevens during a two-day symposium in Sydney, Australia – SEAM 2010: Agency and Action. Participants in the experiment interacted with an enclosed projection of sections of the Double Skin/Double Mind workshop. They then watched excerpts from Extra Dry by Emio Greco | PC and a live performance of GLOW by Chunky Move. During the performances, researchers from MARCS Auditory Laboratories, University of Western Sydney collected continuous real-time audience reaction data. Experimental psychology methods are used to investigate the effect of pre-performance interaction with the interactive installation. For more details see http://marcs.uws.edu.au/?q=research/movement-and-action.

How motor experience changes the way we see intentional movement in contemporary dance

Cognitive Neuroscientist Corinne Jola is research fellow at Surrey University, UK. Her research interests are representation, generation, and perception of the human body and complex human movement patterns, in particular in relation to the performing arts. Her most recent research emphasized brain imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnet stimulation (TMS) to study how aesthetic movements are perceived by a diverse group of audience members (see www.watchingdance.org).
Following this last project Corinne Jola now develops a new study that investigates how the processes and structure of the human brain changes in response to intense physical experience. Is it possible to see the experiences of embodiment in the behaviour of the brain? The work of Emio Greco | PC with its particular movement language and curiosity for the body and the mind provides a unique opportunity and optimal basis for this study.

Gesture recognition and the control of complex system: interfacing dance gestures and graphical physical models
PhD research Sarah Fdili Alaoui - IRCAM, Paris, France

Since October 2010, Sarah Fdili researches both at the LIMSI-CNRS and at IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, Paris France. Her PhD deals with the conception and development of advanced models for human-computer interaction, applied to an artistic computational framework and particularly to gesture recognition fields. The goal of her work is to develop a recognition system of dance gestures, and to use it for the real-time control of graphical feedbacks based on physical models.

Sarah worked on the play mode of the Interactive Installation Double Skin/Double Mind. In this play mode, the participant improvises, using the movement qualities he acquired while experiencing the professional modes of the installation. The feedback system is able to recognize the gesture of the participant and the movement qualities he/she is performing and to control, in real-time, a graphical feedback based on physical models. In the system, the gesture recognition is not about comparing the participant’s movement to the movement of Emio Greco, it is about comparing his/her quality to that of Emio’s. The recognition feedback was made possible by using the Gesture Follower technology developed by Frédéric Bevilacqua and Bruno Zamborlin at IRCAM.

The  Faculty  of  the  Voice   -  Intercultural Explorations into Performance

’Performance’ as a dynamic field of research immediately opens up ’new’, multidisciplinary horizons that clamor reassessment of customary paradigms in academic thought.  

Saskia Kersenboom proposes to study ’Performance’ and its creative practices of  Drama, Music and Dance  as ’interrelated, self organizing systems’.  Her theoretical  background  in General Linguistics,  Indian Languages, Cultural Anthropology and Theatre Studies in combination with her longstanding Praxis of South Indian Performing Arts forcefully remoulded her received, western notions on language and speech.

The project 'The Faculty of the Voice’ underlies the MA course Performing Arts in Word, Sound and Image’ at Amsterdam University where Saskia is Associate  Professor of  Theatre Studies.  This course drafts a constant dialectic between academic Theory and Artistic Praxis. Since 2008, Bertha Bermudez  participates as  visiting artist, researcher and teacher. As a result, a highly comparative discourse has emerged between the Performing Arts of South India and the work of  ICK Amsterdam. Central, theoretical positions like ’Voice’ /’Rasa’ on the Indian side and the ’Seven Necessities’ /’Language of the Flesh’ on the side of Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten are in constant, intercultural and interdisciplinary exchange.

Accademy challenges to discuss, experiment, analyse and represent the results of this inspiring collaboration.  Their earlier publications in print like Word, Sound, Image – the Life of the Tamil Text (1995) and Capturing Intention (2007) and in Interactive Multimedia :  a.o CD-i Bhairavi Varnam (1995), DVD ,DVD –ROM  and Installation Double Skin/ Double Mind (2007) form comparative data  that will be contextualised in Indian primary and secondary sources on Language and the Performing Arts, in ongoing research within ICK Amsterdam, especially the reseacrh undertaken by Bertha Bermudez, and in the general, theoretical Paradigm that Performance Studies at large is developing.  

The findings that emerge from this intercultural comparative effort will be tested in and transferred to the praxis of the Perforing Arts, like -for instance- in workshops at ICK BEYOND ( 2009, onwards).
The representation of these cumulative results within The Faculty of the Voice, Intercultural Explorations into Performance  (2012-2015) will seek print as well as apt interactive user interfaces for and in digital multi media.

On Choreographic Knowledge and its circulation in the New Internet - Dance-tech TV

Marlon Barrios Solano (Venezuela/USA) works as an independent movement/new media artist, researcher, on-line producer/curator, vlogger, consultant and  educator. With a hybrid background in movement and new media arts, organizational development, and cognitive science, he researches and create platforms for the development of open and sustainable models of knowledge production and distribution among trans-local artistic communities communities and organizational contexts. He is the creator/producer/curator of dance-techTV, a collaborative internet video channel dedicated to innovation and experimental performing arts and its social network dance-tech.net. Marlon is a research associate at DanceDigitalUK and a researcher in residency at CARD Centre for Applied Research in Dance at the University of Bedforshire (UK) and  the International Choreographic Arts Centre (ICK) (Holland).
He is a guest lecturer for the Masters on Performance Practices and Visual Culture for the Universidad de Alcala (Spain) and the Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT) for 2012.

His research  and production is focused on:

• Contemporary choreographic practices, real time composition and new media
• Emergent dramaturgies and models in relation with networked technologies and performances
• Open culture/knowledge practices, strategieas and tactics  for artists and cultural managers
• networked/collaborative creativity and interactive tools for knowledge production, generation and distribution
• Embodied and situated cognition and the performance of motion  and dance
• On line curatorial approaches and production for the performance of movement in the new internet

He holds an MFA in Dance and Technology 2004 (real-time digital technology, performance of improvisation and embodied cognition) from The Ohio State University, USA.