DEEP FLOW: an embodied materiality of dance, technology, and bodily experience

In this research article, I argue that Deep Flow is an embodied materiality that may be experienced by exploring performative phenomenologies, entwining two different sets of research practice: phenomenological methodologies and artistic practice. In Deep Flow the practitioner entangles phenomenological methodologies, methods and research practices performatively such as embodied dance practice, the felt senses, drawings, verbal feedback and their analyses in relation to biometric data, from an embodied heart rate monitor. By looking inwardly, the practitioner experiences embodied phenomena and reveals these experiences in artistic practices in relation to the worlding in which they find themselves. These outcomes are considered as being differing materialities, flowing and converging through relational and phenomenological practice, Deep Flow and through this they become embodied by the practitioner, where new forms of embodied materialities emerge. I argue that in my practice, this is an experiential state, Deep Flow, where all human and non-human elements of the dance practice flow and course through the practitioner as an embodied materiality.

Face to Facelessness: Imagined Intimacies and Socially Distant Desires

This paper revisits a performance titled Falling in Love Again - and Again which was first performed in 2014 as part of a series of works I created questioning relational intimacy and proximity in public space. During Falling in Love Again - and Again participants were invited to explore public space with the intention of anonymously falling in love with strangers. The details of these encounters were shared with me as the leader of the piece via mobile phone text messages, but never with the subjects of the participants' desires.  Understanding the dynamics of intimacy and proximity in 2014 was a very different experience to how I understand them in 2021. The Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing, and two periods of lockdown has drastically influenced how relationality and physically being in the world with others is performed.  This paper is concerned both with the intimate and proximate dynamics of relational bodies during that performance as I understood it then, and, as a consequence, how we might understand relational proximity and intimacy now.Critical points of departure for the paper include art historian Grant Kester's writing on conversational art practices and his framing of dialogic encounters through the use of Jeffrey T. Nealon's Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity (1998).  Models of 'dialogical' experience and 'responsibility', as situated by Mikhail Bakhtin and Emmanuel Levinas respectively (Nealon, 1998, cited in Kester, 2004, 118) are used in this article to frame a rethinking of the dynamics and ethics of face to face contact and physical proximity, as bodies in space maintain distance from one another, connected only by our digital devices and our imaginations.  The voyeuristic practices of Sophie Calle and Vito Acconci converge with theatre makers Forced Entertainment's 'writing over' of place (Kaye, 2000) to explore imaginary relational connectivity.  The writing of geographer Doreen Massey supports this framing through the use of Massey's thoughts on the fictional poetics of social interactions and 'stories so far' (Massey, 2005).  Ultimately the paper asks what happens when we are required to imagine being with others in physically distant and imaginary ways with only our mobile devices as depositories for our fictional desires. 

I AM (VR) : Wu-wei (無為), Tenuous Self (虛我) and the Liminal Body in Virtual Reality

無為),effortless action, is one of the crucial tacit knowledge from pre-Qin Chinesethinkers. Edward Slingerland articulates in Effortless action: wu-wei asconceptual metaphor and spiritual ideal in early China, “wu-wei, in the absence ofdoing exertion, literally means ‘in the absence of/without doing exertion,’ Itis important to realise, however, that wu-wei properly refers not to what isactually happening (or not happening) in the realm of observable action butrather to the state of mind of the actor. That is, it refers not to what is oris not being done but to the phenomenological state of the doer.” (Slingerland2003: 7)Seeminglyeffortless, wu-wei can be understood as a dynamic, un-self-conscious state ofmind of an agency that is optimally active and effective. This effortless flowaccurately resonates with what I have experienced throughout my journey in IAM (VR), created by Susanne Kennedy, Markus Selg, Rodrik Biersteker andRichard Janssen in 2021. During this experience, the vivid bewilderment of‘being here but not here’ reflects an uncanny sublimation of the body incyberspace. As my vision travels deeply inside, my physical body, “in theabsence of doing exertion”, remains situated in an enclosed cubic space in thegallery where the journey takes place. Such attentiveness of consciousnesstraveling through the virtual reality within the stillness of one’s body evokesa pertinent embodiment of Wu-Wei. Positioned itself in the stance ofcritical posthumanism, this essay asks how do we consider the physical form of the human body,assembled in reality-reality within the immersive sharing and exchangingprocess of virtual-reality? What kind of transformation that the human bodymight experience when it immerses into that otherworldly reality? I Am (VR),as an embodied performative happening of both artistic research andpractice of virtual reality, provides insightful perspective in searching forpossible answers. 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‘Adjacent to the Live: paratextual augmentation of performance during the pandemic’

The plethora of paratextual materials such as digital programs, recorded interviews with artists and creative teams, behind-the-scenes videos, and curated playlists have been pressed into service to extend the reach of the core business of performance companies. Behind the scenes and ancillary activities have come to the fore, potentially altering the way Genette considered paratexts to work as thresholds to the core. Until the last year or so, paratextual elements such as the aforementioned existed primarily in the service of marketing and promotion. They were not themselves seen as separate or independently monetised ventures. They were tasters of the real thing or treats for loyal followers. Comparatively little attention in this field has been paid to live performances, although these too have similar panoplies of paratexts used to promote the core texts: advertisements, advance publicity and reviews for instance. Our concern here is with the way paratexts were used during the extended COVID lockdowns when live performance venues were closed, particularly instances where the usual relationship between core text and paratext, whereby the latter are shorter pieces supporting or promoting the former, is upset. There was a considerable range of sophistication in the paratexts operating as core texts during the pandemic. Most sophisticated ones, like those from the NT or Pinchgut’s The Loves of Dafne and Apollo did not call on audience members to produce the experience of liveness, even if the NT’s branding persisted. We have concentrated here on Dream because it was such a sophisticated piece with liveness at its very heart.

Embodying Ubuntu, through the Physical Journal as an antidote to the effects of the Anthropocene.

This Article will explore, how embodying an interpretation of the South African concept of  Ubuntu, through apraxisviamyconceptofthePhysicalJournal,canbecomeanantidote to the alienating effects of the Anthropocene. The current effects of the Anthropocene, areunderpinned by the ideology of liberal capitalism; which has been accelerating itseconomic indifference to the Eco-scene since the enlightenment. This much heraldedperiod in the 18th century, saw people with my Yoruba cultural heritage, as commodities to be bought andsold.Thus,Iwould havebeenseen,atthetimeof theenlightenment,asaresourcetobe exploited along with the environment and livestock. As a consumable resource, Iwould not have been considered as having any rights to the lofty claims proposed by the  enlightenment philosophers of equality and more specifically: life, liberty, and property.

Literature Review - Dani Ploeger, Deserted Devices and Wasted Fences: Everyday Technologies in Extreme Circumstances

Deserted Devices and Wasted Fences is acaptivating critique on consumer culture and the role technology plays, and canplay, in our understanding of the world around us and ourselves. Dani Ploeger’scollection of essays offer a guided tour of items and memories, like a livingmemory box. These writings probe our relationships with devices and what they representin our culture; from mobile phones to projectors, from smart fences to strap-ondildos. Ploeger’s provocation unravels from the journey of a device; to theintertwining of the human and non-human technology, shifting gears to the symbolismand mythology of military and state devices of control, closing with thecultural interaction with architectural decisions made in urban landscapes.Although seemingly grand, and without a doubt ambitious, in subject matter,Ploeger evokes the tone of memoir, incorporating reflections of his travels andpersonal happenings, with philosophical and political deliberation; bringing inkey thinkers to ratify and expand his unique perspectives.

Returning to the Body: Somatic Sensing in Multi-Person Virtual Reality Technology

This article uses a dance-somatic standpoint to explore the complexities of body-technology relations across the virtuality and corporeality of bodies and environments using multi-person Virtual Reality technology (VR). Immersion into a virtual environment (VE) using VR can lead to a sense of presence, of ‘being there’. Dancers move attending to a field of sensation which is felt and tactile, undertaking somatic and sensory practices to de-centre vision so to foreground and thus activate non-visual and somatic senses. From this dancerly standpoint, entering into a VE brings into play the immediate effect of a perceptual tension or ‘gap’ between the visual, virtual environment and the physical, felt environment. Technologists and artists engaging with VR typically find ways to cover-over this perception gap in order to create a reality that is fluidly and synchronously experienced by the participant. This article introduces and discusses two participatory performance projects Figuring (2018) and Soma (2020) which challenge this approach. Drawing on participant responses to Figuring, and the creative development of Soma, the article presents and discusses six themes which unpack and challenge normative notions and expectations around VR technology and how bodies sensorially engage with the technology; and discusses an ‘ethics of care’ which calls for somatic activation and participatory agency in human encounters with technology. Throughout, the article offers a commentary on the tensions between a thematic research approach and an intuitive, practice-led approach in the analysis of participant testimonies and in the creative processes of performance-making. 

Affective Movement in Robotic Art: Alternatives to the ‘Interiority Paradigm’ in Social Robotics

This papercritically evaluates how emotional and intentional movement is conceptualisedand deployed in social robotics and provides an alternative by analysingcontemporary robotic artworks that deal with affective human-robot interaction(HRI). Within HRI, movement as a way of communicating emotions and intent hasbecome a topic of increased interest, which has made social robotics turn totheatre and dance due to the expertise of these fields in expressive movement.This paper will argue that social robotics’ way of using performative methodswith regards to emotional movement is, nonetheless, limited and carries certainchallenges.  These challenges aregrounded on the claim that social robotics participates in what the authorcalls an ‘interiority paradigm’. That is, movement is understood to be theexpression of inner, pre-determined states. The 'interiority paradigm' poses several challenges to the development of emotional movement, with regards to unaddressed human androbotic imaginaries, an emphasis in legibility and familiarity, and arestrictive interior/exterior binary that limits the role of movement in anaffective connection. As an example of how robotscould be imagined beyond this interiority paradigm, the author proposes to turnto contemporary robotic art.Robotic art’s view on affective movement as a matter of evocationand of performative co-creation might inspire the development of robots thatmove beyond the requirement of being mere copies of a human interiority.  While the intersection between robotics andthe performing arts is a fruitful field of research, the author argues in thispaper that the way in which movement is currently being developed throughperformative methods has certain shortcomings, and that the perspective of roboticart on affective movement might open up a more interesting area of explorationfor social robotics, as well as expose those aspects of theatre and dance thathave being unaddressed in robotics. 

Zoom: A case study

The paper 'Zoom: a case-study' explores the process of the staging of a hybrid performance that took place in September 2021 in Malta as a response to the Covid scenario. This production was watched online and live, with actors performing, using both realities.  The project also explores the notion of space, whether it is the virtual, as opposed to the 'real', and the different spatial dynamics that this performance occurred in. In fact, the performance happened in two 'real' spaces, connected one to the other through an intricate use of screens and cameras, in such a way that whichever way the audience decided to watch the performance in, they could still understand the narrative of the play. The paper is analysed by juxtaposing literature on hybridity against the experiences of the different stakeholders involved in this production, namely, the co-producers, the director (the researcher of this paper), the technical director, the actors and members of the audience, with the aim of analysing and evaluating the dynamics of the production as a model of good practice and discern whether it can provide a framework to work in for the restricted reality that the local industry is in currently, as well as for the future.

Narratives of the future: immersive stories / indigenous roots

The way we tell stories shapes what we are: it articulates the way we position ourselves in relation to the world. This article explores how immersive practices, as used in virtual reality and intermedial performance, provoke novel dynamics between artist and audience that no longer fit within Western traditions of aesthetic exchange and furthermore challenge our understanding of narrative production and reception. It proposes that new ways of reasoning are needed to allow audience agency and the evolving role of the artist to be explored more fully than is currently possible in mainstream theatre scholarship. One source that can provide a model for considering the dynamics between audience and performer in immersive performance is the Indigenous story systems of Australia. There is a significant synergy between the structure and operation of First Nation songlines and contemporary immersive performance. This is explored with reference to the work of contemporary anthropologists and Indigenous scholars and to recent immersive work from the companies Kaleider and Theatre Conspiracy. The article considers how both ancient narratives and contemporary immersive practices require people to engage with data/ physical space in a specific manner in order for stories to be realised. Furthermore, both bestow creative responsibility and the role of custodian on the user, through whose actions narrative is manifested. Immersive performance challenges assumptions about how information is generated, processed, and passed on, and the power structures involved in such exchanges. This research explores how non-traditional narrative practices can assist the debate about the future of storytelling.