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  • Dance, Interactive Technology, and the Device Paradigm
  • Eric Mullis (bio)

Not unlike other art forms, dance has been significantly influenced by the development of digital technology over the last two decades.1 The advent and widespread use of computers with increased processing speed, the development of programs—such as Isadora and Bodycoder—that were designed for use in dance performance, and the development of affordable and increasingly accurate sensory devices have allowed dancers and choreographers to creatively explore the intersection of the body and digital technology. The 1990s saw a proliferation of dance artists experimenting with and incorporating interactive digital technology into their work—artists such as Yacov Sharir, Ellen Bromberg, Suzan Kozel, Robert Wechsler, and Lisa Naugle, and companies such as Troika Ranch, Random Dance Company, Company in Space, Palindrome, and Chunky Move. These artists and companies have increasingly implemented the use of sensory devices such as microphones, motion tracking cameras, and wearable computers in order to give dancers the ability to manipulate and respond to projections, sounds, and lighting in real time.

Since such work is predicated on increasingly interactive systems, it raises questions about the relationship between the dancer’s body and the technology with which it is kinetically intertwined. Dance theorists such as Johannes Birringer, Scott deLahunta, Lisa Naugle, and Susan Kozel consider how the implementation of interactive platforms affects the manner in which dancers and audience members perceive movement.2 Dancers who perform through interactive platforms at times report becoming aware of the manner in which digital technology affects their performances, with some suggesting that the platform can be experienced as a partner that responds to and influences their movement as the performance unfolds.3 This bidirectionality presents dancers and choreographers with novel avenues of creative expression and fosters consideration of the manner in which interactivity affects conceptions of dance.

More specifically, utilizing performance technologies allows dance to extend its reach, as interactive systems allow for the creation of fluid performance spaces that need not be constrained by the proscenium. Dancers who move within such spaces can be seen as active co-creators of the performance space, since the responsive relational architecture that they interact with produces environmental effects in real time. Creating interactive spaces entails technological mediation, since the dancer’s movement is tracked, translated into digital information, processed in terms of various computer algorithms, and then rendered into scenic output. When fast and efficient interactivity is achieved, systematic technical mediation occurs, but it remains unperceived by the dancer and the audience [End Page 111] member. This efficient mediation allows the dancer to experience bidirectionality and allows the audience member to view the dancer as causally intertwined with aspects of the performance environment.

In this essay, I consider bidirectionality and technological mediation through the lens of Albert Borgmann’s philosophy of technology. Borgmann is an influential twentieth-century American philosopher of technology who draws on a range of European and American thinkers including Hannah Arendt, Jacques Ellul, Martin Heidegger, and Lewis Mumford. Like his predecessors, Borgmann’s approach focuses on the manner in which technology has affected the human relation to the physical world.4 Although he does not specifically discuss dance or performance, his notions of the “device paradigm” and the “focal thing” can be applied to the phenomena of bidirectionality and technological mediation in fruitful ways that encourage a consideration of the implications of interactive dance technology use. More specifically, it will become clear that an approach that draws on Borgmann’s concepts calls into question those who advocate for “digital materiality” and/or who suggest that the line between the dancer’s body and the digital platform with which it interacts is blurred during performance.5

Opening Up Interactive Technology

At the outset, I should say that a wide range of performance technologies demonstrate bidirectionality and a high degree of technological mediation, and could be considered in light of Borgmann’s philosophy of technology, but I will focus on interactive technology in order to consider technological mediation and the notion of technologically enhanced corporeality. After discussing various forms of dance technology, in this section I will discuss Chunky Move’s Glow (2006), a solo piece that features interactive imagery developed by...

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