Matt Gough Blog [closed]: Hyperchoreography
Monday, Jan 3 2005, 01:44
Londondance.com posted two 'new' websites on the noticeboard for dance on screen/new technology (membership required), hyperchoreography.org and videodance.org.uk. networked performance and da ... nce have also flagged up hyperchoreography.org but after looking over the site i'm not very impressed.
hyperchoreography states ' the site will allow informed debate and ranting polemic ' these are empty words. there is no place on the site for such discussion. this façade of open debate is probably part of the funding bid rather than to promote and develop hyperchoreography. the whole site seems to be a promotion tool for Katrina McPherson and Simon Fildes dance for camera work.
so what is this 'hyperchoreography';
Using digital hypermedia, Hyperchoreography is a non-linear dance performance 'space', existing in an interactive, networked medium. The elements are put in place by the creators, but the shape of the work is decided by the user at the moment of interaction. It is based on the model of hypertext, as defined by its creator Ted Nelson, and allows a choreographer/artist to create work that can be sequentially altered by user interaction, moving through hyperlinked moving images.
i'm not very impressed with the theory of hyperchoreography put forward, it's deeply flawed. firstly the rather weak attempt to align the concept with Ted Nelson's work is questionable, nothing about the work presented comes anywhere near to his concepts of hypertext, it simply replicates what the web is today.
perhaps i needed to look inside the files? after decompiling ' big ' {1.6mb swf} and ' the truth ' {6mb swf} the hierarchal, database like structure of the two works became clear. one way links and a file format that prevents transclusion are not what Nelson considers hypertext, nor is the sequential image browsing . one might also ask where the parallel hypertext can be found, as multiple panes of the same image is not parallel reading.
lets not fool ourselves, the shape of the works is fixed as we are unable to change the images presented, although do we have some control over how we 'read' the 'text'. these readings may be intertextual but are not hypertextual, nor are there infinite possibilities of visual representations, rather a fixed number of variations as there are a set number of files available. we are not editing the work, that has already been done, we simply sort the reading order of the images.
this 'Hyperchoreography' (or at least the works shown on the site) is actually real-time generative video dance. all the composition is fixed (the filmed video segment) and so it's only the larger, structural choreography that the user can manipulate. this can, and has been performed without the use of digital media.
the material presented in the works is linear, narrative and projects expressive personna and is at times representational. the directors selection of camera angles and framing enhance particular elements of the movement. rather than preserving the objects (movements) 'dasein' it promotes the reading of 'inner meaning'.
from 2002 to 2004 there seems to have been little progression in the concept of hyperchoreography or how it might be more fully realised. what is needed is overhaul of the methods by which hyperchoreography is created and presented. the images / video should be truly networked and hyperlinked (two way links) whilst allowing transclusion. until then this is just digital video dance, nothing more.
Filed by Article19 at 1:44 PM | 
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