ABSTRACT
At the turn of the twenty-first century, digital tools have become an almost unavoidable presence in the creation, recording and dissemination of performance. Digital processes involved in performance, such as interactive programming and physical computing, sampling and real-time processing, sensory feedback, animation, data streaming and distributed networks (telepresence) produce new physical experiences and perceptions, which are the result of the hybridization of virtual and real spaces. Introducing this ‘Field Station’ and its inquiries into the virtual, the ephemeral and the technological, I look at changing contexts of performance by treating performance as environment and as system. I refer to contemporary performance and dance that use digital processes and are affected, in particular, by the transformations of audio-visual space and bodily perceptions within interactive and streaming media environments. Dance, more comprehensively than theatre and live art, has played a pioneering role in adapting digital tools and exploring new synergies with electronic music, sound art, media and installation art, which in turn means that dancers have also collaborated more effectively with adjacent practices in computer engineering, visual technology and the sciences. Thus, contemporary choreography and explicitly computer- driven performance reflect new conceptual models of hybrid mediatization, positioning the experience of dance less in relation to its traditional kinesphere than to an expanded notion of information/data space and an evolving digital phenomenology.
