ireaders will have a strong interest in corporeality, and will be wanting to read about.
Another important audience is certainly constituted by dancers and choreographers,
dance and performance theorists and critics who are open to the introduction of new
ways to analyse dance and its relation with technology. To them, the proposed book
aspires to show new possible directions in their thinking and creative processes and
new ways to practically conceptualise their work. It is thus an ideal reading for both
theorists and practitioners who are not only in search of descriptive performance
analyses, but who also have a particular attention for the 'futurity' of the present, i.e.
for empirically thinking the potential of contemporary technologies in relation to
movement and dance.
In all cases, the main approach to the analysis of the technological component is
represented by the formalistic or culturalist theories of Lev Manovich, Sean Cubitt,
Roy Ascott and Martin Lister.
Furthermore, the intepretation of the work of some modern and
contemporary philosophers (such as William James, Alfred North
Whitehead, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari),
particularly focusing on their conceptualizations of rhythm, the body
and movement, will have important repercussions not only in the art
and media fields, but also on the ontological foundations of Cultural
and Digital Culture Studies.
Stasis, in this sense, is nothing less than a different speed, an intensive effect
produced by the relation between the slowness and velocity of internal and external
bodily rhythms. As a composition of non-organic (i.e. atomic, molecular) processes,
of physical movements and of acquired techniques, the body appears as a system in
continuous variation. Thinking the possibility of a totally stable and static body means
to reinstate a prosthetic concept that holds technology to the body’s outside: as a
prosthetic to an already existent and never-changing body, technology cannot do more
than mimic the actions undertaken by it. On the other hand, the conceptualisation of a
shifting bodily system is fundamental to analyse its technological connections at a
more intensive level of emergence and production (rather than of mere cyborgian and
Heideggerian juxtaposition), allowing us to understand how technology can re-
articulate the potentialities of a continuously mutating body.
Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari and their relation with the work of Whitehead, It is
important to clarify the material character of the common field: without coinciding
with a pre-formed physicality of perception and movement as the natural basis for
further cultural or technological developments, the materiality of the field in the
dance/technology relation is better understood through its abstract character, where
this abstractness refers to a non-positioned and non-formed rhythmic matter immanent
(not pre-existent) to the evolution of all physical, cultural and technical formations
and
Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘sensation’ as a non-conscious material event
which exceeds the phenomenological subject and its lived experiences, is therefore
developed through James’s concept of ‘pure experience’. According to James,
experience is a complex event comprising a multiplicity of simultaneous inter- and
1
intra-bodily relations in every single moment, unit or step. As argued by the
philosopher, “the relation itself is a part of pure experience”, 1 its participating
elements being only afterwards differentiated as subject and object. The book deploys
James’s concept of ‘pure experience’ to analyse the rhythm of dance and technology
performances not only as a simple sensation or material ground, but as an
‘experienced relation’ between different levels of sensation and between different
com-participating bodies, between human and technical machines.
The work of mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, particularly his
concept of ‘actual occasion of experience,’ also associates the experiential moment to
a sort of compression realised by the body-mind, the emergence of the One (an
infinitesimal ‘differential’ unit of experience) from the Many (the chaotic sum of all
possible sensations).2 The use of the 'whiteheadian' concept implies a re-definition of
rhythm, taking into account both the compressive character of the rhythmic
experience (the actuality of the rhythmic moments as experiences accomplished in
themselves, or as atomic rhythmic units), while at the same time considering their
capacity to weave relations and to complexify themselves. In other words, the rythmic
interval is defined as the moment of coincidence between movement and thought, a
felt multiplicity of potentials preceding and following the actual accomplishment of a
step. In this way, the proposed book points out and 'concretely' shows how the
realisation of a dance movement is linked to its non-realised potentialities.
The compression of an infinite multiplicity into an infinitely small unit directly links
Whitehead’s philosophico-mathematical reflections to the functioning of technology
and to the digital codification of rhythm. The practical understanding of the relation
between human/technical rhythms is therefore also supported by the inclusion of a
basic mathematical theory such as differential calculus (namely, the calculation of an
infinitely large or small ‘differential’ given by the relation between two variable
quantities). By using calculus as part of its theoretical framework, the book highlights
and explains in detail how the rhythm of dance and technology performances
coincides with complex relations, rather than with simple units: rhythm as the result
of a differential mathematical relation between the dancer’s steps and, for example,
the velocity of the video frames or the position-angle-orientation of the dancer’s limbs
as recorded by MoCap sensors. (continuity/discontinuity)Inter-disciplinarity
(Guattari)
Description of the methodological approach
This book is cross-disciplinary in its nature. In transference, there is virtually never
any actual dual relation: “At the moment that we envisage this relation in a real
situation we recognize that it is, at the very least, triangular in character.” (63) As
clearly stated by philosopher, psychoanalyst and ecologist Fèlix Guattari, an
ecological paradigm of work cannot recognise any dominant or determinant instance
guiding all other forms according to a univocal causality.3
The book's cybernetic methodology draws on the definition of movement as a process
generated by different material forces which 'direct’ the formal realisation of dance.
Between philosophy and science, i.e. in-between the physical and mathematical
exploration of auto-poietic technical systems, and the aesthetic conceptualisation of
1 William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, University of Nebraska Press.
2 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, The Free Press, 1985.
3 Felix Guattari, Chaosmosis. An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, Indiana Press, 1995.
2
the poetics of dance and movement as a creation of rhythms and patterns, the book
outlines the concept of an auto-po(i)etics (an autonomous material creation) emerging
in the dance performance. In other words, the autopoietic level of body-machine
interaction as an apparently closed system is opened up by the poetic, creative and
unpredictable aspect of dance (in the most literal sense of the word ‘poieo’, to make,
to create, to make the new emerge); on its turn, this po(i)etic creation of rhythms and
patterns is liberated from any external principle of choreographic determination linked
to traditional dance poetics, and attributed to the human-technical organisation as a
material system autonomously moving and changing. In this sense, the auto-po(i)etics
of dance becomes a scientific and aesthetic reading of the material originality of
movement, a kine-po(i)etics questioning the self-integrity of the dancing body and its
creativity. This conceptualisation takes the definition of the moving body out of the
‘physical’ or ‘organic’ sense attributed to it by phenomenology, developing a different
methodological map of non-textual, non-human and even non-organic but ‘material’
concepts of the body as detached from significance and subjectivity, and only related
to the forces and fields of attraction and repulsion that move it.
Adopting a cybernetic terminology, we can argue that most of what goes on in the
world has little importance to us (e.g. the random bumping of electrons into atoms in
a wire), all these insignificant differences being usually relegated into the definition of
'background noise'. The cybernetic determination of ‘significance’ (...) clashes with
the ontological and pragmatic paradigms of ‘importance’ and ‘interest’ as delineated
by [Link]’s philosophy of radical empiricism. 4 For the philosopher, a whole
universe of connections constitutes the environment of every single empirical fact,
while each singular perspective to the fact is only the result of a gradation of
relevance, the outcome of a feeling of importance alternately awakened by the variety
of the world’s differentiations. Re-delineating the cybernetic paradigms of importance
and interest so that to amplify them in their aesthetical, ethical and ontological senses,
the final goal of the book is to develop a new philosophical and critical vocabulary for
the empirical analysis of dance and technology performances, and of their
significance in the artistic and cultural landscape. This vocabulary will especially
highlight the impact of digitalisation on contemporary notions of subjectivity and
performative creativity, so that to set forth possible directions for a future aesthetics
and for a creative practice based on the importance of both linearity and interruption,
continuity and discontinuity, and on the coexistence of rhythm and codification in
digital art.
A first, broader definition identifies the main audience(s) of this book as pertaining to
the academic and artistic fields.
Finally, a close reading and mobilisation of the work of two contemporary
philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, but also of previous thinkers
such as William James, Alfred N. Whitehead and Henri Bergson, will be provided,
creating a sort of conceptual conversation between them, and modulating the terms of
their analysis toward notions of rhythm and movement. This philosophical
undertaking will certainly be of interest to all those already engaged in the study of
these important authors, as well as to those who, being curious to find out more about
the philosophical approach of 'radical empiricism', will take this book as a specific
exploration of some of its fundamental concepts and ideas.
4 Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought, Fireside, 1968.
3
The stratified methodology of this thesis delineates a tripartite analysis, focusing on
the biological and anatomical development and organisation (which will be defined as
the bio-physical codification) of a moving human body, on the socio/cultural level of
dance (gestural over-codification), and on the insertion of technological tools into the
bio-physical and ritual dimensions of a dance performance. The difference between
these levels of organisation is only one of scale: as Parisi and Goodman point out by
drawing on the philosopher A.N. Whitehead, waves, electrons, protons and molecules
form their own societies (i.e. inorganic bodies, cells, vegetal and animal bodies,
technical machines and digital chips). (2005) As a consequence, we can understand
the bio-physical stratum of the dancing body as a population of organised particles-
forces, in the same way as the becoming cultural of dance organises the movements of
bodies on the ‘anthropomorphic’ stratum. At the same time, different devices (such as
digital drum machines and sonic software, video, Motion capture, choreographic
software, Internet) are plugged into the molecular composition of a
perceiving/performing body, altering its dynamics of rhythmic transmission.
These levels are not separate fields or successive stages of a progressive evolution of
the dancing body. In Deleuze and Guattari’s words, “evolution does not go from
something less differentiated to something more differentiated” and “it ceases to be a
hereditary filiative evolution, becoming communicative or contagious.” (2002a: 238)
In other words, you do not go from the organic physicality of the moving body to its
progressive approaches to technology. In Manuel De Landa’s cross-elaboration of
Deleuzo/Guattarian in-volutionism and nonlinear physics, evolutionary dynamics are
“not only far from equilibrium but also nonlinear, that is, [with] strong mutual
interactions (or feedback) between components.” (2001: 11 and 21) Beyond the
cultural/biological or nature/artifice impasse, the conceptual functioning of this thesis
unfolds an ‘in-volutionary’ analysis of dance, mapping the bio-physical
transformation of rhythmic matter/energy, of atoms and molecules into a live, moving
body, the simultaneous anthropomorphic identification of a body and its insertion into
a social group, the use of various technological apparatuses, as coexisting levels of the
dance performance. These layers are not the progressively more sophisticated stages
of an evolution with technology and digitalisation at its further end, but different
processes crossed by transversal material flows ‘inside and between’ heterogeneous
populations (of molecules and cells, human bodies and technical machines). At
certain thresholds, each one of these organisations assumes a molecular, chaotic
character with respect to the other ones, starting to behave as a pack, a swarm or a
blob.
The hierarchical organisation of the thesis layers (or chapters) progresses as follows.
The third chapter maps the bio-physical organisation of the dancing body, trying to
explore how a living, moving and perceiving organism is formed and organised as the
corporeal content for the expressive performance of dance. Considering rhythm as an
attribute characterising the molecular, micro-physical dynamics of matter and its
energetic vibrations (i.e. rhythm as a continuous qualitative emergence spreading
from chemical reactions), the whole of matter loses its static appearance and becomes
an ensemble of dancing molecules. Sequences of molecules and cells, neuro/chemical
paths and electrical signals, organs, tissues and apparatuses align themselves in a
particular order, building up the biological conformation of an organism and its
formal, anatomical structure, which at the same time becomes a host of parasiting
processes.
4
After this level of molecular ‘aggregation’ (the ‘social’ level of the biophysical
organisation), the emergence of the human species from the organic stratum happens
through a particular systematisation of organs and through particular morphological
(arms, legs, head), postural (standing position) and kinetic features, together with the
development of a particular sensori-motor system based on the 5 senses and on
perceptual/behavioural coordination, as the pre-suppositions of various socially
codified habits already ‘incarnated’ into the physical consistency of the body. At the
same time, myriads of molecular movements and relations perform their own
schizo/rhythmic development in the organism, provoking a sort of micro-kin-
aesthetics of imperceptible alterations and deviations.
Acting as a sort of virus, the molecular propagation of energy across a living/moving
body follows a rhythmic pattern of epidemic diffusion. This rhythmic vector or spread
of energy cuts across the very organisation of the living body: its transversal weaving
of intensive amplifications along the linear sensori-motor schema of
perception/response decentralises and trans-forms the coordinated actions of the body.
In the muscular/skeletal apparatus, the spread of rhythm works as a viral electric
diffusion through the nerves, in a sort of neural micro-dynamics fractally composing
movement as a series of involuntary jerks, variable speed relations and gravitational
lines of flight. In the human body, the energetic dance of electromagnetic matter
(light, sound) produces a series of molecular alterations, triggering the production of
various chemical, hormonal substances and generating multiple auto-poietic, local
realisations, dispersions and excesses of the movement performance (the excesses
macroscopically and ‘extremely’ exemplified by spasms and hysterical attacks).
This chapter questions the self-identification of the body/subject and the harmony and
coordination of its composition, movements and perceptions, focusing on the notion
of rhythm (as biological or bodily rhythm, and as the rhythm of perception, movement
and performance) as a viral contagion. Bio-technological experiments, Stelarc's
experiments with prosthetics and telerobotics, and digital audio-technologies are
examples of technical apparatuses directly connected to the body’s micro-kinetic
organisations, performing a redistribution of rhythm across all different levels and
dimensions of the bodily system.
After mapping the emergence of the anthropomorphic body and the passage of rhythm
from material energy waves to bodily movements, Chapter Four explores how the
energy traversing the human body becomes culturally organised among different
bodies and social groups, giving them an ordered structure of territorial relationality.
Uniform kinetic habits and corporeal regulations, geographic and cultural confines
constitute the rigid grid of expression which moulds the circulation of rhythm
between dancing human bodies and groups through the codification of gestural signs:
ethnic dance rituals as the form of expression of a socio-cultural content. At the same
time, the kine-topology of rhythm reveals how solid and stable social structures are
eroded by uncontrollable subterranean movements coinciding with a micro (or local)
level of aggregation of crazy particles/signs and particles/people gathering or moving
around particular speed attractors and drawing a schizo/rhythmic map across spaces
and buildings, cities, states, continents.
Focusing on dance in its cultural aspect, this chapter questions the kinetic
synchronisation of the body/group performed through the regulation of motion, its
spatial delimitations and its linear temporal development. The conceptual subject of
this discussion is the diffusion of rhythm and movement rituals across different
cultures, times and spaces, as a viral event disrupting the clear delimitations imposed
through particular kinetic habits, and as a cultural contagion spread by both analog
5
and digital technologies. On the anthropo-social layer, technological apparatuses
emerge (for example from acoustic drums to digital sampling and mixing machines),
provoking perceptual amplifications and turbulences that infect the bodily sensorium
and corrode the borders of regimented social relationality, while travelling across time
and space. Cutting across the dualistic conception of a biological and physical level of
the body as different and opposed to the mediated, linguistically shaped level of
human society, cultural viruses (such as the spread of sound and dance) draw a
different level of relationality involving systems of bodily signs successively ordered
into semiotic substances, a variety of substances of expression such as gestures and
rites circulating in and across bodies and weaving a field of proto-social relations
between the different scales of bodily molecules, organisms and groups: the
nature/culture distinction is thus displaced and transformed into a continuum of
rhythmic circulation.
Cutting across the double physical/semiotic stratification, technology performs a
simultaneous codifying/de-codifying operation. Chapter Five analyses analog and
digital technologies of dance choreography and performance and the most recent
developments of digital cyber-dance. The functional structure of expression realised
in all dance/technology experimental combinations usually delineates a particular
hierarchical organisation of the performative content. A precise geometric schema
draws thus the dance stage as a fixed structure organised around three main points: the
dancer as creator of linear movement sequences, an immobile viewer as message
receiver (both as ‘live’, organic bodies), and technology as mediating, inorganic
‘interface’ or reproduction surface.
At the same time, contemporary audiovisual technologies and cybernetic systems
make more evident the complexity of these man-machine relation, entangling the
smooth line of information transmission with various side-effects of perceptual and
kinetic friction (such as perceptual shocks, or noise and disturbance in the
transmission process through the Internet). Focusing on the different technical
developments of dance, this chapter questions the linear communication between
human bodies and technical machines performed through the control of cybernetic
dynamics of information exchange in the dance/technology encounter. The aim is to
focus on the concept of rhythm as an interruption of the linear cognitive and
conscious relations established between the different components of the cybernetic
performative system (dancer-machine-audience), and as the viral invasion of bodies
by microscopic, non-conscious sensations travelling through the perceptual and
technical interfaces. In this sense, the digital cybernetic system becomes a non-
integrated differential circuit of information exchange. The development of a
technological level appears more related to rhythm than representation, being more
effectively connected with the molecular than the molar aspects of dance. In the open
rhythmic circuit of dance perception and creation, human and technological identities
do not merely coincide in a hibridising contact and phenomenological juxtaposition
but are microscopically related on the plane of a reciprocal material influence and
contamination. In a human sensorium / technological sensors feedback loop of
reciprocal re-action and continuous resonance, how does the technical machine feed
back into the perceptual and motor levels of the body, on its sensations and
performances? How is the technical stratification connected to both its bio-physical
and cultural counterparts?
6
21