Roundtable: DaNCING in Second Life

I attended the Roundtable at Society of Dance History Scholars. This is early case of teleconference with virtual environment at official academic association in the field of dance and theater research.

Here is abstract:

DaNCING IN SECOND LIFE: a Roundtable — Envisioning Virtual Cartographies for Corporeal Interaction: Dance and Performance Convergent Applications of the Second Life 3D Metaverse Social Environment :: at Society of Dance History Scholars Conference :: June 20, 2009; 5:30 - 7:00 pm (SLT) :: Room 2 - History Corner and Weltec, Koru (203, 224, 3093).

Moderator/Discussant: Sarah Rubidge, Chichester University, UK :: Facilitator: Mike Baker, School of Arts and Media, NMIT, New Zealand :: Panelists: Yukihiko Yoshida, Keio Research Institute, Keio University, Japan; and Isabel Maria de Cavadas Valverde, Institute of Humane Studies and Intelligent Sciences, Center for Art and Technology, Portugal.

For Mike Baker, Yuikihiko Yoshida, and Isabel Valverde, the Second Life 3D environment is a novel terrain for creative convergence, rather than separation, of physical-virtual embodied realities. The constant traversing between physical and virtual modes of embodiment and sites informs their theoretical and practice research. The process of involving these novel and accessible networks is regarded not as substitution but as amplification of corporeality in its infinite possibilities of subjective and inter-subjective modes of interactive engagement. How is dance being challenged by artistic embodied practice in SL and hybrid mixed-reality environments? How is this practice influencing and affecting the way we theorize and historicize dance, setting new directions in dance-technology development, and proposing new forms of bodily knowledge?

Mike Baker — In the Company of Strangers: I propose the documentation of missed conversations approached performatively in mixed-reality (Real and Second Life) expressed through a language of indeterminant ‘Leaving’. Due to the inevitability in our existence of indeterminacy, that is a state representative of chaos - a breakdown of order - we have an inability to be fully present at any given moment in time. Indeterminacy implies motion and emerges as Massumi asserts, through ‘… an unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary …’. We are constantly being drawn away, always either approaching or embracing involuntarily, a state of ‘Leaving’ that co-mingles with our efforts to converse with another in the here and now.

Yukihiko YOSHIDA — Real Dance and Dancing in metaverse In Japan, choreography using Avatars and making digital dance content is getting popular. Content is stored at the level of the movement of body parts so that choreographers can share remix and reproduce it in their works. Japanese pop culture content is included, for example “Hatsune Miku” and the Japanese idol unit “Perfume”. A strategy that combines Open Source and Otaku Culture is being undertaken to affect products in exisiting markets. The content is to be transferred into Metaverse contexts, increasing Far East dance content.

Isabel de Cavadas Valverde — Performing In Between Embodied Modes of Experience: Real Virtual Games project with hybrid site-specific physical and avatar bodies and environments: Real Virtual Games (RVG) is a collaborative transdisciplinary project, proposing alternative hybrid embodied interface environment for live and avatar inhabitants. RVG questions videogames and MUVE (Second Life(r)) social places’ immersive interfaces in their deployment of handicap embodiments, rather than a promised expansion. I will discuss RJV’s deviated application of the Second Life(r) environment through constructive deconstruction. Engaging performative interactive situations, the project experiments creative modes to alter and estrange what became too limited desktop bodily experiences. We want to contribute to an emerging posthuman corporeality concerned with subjective, collective, hybrid and mutable realities within Western Cartesian bio-information globalized virtuality of contemporary condition.

Here is the whole view of Koru below.


(C) Yukihiko YOSHIDA

You can see conference participant at Stanford University.

(C)Yukihiko YOSHIDA

Isabel is demonstrating her choreography insides virtual environment.

(C)Yukihiko YOSHIDA

The working environment of dance critic/researcher is changing. Dance Critic these days works with telepresence and virtual environment. Dance critic/researcher works in those trans-disciplinary environment beyond borders and fields. Dancer and dance critic/researcher need to figure out governance of new coming digital age.