Twitter experiment No 2

Since this event was in same week as the Siobhan Davies ICE Seminar I (David) repeated my twitter experiment with the following results:

benno121: Q. In what way does Adam simplify? Can Lesley tap into this? A. No – not at the moment. #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: Interesting observation – artistic output vs academic output. Unfortunately only artistic being considered. #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: Definition of fractal – an infinite line, that’s simple http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: Assign colours to numbers v similar to my approach to dance + maths, assign movement to number #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: Trip to Botanical Gardens, Lesley looks for detail and Adam simplifies #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: Level of maths detail a concern for Adam, can Lesley cope. Proves difficult. Oblique Strategy cards v helpful http://is.gd/i8rf #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: Lesley (artist) keeps a journal, Adam (Maths academic) keeps video diary #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: Warwick Uni can offer Maths BA as well as BSc – well, well,well #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: Visual – Maths – Visual as overview of project…chaos theory, fractals, fibonacci sequence, fractal dimensions, #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: Barry Phipps, Research Fellow (Kettles Yard) http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/ #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: new one on me – ethnobotany. #art+maths
4 days ago from twhirl · Reply · View Tweet

predacomDom: RT @benno121: “ICE seminar – Lesley Whelan and Adam Boddison – Art+Maths=? http://tinyurl.com/ch68j7 (expand) #art+maths=?” – Just arrived for this..
4 days ago from PockeTwit · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: ICE seminar – Lesley Whelan and Adam Boddison – Art+Maths=? http://tinyurl.com/ch68j7 (expand) #art+maths=?
4 days ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

OK, so I did learn one or two things from last time – the #arts+maths tag is a little simpler – but if you don’t use it these tweets will miss the search

# Yes, I just finished a Creative Partnership project Dance n Maths so equally interested
5:19 PM Apr 30th from twhirl
was my response to @predacomDom

# good start – don’t use = in hashtag
5:12 PM Apr 30th from web
The reason I said this was #arts was only term that became a ‘searchable link’, so ‘+’ character is also a no-no. However, #art+maths does work as a search so maybe it’s the ‘searchable link’ function that does not like these special characters? Try it in Twitter, you’ll see what I mean.

# Experiment 2 for live twitter so bear with me folks
5:09 PM Apr 30th from web
Learner driver, so beware.

Do go to the project website for more information, my twittering does not do it justice.

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Siobhan Davies ICE Seminar

I (David) was at this seminar not only because I’m part of the team working on the archive but also for an experiment in live twittering. Here are my tweets:

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. That’s all folks. This was an experiment using Twitter to record live – now to transfer to the blog?
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Suggestion that there will be a flurry of conceptual work and will that ‘fit’ the archive better or not?
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Observation 2: Scratch tapes reassuring that fellow dancers also ‘struggling’ with working solo in the studio
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Observation: Kitchen as a way to engage with work found difficult in the past
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Observation: website will look dated, the dance looks dated, has/will become a ‘classic’ text
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Opportunity that writer or visual artist can ‘use’ archive as source material in some way
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Q. work for the archive? A. Nervous that talk of next work being documented etc for the archive, but also…
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. These pre-show talks became a ‘diptych’ where dance was part of the conversation
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Experience of experts from other fields coming into rehearsals for In Plain Clothes, extended to pre-show talks
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Dance activity stays a live event. However need some ‘intelligence’ in wider community to support dance
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. SD now thinking of how to use archive in future – do I make work for the archive?
about 3 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. SD initially horrified at thought of past work becoming public again – now accepts this is OK,
about 4 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Difficult to visualise without the image avail
about 4 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Use ‘structure’ of dance work to also present the process ideas eg concentric circles of Bird Song
about 4 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. SD talks about her concern archive too static. ‘Kitchen’ is where process is ‘exploded’ a la Cornelia Parker

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Scrapbook feature allows user to add material as you navigate through. this can be shared with others via email
about 4 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Not only dance works but also Creative Projects – eg professional development,
about 4 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Access to dancer scratch tapes – see process of dance making.
about 4 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar. Great feature is view video stills – allows drilling down of short length video into separate 3 sec stills
about 4 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

benno121: #Siobhan Davies ICE seminar: launch end June so cannot give you a link just yet! Inc video, images and text covers 20 years of dance making

Points to note:
1. use of hashtag (#) to search for related tweets needs to be concise as it uses up valuable characters and contain no spaces (in this example #siobhan finds the above tweets – in which case anyone could use same tag in future for something unrelated)
2. is only of real value if others are following the tweets and comment – thank you @predacomDom – Q. how do others see these interactions?
3. OK – now you have a load of tweets, now what? I suspect it is all about the now, the real time event and making connecions at the time rather than for any reflective purpose.
4. Having said that, through use of hashtag, anyone can get a flavour of what happened if they wish.

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F*CK

The reason I was not at the Tom Hingley seminar was because I was at the Warwick Arts Centre watching this documentary shown as part of a Burning Issues series curated by John Gore, the WAC film programmer. Comedian Arthur Smith was the guest speaker – who is always entertaining – but the film was too American-centric and the discussion afterwards veered too-often towards opinionated waffle (where was the informed, cultural studies or linguist expert?). For me, a debate about the c-word would have been more relevant for our culture, at this time, and how its use seems to be creeping back as a result of Amercian TV.

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Nick Rothwell: cassiel.com

Nick Rothwell from cassiel.com gave a talk to the MA Media Arts students today, showing a brief roundup of the projects that he has been involved in, over the past few years. Nick introduced himself as being someone who works across many different art forms, creating compositions and interactive spaces for performance in many traditional locations such as stage, as well as site-specific work (like The Public, for example).

The discussion was wide ranging, from the difficulties of being involved with large projects involving funding from various sources, to how best to incorporate technology into dance performance. Where many producers want to see their dollars worth up there on the stage, letting the audience see what all the fuss is about, there’s often a balance between finding a mid-point. I personally, offered the suggestion that perhaps any stage-bound technology should be thought of in terms of stage design, and placed/dressed accordingly.

Nick’s creative practise moves beyond the performative/dance and includes work like, the intelligent lamppost that dreams and remembers events from the local pub nearby. Soon to be moved the Irish Museum of  Modern Art. A technically, complex piece of work that required the involvement of the council to install the work (digging and slicing the pavement, all in a day’s work for the council worker, less so for the media artist!).

Nick’s website is worth spending time on, and not just as a documentation of the projects he has been involved in. Digging down a bit you can uncover articles about everything from Max/MSP to the Roland D-50.

What’s valuable in Nick’s work, apart from the pleasure of the works themselves, is his obvious commitment to the documentation process. Always a good way of taking care of ‘housekeeping’ for an artists own practise, it’s also a good way to share things in the community more.

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Johannes Birringer at ICE

  Last week at ICE, we had a visit from Johannes Birringer, who, amongst his other roles, is artistic director of AlienNation Co. Johannes leads projects involving a hybrid of dance and technology and came along to talk about some of the projects he has both researched, and been directly involved in. He’s also currently flogging a book (Performance, Technology, & Science), so there was a chance to find out more about the things he was showing us.Some of his projects he talked about involved wearable media: that is, technology mixed into clothing. Having worked with fashion designers, the results were much more exciting and interesting to look at than the idea might at first appear (those fearing a Cyberman style suit, need not worry). The clothing was more along the lines of Alexander McQueen than the BBC props department.

One of the projects he dealt with in some depth was the 9Evenings events, in New York in the 1960s. From the blurb:

The idea of collaborating with technicians, not only initiated by Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver but also organized and largely promoted by them, lead to the performances suggested by the festival title: Nine Evenings with performances by John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Merce Cunningham, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, and Robert Whitman. Billy Klüver was again the driving force. The main technical element of the performances was the electronic modulation system TEEM, composed of portable, electronic units which functioned without cables by remote control. Cage used this system to activate and deactivate loud speakers that consistently reacted to movement by way of photo-cells. For not always being technically and artistically successful, these performances exhausted for the first time the full range of the live-aspect of electronics, taking advantage of its artistic potential in all of its diversity.

The people attending the talk were a mix of dance/performance and media folks from ICE and beyond. Despite the small crowd, it was a crowd that wanted to hear and respond to the works shown.

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