Norah Zuniga Shaw on departure points
It is great to finally launch our project and begin to see how a broad public receives it. We think of this launch as just the beginning and our hope is that the project will serve as a departure point for new research and creativity. We’d love to know if the objects are useful to you in your research and creative practices. We will add new content regularly and continue to develop some of the research projects we have begun with our friends in geography, statistics, and architecture (see the Movement Density, Statistical Counterpoint and Furniture Systems objects). One of the core goals of our project has been to explore the possibilities for placing dance at the center of cross-disciplinary dialog and research. This has been true on our project team which includes computer scientists, animators, designers, architects, geographers, and of course dancers. But we also hope to see it unfold in other ways that we have begun exploring this is in our research collaborations using the objects and data as resources. For example, Stephen Turk and his students in architecture will use Synchronous Objects site as their research resource in their curriculum this Spring. Patrick Haggard, a cognitive neuroscientist from London, has begun working with our data and the ideas in the project to conduct perception research that we will post on the site once the results are ready. The geographers who made the Movement Density object will continue their work and publish their research here. And so on.—Norah Zuniga Shaw
I am fascinated at the possibilities of this project and research generating new creative activity in fields other than dance, but I am also deeply interested in how this material loops back into dance, informing not only the creative processes and perspectives of dance artists, but also how they reveal their work. After the symposium today, a friend asked me where this is going to go next, specifically in regard to Bill’s hope for developing a library or bank of this sort of research/information. And while Bill did mention seeking funding for the next installment in this continuum of projects, the possibility that I find even more fascinating is that this explication will provoke other artists to consider how they might reveal the inner workings of their own work, how they might build a public context out of which understanding for the “strange tool” of dance might evolve. I am interested in how that “library” might emerge from a public culture, embedded in a public culture, rather than emanating exclusively from this (remarkable) team. On some small level, I think this project was the inspiration for my blog. My creative process can be so cognitive and idea-driven, by expounding on it in the public space of the blog, by using the space as a public creative platform, I can in some small way reveal the inner workings of my work–be that choreography, research, philosophies, inspirations, etc.
As if it could be said enough, thank you for this incredible gift. It has already served as an inspiration and provocation in the way I handle my own work, and I am exhilarated by the trust that it will continue to inspire and provoke the work of others, in and out of the dance field.
-M
Michael,
I share your interest in how this visualization project can be used by choreographers and dancers who are interested in revealing “the inner workings of their own work,” as you write.
From my understanding of Synchronous Objects at this point, a major challenge would appear to be the very time-consuming nature of deciding what data to capture and the process of recording it.
Maybe the researchers for this visualization project have thoughts about streamlined approaches to creating similar visualizations for other dance works, but in an expedited fashion? I look forward to hearing about different possibilities.