'Cluster': telematic performance viewed in situ and webcast.

I was the project's director and curator; the work addressed issues including:
1. the nature of presence, mediated and 'real', and how they might intermingle via telematics;
2. how to re-locate western theatre dance performance within heterogeneous social dance settings in real time;
3. how to render active spectatorship active and able to explore multiple perspectives. The work is part of a longer investigation including research undertaken at the Institute for Study in the Arts at Arizona State University, and the project combines and tests a range of imperatives, both research-driven and creative/artistic. The extension of telematic performance work into social dance contexts either within arts venues or in clubs, challenges concepts of spectatorship in traditional dance performance, as noted by Thomas, Dodds and Kozel amongst others. Telematics sets audience members' relationship to present performers in 'real-timespace', against virtual interactions that take place virtually through the use of real-time webstreaming linking audiences and performers. A further experience of the event, comprising merged visual elements from the remote venues, was accessible over the internet, ensuring a wider dissemination of the work as original and knowledge-enhancing in its field. The choreographic invention required exercises in sensing liable to enhance performers' ability to 'feel','know' and interact (in a literal sense) with the virtual presence of others, so that the work could cohere around specific signposts designed to be recognisable even in fluid situations; improvisation in social contexts sensitised performers to the close proximity of spectators who might engage with the performance in unexpected ways, and developed hyper-sensitivity to the performers' shared body semiotic, in order to receive signals initiated from across a crowded room or transmitted
telematically.
Funding assistance provided by London
Arts, Groovy Gecko streaming media services and Cyberdog.