I do not want to create new things that are distant from each other, but everything connected, like the sematic thought like body and mind situation. Yes, this is what I want to simplify and to become more accessible for everyone. -- Isadora Alonso
Once you take away the video image, you're watching movement without the sense of effort, labor, like weight or something. All these physical properties go away, so now you're just watching points float in space. -- Anton Koch
Dance and technology intersect in a myriad of ways, utilizing various tools to capture and represent movement. Motion capture, for instance, can range from basic video recording and inferring key points from moving pixels to sophisticated marker-based or markerless systems that track reflective balls or body forms in 3D space. Volumetric capture, like that from a Kinect, creates point clouds representing body surfaces, while inertial measurement units (IMUs) affixed to the body can measure orientation and movement, offering a more portable solution than camera-based systems, though they present challenges like drift. Even the act of someone sitting and drawing a movement can be considered a valid form of motion capture, providing a low-barrier, introspective tool. Traditionally, these technologies have found applications in games, CGI movies, and special effects, but in dance, they are also employed for documentation, research, and as creative tools, though sophisticated systems are often too expensive for common dance use.
However, engaging with technology in dance brings forth both profound insights and significant challenges. The abstraction inherent in motion capture, for example, can strip away the "body" as a site of politics, effort, labor, and weight, transforming it into "points float[ing] in space," which can change the perception of movement. While this reduction can reveal the "soul of the person" or the "character of the movement" by focusing on dynamics and space, it also raises questions about what truly constitutes dance when disconnected from physical properties. There are technical difficulties like system fragility to lighting changes, the problem of "drift" with IMU sensors, and the high cost and complexity of integrated systems, which can limit experimentation. Furthermore, technology often operates with normative body constructs, struggling to track non-standardized or non-human bodies like those with prosthetics or the fluid movements of a cat, highlighting a gap in its implementation. Despite these complexities, there is a push to understand how dance can collaborate with technologies, incorporating them to enhance human experience, explore new imaginaries, and ensure that a focus on embodied knowledge remains central, rather than allowing technology to dictate creative processes or shift focus away from the human experience of being a body.
William Forsythe wanted to open it up [to communicate choreographic ideas through technology]. So he thought, well, I'd love to build something larger, a library of resources, education resources around other makers processes like a Trisha Brown, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Deborah Hay or Jonathan Burrows. And that was the impetus for the thing called Motion Bank. -- Scott deLahunta
Motion Bank actually came out of which was software for dancers around the beginning of the 2000s including four choreographers to at ways of digital practice involving digital tools to engage with choreographic concepts, choreographic thinking. -- Anton Koch
From the very beginning I understood myself more as a dance scholar, relying on my academic education when I became part of the Motion Bank team. My prior experience with projects provided an understanding of coding and technology, but my focus clearly shifted to using technology more as a tool for documentation, transmission, and research within Motion Bank. -- David Rittershaus
My interest in technology was always what it what it affords, what it enables you to do, and basically that, you know, triggered my tinkering nerve. -- Florian Jenett
I'm much more attached to the activity of filming than to collection of data. I had this ultimate idea that I should be just filming and deleting the data right after because what do I need it for? I'm still not sure where I'm at if it comes to storage and data and maintenance of it. -- Mary Szydlowska
We worked with Skinner Releasing Technique imagery, well, image prompts in the pedagogy, using them to create characters. We thought it was interesting to have these prompts as visuals of characters and also a kind of release for us to see how Midjourney would interpret what we had in mind for these avatars. -- Ruth Gibson
Fatigue with using technology and all these discussions around technology which obfuscates the possibilities that lie in it. Continue to be curious, seeing what things allow us to do, finding that out, and applying it to see what comes up. -- Florian Jenett
Technologies cannot replace kinesthetic experience. Dance would not be replaced by technologies. Understand how we can collaborate with technologies and incorporate them in our practice in order to enhance this experience to all humans. -- Diego Marin
There's going to be cheap low-end and the high-end will always be there for film or scientific research but I think that the dance technology in the future, the ideas about the body is going to become more and more important, and it's gradually saturating out into the design of everyday things. It's all about dancers, about humans moving through space and maybe interacting with others and interacting with the world. -- Bruno Martelli
