Text by Victoria Gray
Context Context
After the focussing on digital technology it felt important to return to the performance component of the project.
During this project I authored a paper titled, Sound Affects: The Sonification of Energetic Exchange in Performance*.
To offer ways in which this project speaks to conceptual and philosophical discourse in the field of performance studies, I have chosen to re-produce two short excerpts and reflections here. The excerpts are in non-linear order and in a deliberately fragmented form for the purposes of a blog, rather than an academic paper.
* Delivered at: TaPRA, Performance and New Technologies Working Group. The University of Glasgow & The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK
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Context 1:
Performance in the ‘post-aesthetic turn’
During the early 1990s there was a paradigm shift in contemporary European choreography embracing the work of La Ribot, Xavier le Roy, Mårten Spångberg, Jérome Bel, Boris Charmatz, Tino Sehgal and Eszter Salamon, for example. This movement, coined by Bojana Cvejić as ‘post-aesthetic’ (2010) posed a perceptual problem asking how to shift the perceptibility of movement from vision to kinesthetic sensibility. In the ‘post-aesthetic turn’ therefore, performance challenged the aesthetic dominance of the visual (Cvejić 2010). It did so through strategies of stillness, slowness and micro-movement. In the ‘post-aesthetic’ turn, attention is brought to somatic processes that are largely ‘performing’ underneath the skin and thereby thought to be ‘immaterial’, and yet, these processes have strong bodily affects.
Reflection: How can sEMG challenge the aesthetic dominance of the visual further, asking how to shift the perceptibility of movement from visual to auditory sensibility?
Reference:
Cvejic, B. (2010) The Politics of Problems, Dance & Politics Conference/Dance, Politics & Co-Immunity, Giessen, 11-14 November. [Internet]. Available from<http://www.thinking-resistance.de/> [Accessed on: June 14 2013].
Context 2:
The Transmission of Affect
As a further point of departure, this research project re-considers Teresa Brennan’s theories regarding the generation and ‘transmission of affect’ between bodies, as a process of electrical entrainment (2004). I began to develop the theory, that ‘electrical entrainment’ is the primary affective mechanism in my solo performance practice. During performance, my body’s kinetic and kinaesthetic effort produces electrical energy. In order for my skeletal muscles to contract, (an activity which may or may not be visible to an audience), an electrical signal is sent from the central nervous system which in turn, innervates the muscle fibres. This causes a series of electrophysiological processes to take place, in short, generating electrical potential. This electrical output can be picked up via the skin, through surface electromyography. In this biofeedback process, conductive electrodes act as a contact between the skin and a sensor. In turn, the sensor amplifies and outputs the raw sEMG data, converting it into digital information.
Reflection: How can sEMG render the arguably ‘immaterial’ process of electrical entrainment and affective transmission palpable for performer and audience via sonic means?
Reference:
Brennan, T. (2004) The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
