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10/27/19

Still Learning to be okay with what’s not got by the cameras because that is central to the work: the actualization of limits means much is not included. Everything is not framed. Existence is collectively realized. Accept it, accept it, accept it.

1 Looking Practice Progression:
Attention, Space, Geometry, Frame, Multiple Frames, Sequencing, Adding Frames

Visible Time Vignette:

Body Vocabulary Includes:
-Bodily Sensing of Time Passing
-Sweeping Actions
-Suddenness

Score Includes:
-Stillness for One Camera and One Dancer
-Dancer Movement and Camera Movement Match
-Stillness

Camera Movement Vocabulary Includes:
-Sweeping Actions
-Suddenness

4_M_VisibleTime_1
4_M_VisibleTime_2

Personality Vignette:

Body Vocabulary Includes:
-Playfulness
-Care/Thoughtfulness
-RISK
-Following aesthetic urges: Planning Ahead

Score Includes:
-Everybody’s Feet in 2 Frames
-Shaky Shaky, FACE
-Cameras Looking at Each Other

Camera Movement Vocabulary Includes:
-Reveals
-Selfies
-Following Aesthetic Urges: Planning Ahead

Run: 4_M_Personality_1
Run: 4_M_Personality_2

“the stakes of negotiation are higher” – Davianna
“playfulness makes an act of cyborging different- I don’t want to cyborg in the same kind of way” -Dian

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9.27.19

Progression ( 4_J_1)
5 minute review of camera tools/composition/perspectives (4_J_2)
5 minute run remembering:
“Search for Beauty”, “Personality”, “Relaying Emotion” and “Visible Time” (4_J_3)

Trying New Sequences:

Telling a Story
-How do you tell a story with and without the camera? Do you feel like the subject? What’s the story?

Preserving a Moment
-are you endeavoring to preserve a moment in your vision frame too? or just with the camera? is everyone preserving a moment? What does this bring up for you bodily?

Personality
Personality of the camera? or how does the camera contribute to your personality? What does personality DO bodily? What does it do “bodily” to the camera? Is personality being shown only in relationship to the camera, or is it happening in your bodies, between you, in each others’ frames as well? Are you “having a personality”? Are you putting on a personality? In what way is this becoming performative?

Visible Time
How and why do the cameras start to take precedent?

These are all things cameras do, or reasons cameras are used. what happens if we attempt to do these things ourselves, without cameras?

What are the people who are holding cameras doing while they are holding cameras? What does THAT mean?

What kind of moves are you doing?

Should we do many events?

What happens if one or more goes suspiciously dark? What do we do?

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9.13.19

warmup, work, watch

cyborg duets
detailed score with specific actions
physicality heightens the moment, heightens the person
rapid transfer of frames
what kind of space do you feel like you’re in, or would you want to be in?

dynamic, investigation, curiosity, searching for things- the camera, looking, seeing, composing, frame, perspective, dancers’ experiences, dancers’ perspectives, always changing, can’t be duplicated, something about change, improvisation makes space for discovery and play, can be focused on the process,

stairs, something that could hide you without you leaving the space, sources of light, shadows, mirrors…

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9.8.19

Progression:
Attention, Space, Geometry, Frame, Multiple Frames, Sequencing, Adding Frames
[I’m thinking about this as adding in tools, as opposed to a progression that happens in sequence, one after another. This builds.]

-clearly ignoring the cameras not for the sake of ignoring them but for the sake of being very interested in a different frame at that moment

-what kinds of camera movements are you using as this happens? when do you think to be creative with the way the camera moves?

-when is the camera an extension of my body and when am I composing for its frame?

____________
a story:
4 people in their own spaces are listening and also sharing space- one person and two cameras look on but are they participating or listening or… what? the sound of the room is like a perpetual outbreath- it goes and goes, like wind it doesn’t take, it just moves on- and maybe this is why it feels this way.

[an aside: taisha paggett’s work asks this too- is based in a sensorial exploration and reaction to seeing and being seen and existing in a particular place and describing those sensations and that architecture through movement, texture, shape, quality…]

[an aside: Re: Atlas and Cunningham: perfectly crafter geometrically for a specific frame/point of view- we are doing this with our framing but not just for one frame, for the frames of everyone in the room. It is improvisaion- Sgorbati- because of the crucial element of consent in being seen as well as describing exactly your sensations in a moment, which will always be changing, listening to how you feel and describing that with movement is a perfect way of listening to/trusting ourselves, and our wants and needs.]

_________________

Camera flip moves!
How is stillness showing up in your bodies too?
Use camera composition tools for the camera and for ourselves

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8.30.19

Progression:
Attention, Space, Geometry, Frame, Multiple Frames, Sequencing, Adding Frames

What does it mean to frame something? Physically? Psychologically? Intentionally? Can you unintentionally frame? How? Bias?

What happens to our bodies when we purposefully avoid the frame?
The word capture was resonating
put myself there, take charge of this frame
My eyes stayed in my body (I did not cyborg, connnecting my vision with the camera’s)

What are things that cameras do? From The Camera by the Life Library of Photography*
-preserve something
-people’s stories
-prioritize
-create a sense, sensation, a feeling
-create illusion
-translation
-portray emotion, relay emotion
-tell stories
-just aesthetics
-a search for beauty
-composition (place in space)
-personality, character
-abstraction
-extension of vision
-visible time, crystallized motion, traces
-proximity, zoom

4_E_1: Search for Beauty:
looking for the camera, looking for the viewfinder reflections? what was beautiful? what were you searching for?

4_E_2: Personality:
Were you showing personality? were you searching for others’ personalities? how did your personality come out? how did you see others’ personalities come out?

4_E_3: Relaying Emotion:
What happened with texture? what happened with effort? how were you making shapes? how were you distinguishing and translating to body your own emotions? were they ‘clear’?

4_E_4: Visible Time/Traces
repetition? quality? shape? camera movement? swoopy

who is the capturer?

–How did you find yourself seeing and being seen in each of these scenarios?
-movement personalities? does that feel like a clear and personal thing to you? does exhaustion play in? how?
-how were you making decisions about HOW to hold the camera and WHERE to point it?
-can we start to do this stuff not just for the camera but for our own vision frame and the vision frames of everyone else in the room?
-what kinds of body things were you doing to make these things visible?
-interaction of camera? when does this happen? (i feel like save it for a very special moment in time)
-if you are attempting to record your vision, what you see, does it need to be ‘smooth’?

How does your movement vocabulary translate to the camera? what is the vocabulary of camera movement?

Maybe this is an attempt at creating our own gaze. Camera gaze? Multiple Gaze?

Camera Movement Vocabulary:
Camera slides across the floor
Flipping the perspective
Stillness- setting it down
Bird’s eye view
Rotating
Leaving the space
Shakiness
Smooth Movement
Camera tracing dancing motion
Level Change
Speed (variety of speeds)
Rocking
Proximity

Camera Compositions:
-cameras facing each other
-cameras recording other camera’s viewfinder
-cameras turned to face self (selfie)
-revealing yourself as the camera person

What is the body language of the camera person?
What is the quality of the camera movement?
When are you foregrounding the body and when are you foregrounding the camera work- can it be both? Do you have to choose?

 

*The Camera. Amsterdam: Time-Life Books, 1984.

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8.25.19

Runthrough:
Attention, Space, Geometry, Frame, Multiple Frames, Sequence, Adding Frames

play with some camera relationships: camera as subservient, curting your image…

movement explorations: what it feels like to hold/be in front of the camera

“i’m drawn to answer to its gaze” -Yildiz

I’m thinking about communicating with someone else who is not the camera person
Trying to care aoubt posture
Playing with my frame, looking at the actual person
Sense of the camera, even when I don’t see it or face it, my attention is going back and forth

4_D_1:
-what feels good/restrictive about working with a partner instead of the whole grou?
-what happened with camera relationships this time? how did it feel to be able to pick it up and set it down?
-how was it to do more moving with the camera?

I see lots of feet this time, lots of kicking
i see fun being had
i see performative bodies composed with intentional weight, space, shape, time, effort
i wasn’t afraid to look at the camera, less tension
trying to avoid the camera and performing for it too
-facing your own truth/how you look

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8/23/19 [Poetically Presented Rehearsal Notes]

Looking Practice: Attention, Space, Geometry, Frame
Camera Eyes Practice

What is your relationship to the camera while you’re dancing?

Make a list and embody these relationships:
-What kinds of relationships do we have with the camera?
-What does it feel like to point the camera?
-Your point of view includes your comrades…

4_C_1: Adding to Sequence:
Attention, Space, Geometry, Frame, Multiple Frames, Sequence, Adding Frames

What other things come up?
Does it start to break at some point?
What happens when (if) it does?
Adding cameras would do what?
what does seeing like a camera do?
Frame vs. Focus
Become a stranger to your own body – Yildiz
I felt like a camera- Davianna
Accidental in-camera editing – Yildiz
Staring felt more calm (why?) – Davianna
Hair is not hair, it’s a line – Dian
Touch is a reminder of humanity -Dian
Eye contact takes me out of the frame – Dian
I just wanted it to be my eyes- didn’t want my body to be in it – Laura
I craved something happening in the frame – Laura

What starts to arise?
-frustration in seeking symbiotic relationships
-distance becomes significant
-duration/editing/is there a time constraint?
liberates my body because i’m so focused on vision-disassociation from my body

Selfies:
for self: “i want a picture of myself, i think i look attractive
for world: different social media pictures, just responding to social media connection
people have different importance of the outcome
haphazard selfies
“who do i think i am”
social media curation
posting a selfie is a loaded thing
expose yoursef to critique
expose but also hide yourself
curating yourself
manipulating images
“There is how you want to look, how you think you look, and how you actually look” – Yildiz
branding, marketing, what am I portraying?
emotionally loaded
afraid of becoming or coming off as egotistical, or some other certain thing.
most of what we are worried about is what other people think.
confidence, jealousy, critical, judgemental, wish i was more supportive, men don’t have the same rules.

how do you use the camera?
exhibition, empowerment, doing your bidding

what is the difference between what happens with a still photo and a video?
what kinds of movement vocabularies come up in each of these person to camera relationships?

The camera as:
-subservient to me, doing my bidding, exhibition
-a channel to share my image (curated) to the world
-a tool to pass a quick note
-a tool to show how I see myself
-a tool to show how I want to be seen
-a tool to show how I actually look
-a tool to contribute to my brand
-a tool through which to be misunderstood

male gaze, female gaze, matrixial gaze, queer gaze? multiple gaze? complex gaze? camera gaze? how does a camera see and can we mimic it?

All of these perspectives are correct. What does that mean? It means we must listen to one another. 

similar things happen when we look at each other or think about being seen
we get slow and small
is it hard to do this with other people in the room? how do you really feel?

[When do we start talking about light?]

“algorithm of what you need to do to look the way you want to look, thinking about face as selfies, shifty, ungrounded, uncomfortable” -Laura

“camera as a tool toward empowerment as opposed to showing you as already empowered.” -Yildiz

“what are the standards? why should i use them?” -Davianna

“selfies are head neck and upper chest. my face looks the same, my chest, my posture. I have criteria for myself in a selfie.” -Laura

how does it become your criteria?I’m influenced by culture and society as I build my criteria. Struggling with myself- back and forth.

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8.16.19

Regular Practice group rehearsal of The Maya Project work. Contemporary dance improvisation work with cameras. Getting to know the frame so well that we may consider regarding and disregarding the frame of the camera as a compositional tool. Conflating the past, present, and future by using a tool of archive to compose for an ephemeral moment.

Collaborating with Davianna Green, Yildiz Guventurk, Dian Jing, and Laura Patterson.

Seeing and Feeling.

Just begin with an Attention improvisation, active tuning (Lisa Nelson) of the senses and one another

The power of purposefully putting yourself in front of the camera.

“Emergence notices the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies” – adrienne maree brown

We are creating a little cyborg ecosystem. Visual/Kinesthetic.

4_A_1 : On mirroring the visual personal frame, lots of hands in the air describing windows and lines- what does your vision dictating your movements do? What does it mean? Is it hard to look at others’ bodies here? How will you choose a quality? Did you embody? Describe a line? How did you choose body parts? What about locomotion? When did you feel limited? We felt separate somehow to me. What does looking as a guide predict?

4_A_2: On composing based on sensation and impulse- this was more curly- I found texture. What’s it worth to feel vs. see? Is this about believing peoples’ subjective experiences? Listened more. Wasn’t often sure what to do with my sensation but then, sometimes was. What does it mean for it to resonate in the body, and what does that show?

“even when eyes are closed, I’m sensing shapes in the space.” -Dian
“What shapes do our bodies like to go to… the second time i focused on sound. how did it connect to my other senses” -Davianna
“inner voice distraction- because the space is big- it’s harder to focus. my head changing perspective is also a movement.” -Yildiz

 

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8/18/19 [Poetically presented rehearsal notes]

What is holding the camera?
What is being in front of the camera?
Focus on emergence
Duets (AKA Trios)
Pointing the camera, Listening to Sensation, Creating Movement
Camera Eyes practice

What are the benefits of utilizing the camera?

[Relating through initiating purposefully in your body certain physical mirrorings of what your perspective shows.]

‘rhythms, energies- it depends on who is looking – i want to manifest tall and strong – became fully exposed, watched on both sides’

How does time manifest?

I want us to become experts at composing for the camera so that we can consciously and compositionally ignore it.

Number of cameras, overlap, intersection, accidental, compose a lot according to partnership dynamics.

Being with the camera takes you out, but with the second camera you are composing for both: 2 worlds. Your body in this world/your body in the digital world, being seen in both.