dear all
yes, like Paul, I love the conversation too, and after reading his commentary on
"requirements for virtuosity; legibility of virtuosity" and the other ways,
the poorly done ways, I had to laugh. Just this morning I came a across
a piece of writing on lecture-performances where a curator is mentioned,
Guillaume Désanges, who apparently likes the notion of ‘deskilling’ as a central notion of
conceptual art, developing from it the model of ‘deskilled curating’. *


Well, let me just reply briefly to Victoria -- thanks, yes, I like what you are doing in your comparison of "Hacking Choreography"
and "Hacking Choreography" - and both pieces might be considered conceoptual art.

>
Similarities: Instructions dictate action.

I wonder if Kate has tried engaging an audience with code-based instruction
rather than a dancer?

I am intrigued by Johannes's question: what would be syntax errors in
social code?
>


In fact I don't see any similarities on the level of instruction-action, if you go back to issue of
the space of politics/context that affects the performance of anything, never mind "code"
[I admit the word code is interesting, though, as some Italian friends recently used it
to refer quite metaphorically to what they thought could be understood by a public,
i.e. the message, not an underlying software code, but the surface; code as surface)(Or message on how to use the thing)

so now we could speak about code as costume, cloth.
 
It has always struck my attention that I never cared much about fashion until I started to work with a designer who cared;
learning about it goes a long way, for me, towards interpreting all kinds of layers/accoutrements, metaphorical, mythic, symbolic, cultural and perceptional - regarding
how a "viewer" or interactor looks at and responds to surfaces, and toys, or bigger stuff piled up, thinner stuff, transparent or more eccentric garments and hats) and begins to sort out some questions
(like the ones we discussed on audiences, 'non-human entities', physical/psychological terms (movement and movement empathy, kinaesthetics, emotional affect, etc) why who? to do with the thing.

       [Curt Cloninger's extravagant Taxonomical Continuum of "Artist/Audience" Relationships: "To look at art through the filter of control is to implicitly ask "who?" ]

"Cut Piece" had a complex social setting, in my opinion, as it invited (literally) violence done to Ono's clothes and, by implication, her vulnerable female body; thus the work
solicits complicity and at the same time (as some watched, others acted) a conflict space, as you may not agree with what you watch, and the social syntax has already broken down or is breaking down to be reupheld?,
violated, put to the test (as Victoria also explores in her examples), distressed, dis-dressed.

 This is a dimension which I don't see in Kate's "Hacking Choreography" (thus the space of politics, even if you were to follow
on some implications of the microphone, the role of instructor, etc) is not actionable (by the audience).

I have not experienced "Cut Piece" live - but remember seeing a video of it with my design collaborator in the context of, surprisingly (!), fashion, --- a Royal Academy of Arts exhibition "AWARE: Art, Fashion, Identity" (2011).
I gather Cut Piece" had one verb as its instruction: "Cut." Ono executed the performance herself in Tokyo in 1964 by walking on stage and casually kneeling on the floor in a draped garment. Audience members were requested to come on stage and begin cutting until she was naked. Apparently folks were shy and careful in Tokyo, but at Carnegie Hall the next year, less shy, and sometimes these performances would get out of hand; this particular performance, documented, stops after 11 minutes, not finished, message scrambled?

regards

Johannes Birringer
dap-lab
"for the time being" [Victory over the Sun]
Premiere April 3-4, Sadler's Wells
book here: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap

>>>>>

[Paul schreibt]

I'm fascinated w/Live Code as a practice, and how there are requirements
for virtuosity; legibility of virtuosity; potential for failure; reception
of structure; interlacing of venue value systems; material rupture. Poorly
done live code, like other performances poorly done is quite exasperating;
though very bad theatre is a very specific real-time
cringe. Well done, viewers/audience can feel aloft; they may even be
aloft. Toplap is a fantastic resource - though I'd be curious to hear
about

>>

* Rike Frank, "When Form starts talking: On Lecture Performances," Afterall 33 (summer 2013), 5-18.