An expostion on rails

(I previously wrote this, and it contains some of my meandering ideas of the conceptualization of rails within liquid. It's not exhaustive it's just some ideas.)

Rails are a type of mime. They give substance to the illusion. On the most basic level they are just simple lines you’re drawing in the space around your body. Without them you’re stuck doing like an energy ball thingy-majig in your stomach area with your elbows locked into your side. That being said a lot of people forget you can use this as a cool little illusion/ transition and totally blow it off as wack.


The handwave and it’s role

Two definitions I use are pulling and sitting in a rail. These will make more sense as I separate styles:

Pulling through a rail - The handwave is almost nonexistent. You’re literally pulling your hands through space one after another and it creates the illusion.

Sitting in a rail - The handwave is the main attraction here. You aren’t pulling through space to create the illusion, the handwave is creating the illusion.


Most styles of liquid are defined by their rails. Except for figure 8 liquid which is defined by a split although figure 8 liquid can be a type of hyper-rail. Figure 8 liquid gives depth in a lot of the same ways as orbital liquid.


Orbital liquid - 3-D. The pathways you are shaping are circular and you are mostly contouring your arms as well. The way this looks best is when you pull your rails. Circular pulled rails are illusional and give incredible weight and dimension to your dance. In fact anything circular gives your dance a lot of weight when done correctly. See boogaloo. A huge mistake I see people make is when they try to sit in a circular contouring rail. It’s impossible. I’ve never seen it look good. Most people are thinking handwave-handwave-handwave then try and add weight to their dance by doing a circular contouring rail but they don’t understand that the handwave isn’t important.

Linear liquid - 2-D. These rails are geometric usually just a straight line. The most prominent example would be the box rail. You can pull through these rails and actually pulling through a linear rail is a great way to transition into orbital liquid or out of orbital liquid. But linear liquid is the type of liquid to really sit in your rails. You want to draw the lines out as cleanly as possible and not rush your handwave. Folds also come into play if you are capable of utilizing wrist rotations while doing rails. In fact wrist rotations add so much more to what you can accomplish it’s a shame hardly anyone uses them. You can do circular rails also but it’s not the same type of circle as you do in orbital. The circle you would do here is flat and 2-d. It’s important to realize the difference. Most people train their handwave for linear liquid without realizing it, then try and do orbital. This is why so many liquid dancer’s illusions are trash. They don’t realize there is a difference in mechanics. It’s like trying to shove a square into a circle.

Fixed point liquid. A natural compliment to linear liquid. Instead of both hands miming the area of a line one remains at a fixed point while the other contours the space. So for instance you have a straight line you’re going to run your liquid over.

A--------B

You start with both hands at point A. One hand moves with or without a wave to point B then stops at point B it then becomes the fixed point. The other hand may then follow the same path to point B. Of course you can establish more complex rails then this. For instance the initial fixed point doesn’t have to follow the same path as the lead hand. Nor does is it have to meet or stop at the second fixed point. But be careful doing this as you can lose your viewer and things can start looking like garbage. Also this style has the most potential to be mixed with animation b/c of it’s nature of relying on stillness and non-movement.

As a sidenote it’s always good to try and juice up your rails by adding texture through tension, speed control, ticking, or vibration. Basically all of these effects are created by muscle control in your arms.

A split may break a rail physically in the viewers eye. But that doesn’t mean that a rail connection still isn’t there. One hand following the other is a logical connection. All the rails I described previously are logical connections. So on the other hand if your walking normally there is an illogical connection between your hands. It is your job to balance logical and illogical connections. To make illogical connections logical when doing splits.

But like I was saying just because you split doesn’t mean your rail is finished there is always a hidden connection for you to find. Orbital liquid can spontaneously form what I call hyper-rails that don’t physically exist but visually exist. This is mainly done by pulling your orbits at a certain speed than doing a split. You sometimes leave behind visual tracers. When you hit splits while pulling your liquid sometimes you leave ghost trails that are connects to what you are doing... hyper-rails. This happens mostly with orbital liquid and figure eights I’ve found. Linear liquid has a different dynamic completely since it relies on a different more isolated handwave to look good.

The glitch aesthetic

mother and daughter from lemonsalt's photo stream

Machines are built to run perfectly. To get the job done. To make sure things go off without a hitch... or should I say glitch. Modern technology isn’t without flaws though. Computers are notorious offenders of glitching out because of coding errors or hardware malfunctions.. There is nothing more irritating than having a video game, video file, or music file suddenly glitch and become distorted for some reason. Or worse yet to get the blue screen of death on your computer when it crashes. To most of us these glitches are a general annoyance, but there is flourishing underground scene that thrives off the glitch aesthetic. From glitch music, to datamoshing and other types of glitch art.

sprouting viscera from andrew benson on Vimeo.

I wanted to tap into this with my dance. To have a glitching aspect to what I do. In a way it fits in with my idea of transhumanism. Nanotechnolgy glitching within a cyborg. Psychopharmaceuticals and performance enhancing pharmaceuticals having unattended consequences. Errors that would cause a transhuman to have strange ticks. Also glitching serves as a gateway to exploring alternate dimensions of reality. Like a glitch within the matrix of space time. Extreme speeds of slow and fast such as warping through space or rewinding action and repeating it.




In popping a similar idea was explored in the 80's with a style known as animation. The practitioner would imitate stop motion claymation characters from movies. And there was the concept of strobing where a practitioner would imitate being under a strobe light. So the idea isn’t necessarily completely new. Every new idea comes from older ideas. But ideas are reinvented according to place, time period, and setting. The technology has changed. Datamoshing is an example of editors using glitches artistically in a new movie medium. The abundance of CGI in films is another place to draw inspiration. Movies like The Matrix philosophically contemplate reality while at the same time use video editing techniques and CGI to create a false reality to tell the story through film. And even newer films such as Avatar change the viewing experience with new technologies and the use of 3-D.

So as technology progresses and there will be new and exciting glitches to physically explore. But I feel the main philosophical component will remain the same. What is our true reality? Why are we here? Where are we going? And what is the truth between reality and illusion in the physical world.

If you want to view more glitch art online visit Flikr's glitch art pool.

Transhumanism

Robotics is a natural starting point for illusional dance. In order to successfully execute the robot you must employ individual isolations and maintain muscle control. On the most basic level you move one body part at a time while all the other body parts remain motionless. So move a single joint, limb, or muscle individually then stop completely then do it again. Moving one piece at a time. Move, stop, move, stop etcetera. A basic but very powerful building block in illusional dance.

Aside from the actual physical movement there is the imitation that the movement is based on. You must choose what type of robot you want to imitate. Maybe an old fashion robot with jerky stops. Maybe a robot that behaves more like a puppet. These are classic examples. I feel these ideas have already been explored sufficiently in the 70's and 80's when the robot and later popping were fashionable. Instead I have an idea for a more modern approach, the transhumanist movement.

We are already at the point where human beings are modifying their bodies with surgeries and pharmaceuticals. For example actresses get plastic surgery to maintain their looks, mentally ill people use psychopharmaceuticals to stabilize their mood, athletes use performance enhancing drugs to push their physical limits. I want to delve deeper than what is currently available though. More into the realm of futurism with the ideas of nano-technology, genetic modification, and cyborgism. With these tools a transhumanist would seek to artificially evolve and extend their life maybe to the point of becoming posthuman. Simply a mind within an advanced machine.

So my idea is to imitate the movement of a person who is part cyborg with nanotechnolgy or artificial machine body parts sculpted to look like human body parts. To move in such a way that gives the viewer a feeling of something being off. A slight robotic edge ingrained within natural movements. Usually when someone does the robot it is a theatrical display with big swinging and jerky movements. Hydraulic looking most of the time. I want an uncanny effect. The same one would receive from looking at a vary realistic doll or puppet. From Wikipedia:

The Uncanny (Ger. Das Unheimliche -- literally, "un-home-ly") is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange. Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize.

I am not for or against transhumanism right now. I can see both positive and dangerous consequences of artificial human modification. I simply want to imagine and interpret the uncanny physical movement of someone who has been modified. I also feel like the morality of transhumanism adds an intriguing element for someone to consider when they view my dance.

As a final note I would like to present some sculptures by Ron Mueck to show other physical representations of the uncanny in a different medium. (Also because they look cool.)

My one belief

Well in my last post I was talking about ideas versus beliefs. And how beliefs were more like rocks and ideas were more like clay. I tend to stay away from beliefs in my dance because I want my dance to be experimental and malleable. Beliefs are hard to change. They are seen to be true. But I do have one idea that comes close to a belief that I want to discuss.

I don’t believe a person’s dance should be built on shock value but rather their dance should be built around craftsmanship. When I say shock value I mean it in a specific low brow way. Illusional dance is naturally shocking because it disrupts a viewers preconceived perception of how a body moves in the physical world. That is good shock value in my opinion. When I say shock value I mean it in a theatrical sense. Sort of like how Lady Gaga, Marilyn Manson, Madonna, Alice Cooper or for that matter any pop artist uses shock tactics to increase their visibility. For example being weird for the sake of being weird, being sexual to arouse moral concern, or claiming any sort of deviance to get a rise out of the general public. These things are negative shock value in my opinion. It’s a divisive strategy setting up two sides to root for and against the performer. Controversy in other words. Talent is eclipsed by the public fighting over an irrelevant issue. The performer is no longer represented by their talent or creativity but rather they are represented by the controversy surrounding them. And usually after an artist (I use the term ‘artist’ loosely) begins to use low brow shock techniques they never go back to the thing that made them relevant in the first place: their time spent honing their craft. It merely becomes a race to find the next most shocking thing they can do. All their creative energy is wasted trying to get negative attention and cause division by stirring up controversy.

So with that in my mind I always want my dance to be about craftsmanship first and foremost. Spending most of my energies practicing the rudimentary physical components that create various illusions. Your movement can never be too clean or precise. It can always be better or more innovative. You can always interpret the music better or more innovatively. The theatrics I feel should be the final part of the equation or not part of the equation at all. How much more do you need to dress up a shocking physical illusion? It seems that dancers often try and innovate by acting weird when they dance. Making funny faces or rolling around or some such nonsense. All to get a rise out of the viewer and making the audience uncomfortable. Often this tactic is labeled as being ‘artistic’. It seems it has only been in the past century that the ‘artist’ has been praised for being eccentric. I don’t have anything against genuinely eccentric people. But being weird for the sake of shock value seems like a shortcut to me. If you are eccentric because of the way you look or socially interact with people so be it. That has no effect on energy expended towards refining your craftsmanship. If you are otherwise what society considers a plain dull person why should you waste your creative energies trying to be eccentric? Eccentricity does not equate to artistic merit. You can go to any number of insane asylums and meet incredibly eccentric people who are not able to function in what is deemed ‘normal’ society. Does this mean these people are actually incredible artistic geniuses just because they are eccentric and shocking? No. Craftsmanship is what defines an artist. If you have a brilliant idea but can’t execute it you are merely a dreamer. But if you develop a craft whether it be writing, dancing, singing, painting or what not you can express your idea or emotion through your craft and excite the imagination of your audience. The better your craftsmanship the more you connect with your audience.

So this is the one idea that comes close to being a belief for me. I want craftsmanship to define my dance not shock tactics. If I do something eccentric I don’t want it to be by design. It should arise simply out of my idiosyncratic nature

What the title 'Ideas In Experimental Dance' means

Well I guess it would be prudent to start the first post at the beginning. And that beginning would be why I choose to title this blog ‘Ideas In Experimental Dance’. First off what I do is experimental illusional dance. I attempt to exploit people’s preconceived notions about the body and the space surrounding the body. Not exactly a true manipulation of the physical world but an exploitation of a viewer’s mental construct of the physical world. I draw my main inspiration for movement from miming, popping, liquid, turfing, flexing, jooking and other various emerging underground dance styles. None of these styles are necessarily experimental by themselves (although they may seem so because of their underground nature). They all have various general rules the participants must abide by while attempting to be creative. The reason I call my style ‘experimental’ is because I try and combine ideas in new fresh ways. Breaking the rules of those other dances and attempting to combine ideas and movements in unorthodox and interesting ways.

Now if you noticed I used the word ‘ideas’. The reason I use that word is because I don’t want my dance to be immutable. I want there to be fluidity so that my dance can change. Other dances apply the concept of general rules. Or certain limitations that must be applied for the dancer to be doing the style correctly or to, in some cases, even be considered dancing. Those are beliefs. Beliefs can not be changed as easily as ideas. Beliefs are held to be true. Ideas are malleable constructs that can be added to or taken away from. Or to give a more succinct metaphor: a belief is a rock, an idea is clay. I don’t have a belief system that I apply to my dance. I simply apply ideas. If an idea about movement or musical interpretation looks good (to me) or has the potential to look good I keep it. If another idea doesn’t work for me I toss it or try to reformat it to work. Even if that idea is held as an immutable belief in another system of dance that no one would dare go against. I don’t have beliefs about dance, and I try and stay away from forming beliefs. That is easier said then done. But in order to have my creativity at full capacity I can’t have restrictions. This is why I consider my dance experimental. There are no rules. Instead I am more of a dance bounty hunter taking the best ideas from other dances flipping them and reconceptualizing them to suit my own vision.

Now with that said and me making such a stink about not having beliefs I do have one idea that borders on being a belief. Like I said having ideas and not beliefs is easier said than done. Often times I find myself entrenched in an idea that has become a belief and I have to reevaluate it in order to hold true to my dance’s experimental component (my dance has many components but they all derive from ideas if that makes sense). But like I said I have one idea that borders on being a belief and I’ll explain it in my next post...