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In light of the growing criticism and resistance mounted against digital technology and its proponents, the applied sciences need to adopt critical positions that draw from existing knowledge accumulated by current and historical critics and movements. Here, the contemporary abolitionist movement provides a particularly powerful framework to grasp the broader implications of technological development in the context of global racialized capitalism. This article proposes to adopt an abolitionist perspective in the applied sciences and to develop alternative modes of access to engineering and design based on a fundamental questioning and rejection of the established design paradigms developed under a neoliberal and capitalist status quo.

Link:
https://rrrreflect.org/special-issue-1/abolitionist-thinking-in-engineering-and-design

Effect, a dance work for five performers, was created by Finnish choreographer Taneli Törmä as part of a cooperation titled Between Us, involving Tanzmainz, the dance company of the state theatre Mainz, the art gallery Kunsthalle Mainz, and Motion Bank, a research project of the Mainz University of Applied Sciences. The six-week creation process of Effect was recorded on video and annotated using Motion Bank's web application Piecemaker, and the finished 60-minute performance was recorded using video and a 3D motion capture system. The data resulting from this recording approach was distributed to visual artists to use as material or starting point for their own works to be exhibited at the Kunsthalle Mainz. An accompanying installation by Motion Bank provided a graphical analysis of the final choreographic structure of Effect, alongside a detailed explication of its creation. This chapter describes in detail the dance documentation approaches practised by Motion Bank, in particular the role of live-annotation in the studio and the development of a specific arts practice-based terminology that emerges from this context. The results are applicable to other data recordings, and the article also describes the particular motion capture technology involved in this project. This includes in-depth discussion of the strategies required to ensure significant connections are maintained with the documented artistic source material. In conclusion, the authors draw attention to the history of related choreographic documentation projects working with dance data, suggesting the cumulative potential research value of such projects can now be realised more fully.

DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003106401-7

Ever since its approval following the first bidding round in 2020, the consortium of the National Research Data Infrastructure Germany (NFDI) for research data on material and immaterial culture (NFDI4Culture) has linked different actors and institutions in the fields of architecture, art theory and history, film and media studies, musicology, performing arts and the GLAM sector. It is organised as a participatory, community-based and flexible consortium. The work programme and the internal structure of the consortium are oriented towards the research data life cycle. This article describes five case studies of the successful development projects, presenting them as examples of the diversity within the consortium.

DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3196/1864295020691258

Der Beitrag setzt sich mit der Rolle des Zufalls für die Herausbildung von Gesetzmäßigkeiten auseinander, um einen kritischen Blick auf die normalisierende Wirkung der Verwendung von Zufallstechniken in künstlerischen Schaffensprozessen zu werfen. Anhand einer neu entwickelten Webanwendung für den Einsatz im Rahmen eines schulischen Tanzangebots – in Anlehnung an die Verwendung von generativer Software durch Choreografen wie Merce Cunningham und Wayne McGregor – werden Potenziale und Probleme der implementierten Zufallsverfahren für die kulturelle Bildung diskutiert.

Link:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-32079-9_14

In the last decade, interdisciplinary research projects focused on the documentation and study of choreography and dance including Transmedia Knowledge Base (TKB) and Motion Bank used annotation as a major part of their approach to both analyses of time-based media recordings and presentation of research results. Researchers from both projects continue to develop the methods, approaches and in some cases software platforms supporting annotation of dance recordings. More recently, the Wholodance H2020 project has developed an annotation tool for use in their research aimed at developing and applying technologies to dance. Additionally, several of the MOCO 2017 papers included annotation ‘by experts’ in their research design. With all of these developments, much is still to be discovered and understood about dance annotation. Therefore, the authors of this Practice Works proposal, several who are involved in the projects mentioned above, propose a two-hour workshop to take place during MOCO 2018 in Genoa. This workshop will give the opportunity to try out and compare software platforms and tools, and discuss and debate annotation practice, products and coding schemes. The workshop will be open to another 10-15 interested MOCO attendees making up a total of 20 or 25 people.

Link:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344407080_MOCO18_Annotation_Workshop

In early 2014, the first funded phase of Motion Bank came to a close with the publication of the so called on-line scores of the guest choreographers Deborah Hay, Jonathan Burrows/ Matteo Fargion, Thomas Hauert and Bebe Miller. Planning immediately commenced to continue the project, but with a more visible focus on creative research and development of Motion Bank’s open software systems for recording and data management, annotation and on-line publication (PMa, PM2 and MoSys). Now hosted @ Hochschule Mainz University of Applied Sciences, Motion Bank is working with a small team of coding artists developing these systems. One of these, Anton Koch, is an artist, researcher and developer based in Germany.1 PART ONE of Dance Becoming Data emphasises the role of dialogue between collaborating software and dance artist/ researchers on topics such as processes and contexts, critical and cultural histories. This exchange becomes even more essential today in the context of 21st century developments in digital and networked media; as the following conversation aims to illuminate.

Link:
http://computationalculture.net/dance-becoming-data-part-two-conversation-between-anton-koch-and-scott-delahunta/