Mediated Performance Festival: 2008 - Smith College Preliminary description (subject to change)

Overview This festival will explore contemporary performance practice and the complex relationships between performance and current technologies. While the use of computation is increasingly pervasive in various forms of live performance, the implications and potential of this technology is far from resolved, and often goes unquestioned. This festival will present various performance ensembles that are grappling with the challenges of computer-mediated performance, while also providing an opportunity for dialogue and inquiry.

Structure The festival will consist of at least two evening performances, most likely in the Hallie Flanagan Theatre. One night will focus on dance / theatrical performance, while the other night will be primarily a music / sound / image event. During one day of the festival, various members of the performing ensembles will discuss their work, and also participate in a panel discussion. The presentations and panel discussions will explore the conceptual and technical concerns encountered when using computers in a performance setting. What does computation bring to the diverse practices associated with live performance, and what unique possibilities does it enable? How does computer mediation impact the role and behavior of the human performers, and what types of relationships are available? What are the possible roles for the computer in a performance context? (obedient servant, alter ego, autonomous participant, antagonistic disruptor, any or all of the above?) In addition to these complex conceptual questions, specific design and technical approaches will be discussed and / or demonstrated by the presenters.

Rough Schedule (dates may change, but will be in mid / late April) April 10: 10-4, load in / tech for evening performance. 8pm performance April 11: 10-12, artist presentations. 2-4, Panel discussions. 6pm reception / dinner April 12: 10-4, load in / tech for evening performance. 8pm performance

Possible Performers / presenters Jamie Jewitt (http://www.lostwax.org/) Jonah Bokaer (http://www.chezbushwick.net/jonah_bokaer.html) Princeton Laptop Orchestra (http://plork.cs.princeton.edu/) Interface Performance Ensemble (http://www.arts.rpi.edu/crb/interface/) Jamie Jewett - Lost Wax Multimedia Dance Ensemble Artistic Director Jamie Jewett holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Arts, Movement and Buddhist Studies from The Naropa Institute, and an MFA in Dance and Technology from the Ohio State University. Jewett has studied technique and choreography with Diane Butler, Wally Cardona, Barbara Dilley, Susan Hadley, Mia Lawrence, Ralph Lemon, Bebe Miller, Mark Morris, Polly Motley, Suprapto Suryodarmo, and Victoria Uris, as well as Alexander technique with Shelly Senter, Klein technique with Barbara Mahler and Butoh with Joan Laage and Master Artists Koichi and Hiroko Tamano. He has performed at the Joyce Theatre as a company member of Popo and The Go Go Boys, as well as in works by Bebe Miller, David Rousseve and others. He has choreographed, performed and taught in Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Texas and Vermont, as well as Bali, Java and Nepal. Jewett founded Circledance Productions in 1995. A certified teacher of the Shambhala Dharma Arts, Jewettʼs work is deeply influenced by immersion in Asian Culture and Eastern philosophy of composition. This intercultural process is reflected in his multimedia video-dance works, which blend popular cinematic vernacular with post-modern dance forms. Thus his works such as Snowblind (commissioned by IMMEDIA for the University of Michigan, 2002), Kindly Bent to Ease Us(2001), Portage(1998), Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts(1999), and as far back to the evening length works Glyph (1996), A Cloud In Trousers (1997) and Eulogy for Percival (1992) utilize projections of still and cinematic imagery coupled with live closed-circuit video. In addition to performance dance works, Jewett is actively involved in multimedia dance and technology documentation. Jewett seeks to examine the visceral cusp between installation, performance space and narrative through the use of technology. In 2000, Jewett was awarded a grant from USINDO (the US Indonesian Foundation) enabling him to accept an invitation to apprentice with Suprapto Suryodarmo, a contemporary Indonesian Master of dance, ritual performance and installation art. Through this relationship Jewett has taught and performed at a variety of festivals and colloquiums in Java and Bali as well as in New York and Boulder, CO. This in-depth study helped lay the ground for Jewettʼs synthesis of Buddhism, technology, and postmodern dance, a praxis embodying how seemingly disparate research directions can manifest in relevant and mindful works.

Jonah Bokaer - Media Artist and Choreographer is an award-winning media artist and choreographer. A graduate of North Carolina School of the Arts, Bokaer is a presently employed as a professional member of the Dance Company (2000-2007). At the unprecedented age of 18, Bokaer was invited by Cunningham to join the company, and remains the youngest dancer ever hired in the 55-year history of Cunningham's dance ensemble. Additionally, Bokaer has worked with John Jasperse (2004-2005), David Gordon (2005-2006), (2005), and has also interpreted the choreography of George Balanchine as restaged by Melissa Hayden. While studying Visual & Media Art at University, Bokaer also began exploring digital media to produce movement, and has developed a rare, multi- disciplinary body of work that addresses the human body in relation to contemporary technologies. His work has been presented widely throughout venues in the United States and abroad, including , Dance Theatre Workshop, Danspace Project, Dixon Place, La Mama ETC, P.S. 122, Symphony Space, the ISB (Bangkok), Naxos Bobine, Studio Théâtre de Vitry, and La Générale (Paris), Les Subsistances (Lyon), La Compagnie (Marseille), and OT301 (Amsterdam). Bokaer has been further honored with a Human Rights Award (Public Volunteerism, 2000), a fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Dance & Media, 2005-2006). He is also the inaugural recipient of the Gallery Installation Fellowship from Dance Theater Workshop (2007), and re received one of four national Dance/Access Scholarships from Dance/USA, with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2007). Additionally, Bokaer was recently honored with a Special Citation by the New York Dance & Performance/BESSIE Awards (2007), for the arts organization Chez Bushwick. Princeton Laptop Orchestra – Computer Music Ensemble The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) is a newly established ensemble of computer-based musical meta-instruments. Each instrument consists of a laptop, a multi-channel hemispherical speaker, and a variety of control devices (keyboards, graphics tablets, sensors, etc...). The students who make up the ensemble act as performers, researchers, composers, and software developers. The challenges are many: what kinds of sounds can we create? how can we physically control these sounds? how do we compose with these sounds? There are also social questions with musical and technical ramifications: how do we organize a dozen players in this context? with a conductor? via a wireless network? In its first year of PLOrk's existence, composers and performers from Princeton and elsewhere developed new pieces for this unprecedented ensemble, including Paul Lansky (Professor of Music at Princeton), Brad Garton (Director of the Columbia Computer Music Center), PLOrk co-founders Dan Trueman and Perry Cook, and several graduate students. We have made extensive use of a new music programming language created by Princeton graduate student Ge Wang called ChucK, which allows the performers to develop new code in performance. In our first major performance (April 2006, Richardson Auditorium) we were joined by the renowned tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, legendary accordianist and composer Pauline Oliveros, and the exciting young percussion quartet from New York City, So Percussion. PLOrk was featured in the April issues of the MIT Press Technology Review and Wired Magazine, and performed at the Dartmouth College "Orchestras of Sameness" festival in May 2006.

Interface –Computer Music Duo Interactive computer music improvisation duo "interface" creates sonic textures ranging from delicate imperceptible noise to a high energy wall of sound. They have extended, surrounded, and obscured their electric stringed instruments with a variety of technologies, creating an organic, gesturally powerful computer music. Curtis plays the SBass, a 5-string "vertical bass" (like an acoustic bass with no body) fitted with electrical pickups, motion, touch and pressure sensors which allow him to "drive" his computer during performance. Dan plays a 6- string electric violin and an electric bow of his own design; the RBow is a normal violin bow covered with motion and pressure sensors that send performance information to Dan's computer performance system. Their instruments are dynamic, changing constantly from performance to performance and within performances. Interface has a commitment to free- improvisation and electronic music composition. They create real-time sonic environments in performance which combine pre-composed electronic sounds with real-time digital signal processing, synthesis, algorithmic composition, and sampling. Dan and Curtis are joined by dancer Tomie Hahn on shakuhachi, and performing interactive dance/electronic music compositions such as "Streams," and "Pikapika" done in collaboration with Curtis Bahn. Hahn is a musician and dancer trained in Japanese traditional dance (Nihon Buyo) and contemporary performance. Interface has performed throughout the Northeast and abroad, recently appearing at Engine 27, Tonic, the New York Interactive Music Festival at the Kitchen sponsored by Columbia University, the International Computer Music Festival in Thessaloniki, Greece, SEAMUS, and the International Society of Bassists World Convention. They have given lectures and concerts at major academic institutions including Brown, UMBC, Princeton, Peabody, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the MIT Media Lab, and the Computer Music Center of Columbia University and they have presented their novel approaches to sonic display and gestural musical control at ICMC, NIME, CHI2001, SEAMUS and the ASA national conference.