Day 3, Stream 4
Chairs
Margie Medlin & Garth Paine
Participants
Margie Medlin
Garth Paine
Myriam Gourfink
Kasper Toeplitz
Paul Gazzola
Paul Granjon
Carol Brown
Anne Niemitz
ABSTRACT
The Sustainability of Future Bodies roundtable brings together artists working with digital technologies in movement and dance, to discuss ways in which electronic art can extend the physical body through choreography and performance. Hosted by Critical Path, a choreographic research centre based in Sydney (criticalpath.org.au), and chaired by interactive media artist Garth Paine (activatedspace.com), this discussion will ask: How might the body be transformed through an interface with machine? What systems, strategies and practices are being invented/employed? Where might the performer’s agency be located when engaging with interactive technologies? What kinds of future bodies are being performed?
Presenting artists will include Myriam Gourfink (FR) and Kasper Toeplitz (FR/PL), whose Breathing Monster features in the performance program of ISEA2013, and Paul Gazzola (AU) and Paul Granjon (FR/UK) talking about their Experimental Body Extension Manufacturing Unit (ebemu.com). This roundtable runs alongside a workshop series facilitated by the artists, presented by Critical Path and ISEA2013 in partnership with Performance Space.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Garth Paine is an Associate Professor at the School of Art Media and Engineering and the School of Music at Arizona State University. He is internationally regarded as an innovator in the field of interactivity in experimental music and media arts. His work has been shown throughout Australia, Europe, Japan, USA, Hong Kong, Korea and New Zealand. www.activatedspace.com
Margie Medlin is currently the Director of Critical Path. She is an internationally recognised leading artist in the field of dance and the moving image. For 20 years she has produced combinations of film and video works, multi screen works, lighting designs, set designs, projection designs and new media art works.
Myriam Gourfink is known for her extremely unusual writing, based on Kinetography Laban, as well as her close connection with contemporary music and new digital technologies. Previously the director of the Center for Choreographic Research and Composition (CRCC) at the Royaumont Foundation near Paris, Gourfink is a leading figure in choreographic research in France. She has featured as guest speaker at numerous international festivals. www.myriam-gourfink.com
As a composer and electric bass player, Kasper Toeplitz has developed a body of work in the no-man’s-land between ‘academic’ electronic composition and sheer noise. Known for collaborating with such unclassifiable musicians as Zbigniew Karkowski, Dror Feiler, Art Zoyd, Eliane Radigue, Phill Niblock and Ulrich Krieger, Toeplitz makes use of the computer both as a real instrument and as a tool for reflecting on music differently, transforming the musical parameters of pitch data and temporality. www.sleazeart.com
Anne Niemetz is a media artist working in the fields of wearable technology, interactive installation and audio-visual design in general. She is particularly fascinated by the convergence of art, science, design and technology, and she pursues collaborative and cross-disciplinary projects. Anne holds a Media Arts degree from the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, with a focus in digital media and interactive sound installation, and an MFA in Design|Media Arts from the University of California Los Angeles. Since 2007 she’s been living and working in New Zealand, where she holds the position of Senior Lecturer and Programme Director in the Media Design programme at Victoria University of Wellington. www.adime.de
Paul Gazzola has an interdisciplinary practice spanning over 20 years across arts, architecture, choreography, curation, installation, performance, scenography, video and theory. He was coordinating provocateur for the 2010/11 Splendid Arts Lab and co-curated Return to Sender at Performance Space, Sydney. www.paulgazzola.blogspot.com.au
Paul Granjon is a recognised media art and performance artist working with self-made machines. He has worked for the Cardiff School of Art and Design since 1995, where he looks at the co-evolution of humans and machines, and robots in performance. He represented Wales at the Venice Biennale in 2005. www.zprod.org
