Presentation at Somatics Conference, Coventry University, England, 2012

1. Professor Ludmila Pimentel
School of Dance at Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, Dean of
Electric Cyberdance Research Group at LaPAC
Laboratory, Brazil, Postdoctoral studies and Professor
Collaborator at xm: Lab, Hochschule der Bildenden Künste
Saar, Germany, with CAPES sponsorship, and Partner of Slash
Lab Amsterdam
Doctor Mirella Misi
Independent artist and researcher. Founder of Slash Art Tech
Lab, Amsterdam. Partner of Electric Cyberdance Research Group
at LaPAC Laboratory, Brazil.
ALLEGRA SNYDER AND GRETCHEN SCHILLER
INTERFACES: AN APPLICATION OF MERLEAU-
PONTY S CONCEPT OF EMBODIMENT FOR
CINEDANCE AND MEDIADANCE CATEGORIES

2. ABSTRACT
• In the 60's of the 20th century, Allegra Fuller Snyder presented
three categories of interfaces between dance and film, one of
them the cinedance. In 2004, Gretchen Schiller uses the term
mediadance to refer to art practices that integrate digital
technology and electronic media into choreographic work.
• This paper develops the main idea that this kind of art and new
categories begin and return to the body, promoting in last
instance new sensual experiences for the contemporary
body, and still checking the notion of embodiment involved in
this processes.

3. ALLEGRA FULLER SNYDER
PROFESSOR EMERITA OF DANCE AND FORMER DIRECTOR
OF THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN DANCE ETHNOLOGY AT UCLA/ SYNERGETICS SYMPOSIUM 2005

4. GRETCHEN SCHILLER MOTION CAPTURE
BODY, AMUC PROJECT.

5. MERLEAU-PONTY

6. • What are the forms of embodiment that cinedance
and mediadance categories promote?

7. DOTSDANCE(2004) BY LUDMILA PIMENTEL AND FLOR
LIBERATO

8. • It is our intention to deepen some reflections on the relationship
between dance, film and video by composing and uniting some
theoretical propositions made by world-renowned names in this
theme, as the references of Professor Alegra Fuller Snyder and
Professor Gretchen Schiller. We are also interested in
proposing the idea that these new categories generate new
kinds of bodies, so in this way we choose to revisit Maurice
Merlau-Ponty‟s thoughts on phenomenology of perception for
theoretical support to reflect upon the forms of embodiment that
these categories promotes.

9. INTRODUCTION
• According to Professor Allegra Fuller Snyder "it is often said
that dance is ephemeral and therefore eludes documentation.
The reality is that dance is multidimensional, perhaps the most
complex of all expressive forms"(1), therefore it multiplies in
shapes and possibilities. In this sense, film or video are not
considered only as media but also as art forms, which on the
intersection with dance generates new art categories with their
own nature and language, as the example of videodance and
more recently screen-based dance.
• See: www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub84/documentation.html

10. BILLY ELLIOT.LFA(2005) BY LUDMILA PIMENTEL

11. BILLY ELLIOT.LFA(2005) BY LUDMILA PIMENTEL

12. • The first dance films were made by ethnographers and
choreographers for their own use and research, they used film
as resorts to document non-choreographed traditional and
popular forms of dance. One of the important examples we can
mention, that connect the world of cinema and ethnography, is
the partnership of the anthropologist Pearl Primus with the
choreographer Katherine Dunham (between the years 1930 to
1940). In the interface between dance and film, Maya Deren is
one of the pioneers, with a vast experimental production (from
1943 to 1985), playing an innovative role on those times and
still influencing contemporary artists.

13. MAYA DEREN

14. ALEGRA FULLER SNYDER S CATEGORIES
• In the 60‟s of the 20th century, Snyder (2) proposes three
different categories of dance in its interface with film and video.
The first category is simple recording: this is the video
recording of a dance piece in its stage format, that is to say, the
choreography was designed primarily to be performed by
human body dancers in a fixed time, in a theatre, for an
audience. The choreography is not composed for video but for
live dance performance and is recorded with a single camera
that registers a single point of view.
• A. F. Snyder, “Three kinds of Dance Film”, Dance
Magazine, vol. 39, pp. 34-39, 1965.

15. ALEGRA FULLER SNYDER S CATEGORIES
• The second one is dance film documentary, in which the
choreography, although keeps fidelity to the dance narrative, is
adapted to filmic language by the use of several
cameras, close-ups, differentiated shots, and other technical
possibilities of film capturing and editing. This allows a deeper
exploration of the interface between dance and film in the
production of videodance and short films

16. • finally, cinedance, the most complex of the three
categories because it is in this category that Snyder
proposes experiments and artistic works which
present new body types: bodies that exercise
themselves in transcending the biological
possibilities of the human body architecture, no
longer submitted to the laws of gravity, generating
new dancing body configurations. Snyder states that
this category offers opportunity for intense
experimentation and introduces a new basis for the
creation of a new art.

17. ELECTRIC BODY(2000-2006) BY ELECTRIC CYBERDANCE
RESEARCH GROUP

18. ELECTRIC BODY(2000-2006) BY ELECTRIC CYBERDANCE
RESEARCH GROUP

19. • We propose that Cinedance includes the
contemporary artwork productions that use computer
graphics software, video-editing, 3D animation and
any other sort of digital technology for moving
images. It includes as well the telematics dance
works, interactive dance and Live-Motion Capture. It
is in this category that the digital bodies appear,
configured by special effects and endowed with
qualities that are impossible for human physiology.

20. • The bodies generated by the film industry and all
current editing features, allowing the representation
of bodies endowed with the ability to fly, spin
horizontally, rotate numerous times without fatigue
and without losing balance, and so on, are also part
of the cinedance category, as we see in films such as
The Matrix (1999), House of Flying Daggers
(2004), between many others or yet with dance
works fully created on digital platforms with
animation software such as
Lifeforms, Maya, Poser, Blender, 3DStudio and
Motion Builder.

21. THE MATRIX (1999)

22. HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (2004)

23. • Many of these experiments invite the public to move
through various locations and nuances of the
movement, as for example proposed in interactive
installations based on movement or in dance
performances that require the audience body to
interfere in order to be configured or seen.

24. I(NTERACTIVE) ARCH BODIES (2007-2010) BY LUDMILA
PIMENTEL AND MARIANA CARRANZA

25. I(NTERACTIVE) ARCH BODIES (2007-2010) BY LUDMILA
PIMENTEL AND MARIANA CARRANZA

26. • Snyder considers that the new possibilities of cinedance invite
and bring the body of the public audience closer and more into
the transformative experience of dance; even if the audience is
sometimes positioned in fixed places, watching cinedance gives
you the opportunity to dance internally, "feeling and moving" to
and through virtual and real ambients, in a proposition that
introduces alternative forms of kinesthetic perception of
"space, dimensions, depth, non-gravity, time, motion, and also
an expansion of a new logic, rhythm and reality”(3).
• A.F.Snyder, op.cit.

27. I(NTERACTIVE) ARCH BODIES (2007-2010) BY LUDMILA
PIMENTEL AND MARIANA CARRANZA

28. • And what would be mediadance?

29. • Mediadance is a term coined by Gretchen Schiller to
designate a category of art that encompasses all
contemporary dance works in which the digital
elements are integrated with the choreographic
elements as a compositional component and
explores innovative forms of representation of the
body as well as the expansion of body perception. It
can include interactivity in its experiments.

30. For Gretchen Schiller [4] mediadance is one of the
many forms of art that integrate computer-based
technologies, including interactive art, net art,
virtual reality, technologically mediated
performances and videogames. It is, therefore, an
extensive category that embraces different types of
artistic objects and several configuration forms of
interfaces between dance and digital technology.
• G. H. Schiller, The kinesfield: a study of movement-based
interactive and choreographic art, University of Plymouth: School
of Computing, Faculty of Technology. England: University of
Plymouth, 2003.

31. • We can consider together with Schiller that the work of Loie
Fuller represented a breakthrough in Dance History, in the
late nineteenth century.
• Fuller used lights not just to make the scene visible but also
to create atmospheres; she used artifacts to extend and
multiply her body image, or even to transform it into
animated shapes:
• “the particularity of Fuller's extension, projection and
technologically - altered body sets a historical precedent for
movement-based interactive installations in terms of the way
in which screens, media and body together trans-figure
embodiment through processes of technological-mediation
and alter and or extend the medium of the body” [5]. By
doing so, Fuller brought a new and revolutionary concept of
body into the world of dance, which is now widely explored
and implemented within the realm of mediadance.
• G. H. Schiller, op. cit., pp.114..

33. • In the contemporary dance interface with digital
technologies, there are several types of experiments that can
serve as examples of the concept of mediadance proposed by
Schiller:
• David Rokeby, in his work Body Concert for two
cities(1986), constructed a kind of “magnetic field” (with three
cameras, some sensors and a computer) which resonated with
the passage of a body,
• Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Bill Kluver, Robert
Rauschenberg, in the Variations V (1965),

34. • In the 80 's of the 20th century, a group of researchers in
graphic interfaces of the Simon Fraser University
(Canada), led by Thomas Calvert and Thecla Schiphorst
(a graphic designer who previously worked as a
professional dancer) developed the computer program
“Lifeforms”
• Michael Noll (6), who in 1966 wrote the first motion
graphic software. It was a platform electronically sensitive
in which written numbers were translated into animated
figures shown as body-toothpicks (sticks). The body-
toothpicks appeared on the screen immediately after the
numbers were written, i.e., in real time.
M. Noll, “Choreography and Computers”, Dance Magazine, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Art Alliance, 1966 e
M. Noll, “The Beginnings of Computer Art in the United States”, Leonardo Almanac, pp. 39-44, 1994.

35. • The examples of works that fits in Snyder‟s
mediadance category are widespread, and include a
huge variety of formats: digital dance created with
the use of software that enables real-time
interactivity with the movement of the
performer, such as “Isadora”, developed by Troika
Ranch Dance Theater (USA) or “Eyecon” developed
by Palindrome Intermedia Performance Group
(Germany);

36. • Dance CD-ROM, as Improvisation Technologies
(1999) created by William Forsythe, Frankfurt Ballet
and the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany;
• the works of telematics dance developed more
intensely after the late 90‟s, and mentioned by Sita
Popat and Jacqueline Smith-Autard (7), Bytes of
Bryant Park (1997), by Stephan Koplowitz;
Progressive 2 (1996) by Richard Lord and Maggie s
love Bytes (1996) by Amanda Steggell as well as
other more recent developed by Konic Thtr;
• S. Popat, J. Smith-Autard, “Dance-making on the Internet: Can on-line choreographic projects
foster creativity in the User-Participant?”, Leonard Journal of the Internacional Society for the
Arts, Sciences and Technology, vol. 35, no. 01, pp. 31-36, 2002.

37. • and interactive digital dance and screen-based
dance as the works of Frieder Weiss, Chris
Ziegler, Johannes Birringer and Alien co., the Slash
Lab group, Electric Cyberdance Research Group and
the OpenEnded group…

38. 4DREAMING(2012), SLASH GROUP AMSTERDAM

39. • Schiller illustrates in her thesis how the interface of
the body with the digital technologies interpolates
layers, passes through materiality, and thus becomes
a new composition of other dynamic materials and
media, reconfiguring itself. Agreeing with Schiller‟s
proposition we would still have to reflect about this
new corporeal stage, about the contemporary body
that falls within the category of
mediadance, revisiting Merleau-Ponty‟s concept of
embodiment.

40. First of all, we have to ask ourselves, what is the body
of mediadance?

41. • In our understanding, the body of mediadance proposed
by Schiller is not much different, in essence, of the body
of a dancer performer on physical stage
• She uses as reference Eugênio Barba‟s concept of the
„fictive body‟ on theatre to define the dancing body. The
„fictive body‟ is a “psychophysical technique by which the
performer creates a network of external sensations in
reaction to physical gestures”(8) To create the conditions
for a fictive embodiment` it is necessary to alter the
“mood state”, what means, to recall imagination and
memories to create an internal reality (diverse from the
ordinary live reality), in which the “fictive body” takes the
lead.
• G. H. Schiller, op. cit., pp.50.

42. • Further, Schiller’s develops the idea of the “dancing body” as a
“body-medium”, based on Rudolph Laban’s notion of
”kinesphere” (in which he engages movement and space as a
medium) and Birdwhistell’s notion of “kinesics” (“movement
transactions” of the body in its environment, body language) to
apply to her concept of “kinesfield”, which describes what we
consider here the type of embodiment that occurs in
mediadance performance, an intertwined body-space
experience in which temporality is unfolded in multimodal
relational dynamics. And it is in this aspect that we can relate
the body-medium of mediadance with the concept of field of
Merleau-Ponty.

43. • “The world is not an object such that I have in my
possession the law of its making; it is the natural
setting of, a field for, all my thoughts and all my
explicit perceptions” (9)
Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, Northwestern University
Press, Introduction,1969.

44. • For Merleau-Ponty, the space surrounding the body is a
continuum of the body, or the “fleshspace”
• “Fleshspace” , for us, describes the interconnection between the
body and space

45. “That means that my body is made of the same flesh as the
world, and moreover that this flesh of my body is shared by the
world, the world reflects it, encroaches upon/invade it and it
encroaches upon/invade the world (…) they are in a relation of
transgression or of overlapping” (10)
Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, Northwestern University Press, pp.248,1969.

46. • Laban/ Kinesphere
• Schiller/ Kinesfield
• Merleau-Ponty/ Fleshspace

47. • Merleau-Ponty dismantled dichotomies as form/content or
interior/exterior, and insisted that we give meaning to things
through a corporeal and behavioral path and therefore, the
perceived world (perception) is the original instance through
which we apprehend the inter-subjective world.
• For Merleau-Ponty, the subject of perception is the body and
not the consciousness. That is why the subject is not the
source of the sense, but just gathers a sense already given by
the phenomena. However, if we perceive with the body, this
means that the body is not the thing, but that the body collects
a sense on the thing that is presented to it.

48. KITCUBODANCE(2011) BY ELECTRIC CYBERDANCE
RESEARCH GROUP

49. • For Merleau-Ponty, the body comprises the logic of
the world beyond the perceived and fixed in the here
and now.

50. • Therefore, for Merleau-Ponty, perception is always
informed by what he calls a “body schema” (schéma
corporel), which is a condition of cognition, as
embodiment is a condition for being in the world. “I
am conscious of my body via the world,” he says,
just as “I am conscious of the world through the
medium of my body”(11)
• Body as medium
• M. MERLEAU-PONTY, op. cit., pp.82.

51. • Our body is "our general means of being-in-the
world. Sometimes the body limits itself to act the
necessary gestures for the preservation of life
and, correlatively, put around us a biological world;
another times, by playing with its first gestures and
passing from its own sense to a figurative sense, the
body expresses through gestures a new core of
signification: this is the case of motoric habits such
as dancing”(12)
• M. MERLEAU-PONTY, op. cit., pp.203.

52. • We attempt here to apply Merleau-Ponty‟s concept of
body to mediadance and propose the body as a
“fleshspace”, a sort of „network‟ that crosses through
everything and is transversed by everything; in
mediadance the body crosses over different media
and technologies and is also transversed and
reconfigured by it. We suggest there must exist no
antagonism between body and technology.

53. CONCLUSION
• We propose that mediadance category (Schiller)
updates cinedance category (Snyder)
• We believe that in the new architecture of
mediadance category there is an implicit
philosophical condition that enables us to be
harmonic within the spatial context that we live, in
which we are immersed; this is a performative
relational architecture that invites participation and
comprises the digital.

54. • Each of these experiences and creations developed
by choreographers in the category of
mediadance, form a new field of studies open to
analysis and aesthetic evaluation of this new
interface.

55. • We conclude that the unprecedented forms of
transiting in hybrid reality environments that emerge
with the new technological possibilities of
contemporary culture demand a close and deep
reflection not only on the kind of embodiment that
they promote, but as well on the new forms of
significations that the embodiment upheaves, as the
experience of “being-in-the-world” acquires a
different quality with the incorporation of different
forms of relationship between time, space and body.

56. • Our proposal was to revisit Merleau-Ponty‟s
concept of embodiment, together with Schiller
theorethical basis of mediadance and
kinesfield to update this theoretical context.

57. embodiment Schiller body fleshspace Merleau-Ponty body
concept mediabody Snyder cinedance Schiller concept em
kinesfield kinesphere Laban Schiller Merleau-Ponty body bo
categories spacetime fleshspace bodydance dancebody
concept
Fuller Maya Deren film dance video categories embodiment
Merleau-Ponty body categories kinesfield Gretchen Loie
body Ludmila Mirella Pimentel Misi Electric Slash body lab body
Schiller body fleshspace dance kinesphere Laban mediadance