Speculative annotation on human dance improvisations and their digital configurations

ABSTRACT

This research article introduces speculative annotation as a way of witnessing the dancing body and researching its possible becomings beyond its human materiality. Several dancers improvised in front of a film as well as a Kinect depth camera, hence each improvisation was recorded and archived in two versions: the raw recording and a digitally reconfigured version where the human figure was captured as a blob, i.e. a monochromatic shape. Speculative dance annotation was realised in Piecemaker for both of those versions with regard to the changing shape of the body, human or digital accordingly, in order to observe the differences between the two. What word associations are triggered while annotating a blob compared to annotating an evidently human figure? A glossary was created after gathering all the annotation terms and concepts in a systematised format in order to further encourage and facilitate the speculative thinking of the dancing body as a container that can accommodate other-than-human substances.

KEYWORDS:

• dance annotation
• speculative annotation
• other-than-human body

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the participants of the research Stathis Doganis (camera), Pagona Boulmpasakou (dancer), Danae Pazirgiannidi (dancer) and Angelos Papadopoulos (dancer).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eirini Kalaitzidi

Eirini Kalaitzidi is an independent dance and computational artist. Her practise is situated within the field of Feminist Technoscience, exploring the spaces where human and nonhuman bodies, environments and technologies are mutually affective and more than ever intertwined. Eirini studied at the Greek National School of Dance and graduated from the Computational Arts (MA) Department of Goldsmiths University of London. She has presented her works in Athens and London and has been invited to talk regarding Art and Artificial Intelligence at the Human Data Interaction Workshop (Somerset House, 2019). Among other residential programmes, she has been a resident in ICST Zhdk (Zurich, 2020) in the research area of Immersive Arts as well as in the Choreographic Coding Lab (Dansmakers, 2019). She has performed in various productions in Peiraios 260 and Megaron among other stages of Athens and has worked as a choreographer and an assistant choreographer in productions of Athens & Epidaurus Festival and Onassis Cultural Centre. For 2020–2021, Eirini is an ARTWORKS Fellow, awarded by Stavros Niarchos Foundation.