Interfacing Dance and Technology: Towards a Theoretical Framework for Dance in the Digital Domain

Towards contributing to understand and organize the multiplicity of production within what can be identified as contemporary dance and technology, dancetech, I want to propose a theoretical framework rooted in the notion of interface. This framework aims at analyzing the work being produced by this emerging field integrating it in distinct but not mutually exclusive types of interface. Dance-tech interfaces are then perceived as the modes of experience and representation involved in the interaction between participants and elements constituting the works. Adapting representational modes to the intermedia realm, my approach to dance-tech is based in the experiential engagement between the participants (including the audience and the technological apparatus), and the concepts and practices concerning (the treatment of) different mediated languages, especially the body. This theoretical framework takes a critical standpoint in the exposure and fostering of alternatives to the perpetuation into the realm of digital technology of reductive and conservative ideas and practices about bodies and embodiments. Therefore, what I am interested in considering by interface is not only its physical and literal meaning but also how it is used to communicate the experiences and representations it generates. Incorporating various theoretical perspectives and my own experience in the field, in the development of this typology of dance-technology as interface I have identified prominent tendencies in contemporary artistic collaborations. Perceived primarily as a mode of experience and interpretation used to produce the work’s meaning to artists and audiences alike, I utilize the concept of interface on a methodological level, as a way to bridge the gap between practice and theory as I engage with dancing and writing alike. Interface allows a complex fluid approach between semiotics and phenomenology, entanglin