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This thesis explores the creation of queer community and embodied connection through physical and digital spaces during Covid-19. The BodySleuth Project was an experiment in prototyping social somatic experiences - discovering the limitations and possibilities for technology to deepen social camaraderie and self awareness through movement. The BodySleuth Project was a transmedia dance theater game that incorporated live and pre-recorded performances and real time interactivity across a virtual world. Characters or “Guardians” acted as movement guides and story facilitators across the Gather.Town landscape of Rolyrbee Island. Players worked together across time zones and geographical space in their own homes to uncover tactile and digital clues and explore their own bodies. Participants occupied a completely queer universe that has been designed for and by an LGBTQIA+ community.
ContributorsLindegren, Ri (Author) / Standley, Eileen (Thesis advisor) / Rajko, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Coleman, Grisha (Committee member) / Hayes, Lauren (Committee member) / Pinholster, Jake (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Wittgenstein’s claim: anytime something is seen, it is necessarily seen as something, forms the philosophical foundation of this research. I synthesize theories and philosophies from Simondon, Maturana, Varela, Wittgenstein, Pye, Sennett, and Reddy in a research process I identify as a paradigm construction project. My personal studio practice of inventing experiential media systems is a key part of this research and illustrates, with practical examples, my philosophical arguments from a range of points of observation. I see media systems as technical objects, and see technical objects as structurally determined systems, in which the structure of the system determines its organization. I identify making, the process of determining structure, as a form of structural coupling and see structural coupling as a means of knowing material. I introduce my theory of conceptual plurifunctionality as an extension to Simondon’s theory. Aspects of materiality are presented as a means of seeing material and immaterial systems, including cultural systems. I seek to answer the questions: How is structure seen as determining the organization of systems, and making seen as a process in which the resulting structures of technical objects and the maker are co-determined? How might an understanding of structure and organization be applied to the invention of contemporary experiential media systems?
ContributorsLahey, Byron (Author) / Burleson, Winslow (Thesis advisor) / Xin Wei, Sha (Committee member) / Collins, Daniel (Committee member) / Paine, Garth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
When dancers are granted agency over music, as in interactive dance systems, the actors are most often concerned with the problem of creating a staged performance for an audience. However, as is reflected by the above quote, the practice of Argentine tango social dance is most concerned with participants internal experience and their relationship to the broader tango community. In this dissertation I explore creative approaches to enrich the sense of connection, that is, the experience of oneness with a partner and complete immersion in music and dance for Argentine tango dancers by providing agency over musical activities through the use of interactive technology. Specifically, I create an interactive dance system that allows tango dancers to affect and create music via their movements in the context of social dance. The motivations for this work are multifold: 1) to intensify embodied experience of the interplay between dance and music, individual and partner, couple and community, 2) to create shared experience of the conventions of tango dance, and 3) to innovate Argentine tango social dance practice for the purposes of education and increasing musicality in dancers.
ContributorsBrown, Courtney Douglass (Author) / Paine, Garth (Thesis advisor) / Feisst, Sabine (Committee member) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017