A lecture by Thomas F. DeFrantz, Slippage Director and Segal faculty fellow

 Monday, November 7, 2022 | 12:30 PM CT (virtual & in-person) 

Dance improvers who use technology in their craft constantly face challenges with human-computer interaction and the risk of mechanical failure. They also endure an overwhelming sense of unempathetic indifference to questions of social identity that provide the warp and woof of physical imagination.

This talk offers commentary on and analysis of these processes as they were realized by SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, a performance research group in residence at MIT from 2003 to 2011, and newly installed at the Segal Design Institute. Case studies include teaching tap dance to students in Singapore from a teleconference studio in Cambridge, MA; dancing improvised house music choreography while fitted with a wireless Miditron system that fed data that could control pitch, tempo, and playback for preselected audio files; creating motion-capture files of house dancing for use in a stage performance; improvising tap dancing on responsive floors that issued sound and video depending on the performer’s improvised step; and improvising with Wii controllers that repurposed photographic images onto specially constructed surfaces in real-time performance.

In each of these encounters, the terms of physical comprehension expanded and contracted, suggesting an every-where-ness and not-really-here-ness that deserves exploration. Exploring methods of improvising towards empathy, this talk will suggest ways in which dancing bodies redistribute energy in relation to impossible connectivities that are often not human and insistently unempathetic.