Research

This page concerns my PhD research in Middlesex University

DANCE PERFORMANCE IN CYBERSPACE  / transfer and transformation

My thesis focuses on new media dance artworks that are instantiated in intangible ‘places’. I take advantage of the broad spectrum of practices the term cyberspace can accommodate, considering this to be a navigable space enabled by computers (portable or desktop) where the audience can choose a path to steer through content. The artworks can configure as web-based, smartphone or tablet apps, and installations of networked spaces; I intentionally excluded stage performance and dance films, in order to concentrate on a marginal, and yet emergent area of artistic practice, which appears to be underdeveloped, considering the ubiquitous power of computer technology in our culture. However, I often place the views and findings about new media performance in relation with those of live performance.

The literature review includes a discussion that gathers new media, dance and performance studies, in order to define a body of related theory and set criteria for critical analysis of the current practice.

The research follows the work of some key artist-researchers as case studies that have been developing dance projects with digital technology such as Cie Mulleras and n+n corsino in France or the research collective Body-Data-Space and Joseph Hyde based in the UK.

As a theoretical model I propose to see the artworks appearing in this context as the result of a migration process of performance from real space into digital media, which challenges the principles of theatrical dance and their persistence or mutation in newer forms that are delivered through computer screens and that use interactive features. This approach aimed to understand what characterizes the identity of new media dance artworks in relation to the perceived origins of dance in stage performance. In this context I drew on the thesis of transfer and transformation, arguing that while we can observe clear genealogical traces, that can transfer to another medium, this is also the foundation of new canons to the fields of performance, dance, media and analysis, which are worth to explore and understand.

Throughout the research journey I have presented papers in several international conferences in Portugal and England, that are reported in this website.