Oneness: Improvising in a Networked Environment
“...to improvise is to join with the World, or meld with it.”
-- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian
Massumi. Minneapolis: 1987. 311.
Background: RPM’s Remixed
 RPM’s Remixed
 A telematic, transdisciplinary improvisation piece performed over the course of a year,
based on remixing Alvin Lucier's RPM's score – integrating dance, video and sound
improvisation between artists in New York, Houston, Tampa, and Los Angeles.
Background: Kids Connect
 Kids Connect
 Kids Connect is a series of collaborative workshops for young people in multiple
locations, teaching them to connect and work together via performance, storytelling
and collaboration by theatrical and digital means. In our pilot program in summer 2006,
participants created a hybrid city and a performance with other students in New York
and Amsterdam on Kids Connect Island in the virtual world Second Life.
Background: Kids Connect
 Guided by artists and educators from theatre and digital arts, they learned skills like VJ-ing,
Playback Theatre, digital storytelling, and 3D modeling.
Oneness, improvisation and space
 When performers collaborate and improvise in a virtual space, a
“oneness” of space is opened and persists, regardless of the multiple
locations of physical performance
 Networked performance, in combination with improvisational structures,
can form a creative virtual space different from, yet as powerful as that
experienced in a physical space
Oneness, improvisation and space
 What do all performers around the world, despite their language and
cultural differences, share in common?
 Sats
Norwegian word describing quality of energy in the moment before an action
The action itself, post-Sats, is particular to the culture of the performer
The quality of energy before the action is what all performers share
 Indeterminacy: reliance upon one’s readiness to respond creates a
“tension” that resonates intimately among performers
Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Book. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2005. 73.
Immediacy and non-repeatability
 In a networked environment, the bonds that are created among
distributed performers resonate as strongly as those among performers in
a physical space – perhaps more so, as the virtual space encloses the
performance, even as it opens itself to performance.
 Simultaneous enclosing and opening of space
 As the shared virtual performance space remains open only for the
duration of the improvisational performance, performers are acutely
aware of its finitude
 The performance is conducted in a space of immediacy, non-repeatability.
Immediacy and non-repeatability
 Unpredictability provides a constant variable and creates for the
performer a continuum of “becoming,” which recalls that described by
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: “becoming as involutionary, becoming
as creative.”
 Mutual collaboration evokes the effect of space folding in upon itself as
distances collapse into a shared space.
 The human-computer-human exchange becomes, literally, in its
“becoming,” a palpable presence.
 The state of improvisation is a tenuous, yet continuous state of becoming:
immanence collectively experienced.
“Improvisation is a condition…Where, how and when is not the way
improvisation can be valued. It is valuable because you are doing it.”
-- Katie Duck
Duck, Katie. As quoted in Dialogues: on dance improvisation in performance. Nouvelles de Danse: On
the Edge/Createurs de L'imprevu. Ed. Agnès Benoit. Brussels: Contredanse, 1997. 249.
Emergence and possibility
 Brian Massumi, following Deleuze and Guattari, suggests that the virtual is
a mode of reality characterized by emergence of new potentials; its
reality is the reality of change: the event.
 Deleuze describes “l’espace quelconque,” the any-space-whatever, as a
space in which the pure locus of the possible exists.
Massumi, Brian. "Sensing the Virtual, Building the Insensible." Hypersurface Architecture (Architectural
Design Profile). Ed. Stephen Perrella. New York: 1998. 16.
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: the Movement-Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. 111.
“Indeterminacy implies art as process. No beginning, no middle, no end:
that is, no longer will “objects” of music exist in that sense, but each new
performance, each new circumstance, will create a continually variable
process of ideas […] If art be process, then indeterminacy is the only
viable way to proceed.”
-- David Cope
Cope, David H. New Directions in Music. Second Edition, Wm. C. Brown: 1976. 169.
In-betweenness and immanence
 If performance is looked at as process, in which there is a flow, this
implies a smoothness of space as described by Deleuze and Guattari in
their comparison of smooth vs. striated space.
 The two spaces exist only in mixture: smooth space (nomadic, nonlocal) is
constantly being translated into a striated (sedentary) space, and striated
space is constantly being returned to a smooth space.
 The event is the “in-betweenness” — transitions. The ebb and flow of the
transitions between smooth and striated space creates a continuum of inbetweenness, or immanence.
 This continuum of immanence yields a continuum of virtual space.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian
Massumi. Minneapolis: 1987. 311. 474.
Open a window
 Opening a “window” into your world provides a real, tangible way for people
to interact. If they can put a voice and face to your digital identity, it brings
them closer and has the effect of bridging the geographical gap. (Decreasing
the “friction of distance”)
 Streaming (QuickTime Broadcaster - free)
 iChat, skype, Yahoo, and other video/voice-enabled IM apps
 virtual environments (Second Life, Kaneva, etc)
Open a window
Improvisational structures
 The score enables a stable structure that can be followed despite the
sometimes unexpected technical challenges.
 The process of referencing such a structure guides the performers,
regardless of media chosen (visual, audio, gestural), through the
improvisation.
Create a platform: constraint and freedom
“You move forward by playing with the constraints, not avoiding them.
There’s an openness of movement, even though there’s no escaping
constraint.”
-- Brian Massumi
Zournazi, Mary. “Navigating Movements: An Interview with Brian Massumi.” 21C Magazine. 2003.
<http://www.21cmagazine.com/issue2/massumi.html>.
Create a platform
 Create a platform in which people can work together. Following structured parameters
gives the group a goal yet frees them up to be creative as well.
 Rule-based
 Task-based
 Game-like
 What are some examples? Extrapolate on what you already know.
 Tricia Brown’s “Accumulation”
 Blues Sandwich: AAB AAC AAD
 Playback Theater technique
 Viewpoints technique
 Theater games: freezeframe, action storyboarding, First Line/Last Line
 Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies”
Samples
 Original RPM’s score
Samples
 Original RPM’s score
Samples
 RPM’s Remixed score
Playback Theatre
 One of the backbones of the Kids Connect program was Playback Theatre, which is a type of
social theatre that uses storytelling and improvisation. One person tells a story, and the
group “plays it back” to them via improvisational performance.
 This is a shot of our students rehearsing the Playback Theatre technique inside Second Life.
Samples
 The “Harold”
 Structured much like a television sitcom.
 Consists of three acts, each comprised of improvised games and scenes.
 The basic form begins with an opening game, which explores a suggestion
provided by the audience. A set of three scenes, usually unrelated to each
other, follows the opening game, and is known as the first beat.
The actors will then play a game or scene together, known as a group game.
The second beat, which is another set of three scenes inspired by the first
beat, follows and is capped with a second group game.
The final set of three scenes (the third beat) combines themes, characters,
situations and games from the whole piece, hopefully making surprising and
funny connections or intersections among them.
Samples
 Blues Sandwich, based on phrasing in blues music:
Create an 8-count phrase
Do your phrase twice, and then free-form for about 8 counts
Return to doing your phrase twice, then free-form again
So the structure is like this: AAB AAC AAD and so on
Score is paraphrased. Nagrin, Daniel. Dance and the Specific Image: Improvisation. Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1994. 146.
Samples
 First Line, Last Line
Set a beginning and ending line
Ex: beginning: "last night a ghost visited me"
Ending: "and if you're a lamp post, I don't care"
Beginning and ending sentences can be absurd and it's even more fun if they
are..because then these surreal explorations unravel and you just ride the
journey that takes you to the ending sentence.
Samples
 Current event/memory mix up
Do an automatic writing based on a current event or memory - stick to the
literal details, keep emotion out of it.
Do another automatic writing - this time stick to the emotion, keep the details
out of it. (this is slightly impossible but try to stick to it)
Here's the fun part: take 5 words from the literal writing, "choreograph"
gestures (here you might substitute "images" or whatever your media of choice
is) - choreograph gestures/images/sounds/whatever to go with each of those
five words
Take 5 sentences from the emotional writing. re-order the sequence randomly.
keep the new order, even if it doesn't make sense.
Samples
 Current event/memory mix up (continued)
Ex: 4 1 2 3 5
4- and then it just stopped
1- I felt this odd empty yet peaceful feeling
2- it was so quiet
3- not even his breathing interrupted the air space
5- the nurse said, "he's just resting, dear"
Superimpose the 5 choreographed images onto the newly ordered sentences.
do _not_ change the order of the original "choreography" of the images. see
what surprises happen.
Refrain
 Use of refrain carves a space into and out of the virtual environment in
which relationships are conducted via theme, repetition, and variation.
 Theme: the refrain marks a territory, evoking characters or landscapes.
 Repetition: the refrain references and folds in on itself, reinforcing
characters and landscapes.
 The effect of this involution results in an opening, a branching out...
 “revealing until then unheard-of potentialities, entering into other
connections…”
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian
Massumi. Minneapolis: 1987. 311. 349.
Refrain and deterritorialization
 The territorialization process becomes reterritorialization.
 The refrain evokes other characters or landscapes, leading to variation.
 The process repeats itself until the refrain is no longer owned
 It becomes a part of the cosmos. It becomes deterritorialization.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian
Massumi. Minneapolis: 1987. 311. 349.
Involution and evolution
 The difference between improvisation in a physical space vs. a virtual
space, though, is that the virtual space exists only as the improvisation is
happening.
 It is constructed as the performance occurs and disappears in its absence.
Body and hyperbody
 Kas Oosterhuis terms the flowing of data from body to network as a data
“swarm.”
 Each person is his/her own data swarm, meaning that each person is an
independent, intelligent agent.
 The information flows from one body or data swarm to another body or
data swarm via the network/digital means, and the social transactions
provide the necessary bridges for swarm architecture.
Oosterhuis, Kas. Hyperbodies: Towards an E-motive Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003. 67.
Body and hyperbody
 The body is a hyperbody – a “connected, superclustered, time-based
vehicle of swarming intelligent building elements reconfiguring its
multiple shapes and content in real time and processing a continuous
dialogue with its locally and temporally distributed inhabitants.”
 The hyperbody becomes an integral link of communication between
physical and virtual space.
Oosterhuis, Kas. Hyperbodies: Towards an E-motive Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003. 67.
In short, nothing can be observed without affecting that which is observed.
Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty, as applied to the body, renders the
body as hyperbody – it’s ability to affect and be affected, to be a vehicle
for change and flow, is its potential.
Mapping the hyperbody
 Mapping physical movements to media manipulations is an attempt to
explore the potential of the hyperbody.
 When an interactive relationship is created between the performers’
movements and the medium, the emphasis shifts to the body and the
continuum of change becomes contingent to a moving, breathing human
being.
control
(z)
control
(bow)
mapping
mapping
parameter
(hue)
parameter
(timbre)
control
(bow speed)
parameter
(articulation)
control
(bow pressure)
parameter
(pitch)
control
(string choice)
mapping
parameter
(volume)
“Bodies, in ensemble improvisation are transductive relays from which,
under certain conditions, an ethical, political aesthetic of belonging–
together emerges.”
-- Sher Doruff
Doruff, Sher. “The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram.” Diss. SMARTlab Programme in
Performative New Media Arts, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts,
London, 2006. 182.
Oneness and hybridity
 When performers collaborate and improvise in a physical space, the
perception of “oneness” in a space is opened.
 Similarly, when performers collaborate and improvise in a virtual space, a
“oneness” of space is created and persists, regardless of the multiple
locations of the individual performers.
 The multi-user environment and realtime processing of the streaming
media allow for any conception of authorship to be blurred, which
contributes to the perception of a singular space.
Oneness and hybridity
 The perception of a singular space is perhaps a hybrid space – a cross
between physical and virtual.
 Maria Palumbo refers to the body as an inter-media surface:
 “a field for a dual experience between real space and virtual space which
thereby acquires a new single dimension…[which] can open the way to a
new interrogation of the world and ourselves and, consequently, the
possibility of imagining other possible kinds of space.”
Palumbo, Maria. New Wombs: Electronic Bodies and Architectural Disorders. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003. 65.
1+1=3
 The performance of improvisation over a networked space is more than
just the sum of its parts. It is not 1+1=2, the net sum of locations and
performers.
 As in any improvisation, there is a mystical quality that cannot be
captured – the group dynamic that becomes the organic process, the
adaptations and changes that become the event.
 In a networked environment, this takes on an ethereal quality; media
translations are carried over the ether and watched/listened to via the
ether.
Oneness and hybridity
 Perhaps it is this hybridity which propels it forward into a different space.
 A space that opens for the duration of the performance, reaches out into
the cosmos, then closes, like the polite petals of which poet e.e.
cummings speaks:
if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
e.e. cummings. “somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond.” Poems: 1923-1954. New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Company, 1926. 163.
Jo-ha-kyu
 Jo-ha-kyu: a Japanese theatrical term which has been adapted by
Anne Bogart in her Viewpoints training on improvisation and
composition.
 Essentially, it’s a rhythmic pattern. Jo-ha-kyu can be simply translated
as “beginning, middle and end.”
 But, in fact, the meaning is much more complex and useful as you look
deeper...
Jo-ha-kyu
 Jo = Introduction
 Ha = Exposition
 Kyu = Denouement
 Jo = Resistance
 Ha = Rupture
 Kyu = Acceleration
 Jo = Hop
 Ha = Skip
 Kyu = Jump
Bogart, Anne, and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Book. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2005. 147.
Taking care of the Jo-ha-kyu
 Like the essence of performing in a networked environment –
the jo-ha-kyu is simultaneous resistance and rupture, involution and
evolution, local and translocal, body and hyperbody.
 (Anomalies: close/far, familiarity/strangeness, physical/mediated)
 The hybrid state of networked collaboration renders both challenges
and possibilities.
 Its state is difficult to define because there are multiplicities,
however, where there are limitless multiplicities, there is limitless
potential.
Oneness: Improvising in a Networked Environment