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Cracking the elaborate code: Why body language holds the key to virtual reality, - The Verge

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Does somebody ask Steven Spielberg why he's still making movies? Hasn't he had enough success? Hasn't he made enough money? Hasn't he made a name for himself? Did somebody go to Pablo Picasso and say, "Okay, you're 80 years old. Haven't you painted enough paintings?" No. I'm so tired of that question. I just don't understand it. I'll stop doing everything that I do when I don't want to do it anymore. I'll stop when I run out of ideas. I'll stop when you fucking kill me. How about that?

Madonna, Harper’s Bazaar

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http://www.onbeing.org/program/eula-biss-lets-talk-about-whiteness/9147/audio?embed=1

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Movement as Metaphor

I grew up dancing. In fact, in the 30 years I’ve been alive the amount of years I devoted to dancing is longer than the amount of years I haven’t so it’s still difficult for me not to identify a huge part of myself as such. And even though I no longer get paid to be on stage, I will forever be a dancer. 

But what does it mean to be a “dancer”? Is it when one performs for an audience that the work, and subsequently the dancer, become actualized? 

When a longtime dancer takes his/her first leap in deciding against their professional career path  (”quitting”) there is a period of time where they go through withdrawal from performance, withdrawal from being watched, withdrawal from being “seen”, withdrawal from expression. A huge part of a dancers identity feels shattered and caged and it is this “unseeing” that easily removes them from the title of “dancer”. One of the most fulfilling moments a dancer can experience is the fleeting moment of vitality and bliss that they encounter on stage...when the blazing lights beats upon their glistening sweat, when the audience is pitch black and their body becomes an antenna. The dancer communicates with their fellow dancers and the audience. They feed off of their counterparts on-stage and they feel the presence of hundreds of people watching. The power of the collective becomes larger than life. 

“Dance is communication” - Martha Graham

In order for a dancer to communicate, they must be completely precise in their movement and incredibly in-tune with their body. The studio is a place where a dancer finds precision within themselves. It’s a space for self-exploration and in a sense, a space where a dancer is in total competition with themselves. “They are striving to be the dancer that they ultimately want to become”, as Graham states in the video below. The studio space is for refinement, constant, exhausting repetition for the sole purpose of achieving perfection. “Perfection” in this case is for the body to achieve precise clarification and for the body to communicate in it’s fullest capacity ultimately, for its audience. But, it’s in this achievement of clarity (technique) where freedom is found in control. 

The studio has an intrinsic personal value to the dancer. It is a place where they can safely explore, open-up and be vulnerable without anyone in sight, and in this way, this is a sacred ritual for a dancer. In 1957, Martha Graham made a short film titled “A Dancers World”, which happened to be filmed in an isolated space of the studio. In it, she describes what it means to be a dancer in practice, study, and performance alongside experts of her company dancing different pieces from their repertoire that further illustrate her philosophy. 

*Side note: It’s also really entertaining to watch because you get to see just how eccentric Graham really was. 

“Performance” specifically for the dancer on the other hand, is a different realm of possibility and responsibility (responsibility in the sense that the dancer(s) must communicate with ultimate precision to its audience in order for it to be effective, emotionally resonant, and culturally relevant).  It’s interesting to point out the metaphor here for the modern world today: the “dancer” doesn’t exist without performance (but only when they’ve polished or finely curated their method of communication), so their identity as “dancer” doesn’t exist unless they’re seen by others.  It’s safe to say we feel this way in our own notion of the “self”. We perform our identity to others in order to understand it for ourselves, for self-validation. (See term definition: “Performativity” here and Judith Butler describe “gender is performative” here).  Today we all live in a world where everyone is performing in public, constantly putting themselves on display, commodifying themselves through their self(ies) while simultaneously being surveilled (Perform or Else, McKenzie, 2001; Singularities; Dance In the Age of Performance, Andre Lepecki, 2016). 

The idea of “performance” is a hefty topic these days and there is something to be said about comparing both the dancer’s world to that of modern day existence. It should be less about the aesthetic beauty of the dancer (or the person who uploads their most interesting photo) and more about the collective meaning that dancers exude to their audience. It’s within that relation where freedom and a sense of catharses for all participants can be found. 

To insist on the social function of the theatre as a social gathering space, and to acknowledge that the dancer’s labor is inseparable from the conditions of the world ... dancers and audience all produce, and are produced by a shared bio and necropolitical nervous system. 

Singularities; Dance In the Age of Performance, Andre Lepecki, 2016

Dance's ephemerality suggests the possibility of an escape from the regimes of commodification and fetishization in the arts. Its corporeality can embody critiques of representation inscribed in bodies and subjects. Its precariousness underlines the fragility of contemporary states of being.

Dance (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art), Andre Lepecki, 2012

For the dancer though, performance of movement is so much of how a dancer receives their ultimate high, their validation of existence, their heightened experience of life through their intense relation with the audience. In a way, dance could not exist without its audience. Many would argue that art itself can not be considered art without its audience:

Sartre’s existential aesthetics is concerned mainly with how the artist exercises his/her own freedom and how the artist offers the audience an opportunity to exercise their freedom. What separates existential aesthetics from a theory of beauty that is concerned with the creative freedom of the individual is that existential aesthetics wants to do something with both the artist’s and audience’s freedom in the sense that what a work of art should aim to do is inspire a certain free action on the part of the spectator. Therefore the artwork involves a freedom that is not just that of the artist, but also that of the audience. 

Elijah Alexander Guerra, Sartre Existentialism and Aesthetics, pg. 14

But some dancers venimenytly disagree, and with opposition comes counter-culture. Being Watched is a book the captures Yvonne Rainer’s famous rebellion against dancing for the audience’s sake, a rebellion that nicely coincides with the revolution of the 60′s and 70′s. Rainer is significant not only as a choreographer but as a symbol of questioning spectatorship. 

The image above is part of a series photographed by Warner Jepson. In the cover image above, the dancer turns away from the camera, raising an arm slightly behind her. Her hand is out-turned and blurry quite literally suggesting: stop looking at me, I am not meant for you! This notion of course, not only holds meaning for the dancer, but for the dancer as female. 

In her dance and performances of the 1960s, Yvonne Rainer famously transformed the performing body -- stripped it of special techniques and star status, traded its costumes and leotards for T-shirts and sneakers, asked it to haul mattresses or recite texts rather than leap or spin. 

Being Watched, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, 1999

Additionally, women are still the symbols of ballet in the popular imagination, and those who create the work (choreographers) are dominated by men, thus many famous classical ballets are pure examples of the male gaze.   

But if women are still the symbols of ballet in the popular imagination, chances are it is as ballerinas performing dazzling, demanding steps that were devised for them by men. When it comes to choreography, at least at most major companies, ballet remains overwhelmingly a man’s world. Breaking the Glass Slipper: Where Are the Female Choreographers?, NYTimes

The dance realms of 19th-century ballet were harems (sometimes literally, as in one all-female scene of “Le Corsaire,” where odalisques and concubines dance on point with flowers in happy captivity). From the Romantic ballet, initiated by “La Sylphide” in 1836 to the classical creations of Marius Petipa in late-19th-century St. Petersburg (“The Sleeping Beauty”), feminine loveliness was the climate amid which a man looked, traveled and found love. Of Women, Men and Ballet in the 21st Century, NYtimes

See also: Dance Magazine, Does NYCB Have A Gambling Problem?

So, is the art of dance not “dance” unless someone is watching? What does it mean if a dancer must be validated by someone else’s eye? Is it a coincidence that dance has been historically dominated by white men, while constantly seeking their validation as an expert? If I dance in a studio alone, without another body in sight and feel the tension and release of my muscles, the sensitively my skin feels against it’s bones, the suspension of time when I jump in the air, the pure expression of movement against the notes of music, where does the definition of “dance” then lie? 

Dance, in its essence, lies in the sensitivity of the body and in its pure movement, where the body becomes the antenna, transmitting signals to their surroundings. But if we think of dance purely as “movement”, then all humans are dancers. Movement is one of the many ways we identity each other, the way one walks, sits, stands, and even the way one listens is very telling if you’re paying enough attention. And so, I leave this post with a final quote from the famed choreographer, Ohad Naharin, describing his revolutionary modern technique known as the GaGa technique. What I adore so much about this explanation is not only its post-modern approach in thinking about dance, but that it focuses on the paradoxical notion of movement and thus, the paradoxical experience the dancer is constantly going through. He leaves out the notion of an audience completely, it is only about the way in which one chooses to be present in their movement and in this way, they are most present in life. This isn’t just an explanation of dance, this is a metaphor for existence. 

"Gaga challenges multi-layer tasks. We are aware of the connection between effort and pleasure, we are aware of the distance between our body parts, we are aware of the friction between flesh and bones, we sense the weight of our body parts, yet our form is not shaped by gravity... we are aware of where we hold unnecessary tension, we let go only to bring life and efficient movement to where we let go . . . We are turning on the volume of listening to our body, we appreciate small gestures, we are measuring and playing with the texture of our flesh and skin, we might be silly, we can laugh at ourselves. We connect to the sense of  "plenty of time”, especially when we move fast. We learn to love our sweat, we discover our passion to move and connect it to effort; We discover both the animal that we are and the power of our imagination. We are "body builders with soft spines". We learn to appreciate understatement and exaggeration, we become more delicate and we recognize the importance of the flow of energy and information through our body in all directions. We learn to apply our force in an efficient way and we learn to use "other" forces.

We discover the advantage of soft flesh and sensitive hands, we learn to connect to groove even when there is no music. We are aware of people in the room and we realize that we are not at the center of it all. We become more aware of our form since we never look at ourselves in a mirror; there are no mirrors. We connect to the sense of the endlessness of possibilities.

Yielding is constant while we are ready to snap...

We explore multi-dimensional movement, we enjoy the burning sensation in our muscles, we are aware of our explosive power and sometimes we use it. We change our movement habits by finding new ones, we can be calm and alert at once. We become available . . ."  - Ohad Naharin

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via Getty Images

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While You Were Sleeping

(Image: Shaun the Sheep Movie, 2015)

I’ve been thinking about sleep a lot lately. Actually, it’s really weird because as I write this post I just noticed the song that has popped up on my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist is called, I kid you not, I Go To Sleep. Right, so anyway, let’s just pretend that isn’t weird...

My last post focused on our increasing obsession with time travel, and not totally unrelated, our skewed notion of time very much affects the way we think about our own body clocks. 

As technology has invaded our bedrooms and workers feel pressure to be “on” 24/7, an epidemic of sleeplessness has struck. It’s even become “cool” to boast about how little you’ve gotten, because a lack of sleep signals to others quite literally the opposite of death, vitality.

Consumers, it seems, are trying to spend their way out of the problem (this is where I throw some data at you so you believe me):

Sleep-related spending increased 8.8% annually from 2008 through 2012, hitting the $32 billion mark in 2012, according to Time magazine.

A recent study by IBIS World confirms that only 44% of Americans report a good night’s sleep on a regular basis—no surprise, then, that sleep disorder clinics have exploded into an industry worth an annual $7 billion.

According to the most recent NHIS Survey, Melatonin has steadily increased in demand increased between 2007 and 2012, reaching $800 million in sales. 

And here’s the fun stuff, some manifestations that signal waves of how we are re-thinking sleep:

Going to the Mattresses. 

Casper, the online bed-in-a-box maker is investing beyond mattresses and using the concept of sleep as a platform for original content. Recently they worked with K-Hole, the famed trend group on a white paper called: An Exploration on Sleep + Society. They host an annual “sleep symposium” and a blog called Van Winkles dedicated to exploring how sleep affects and informs our lives, both at night and during the day. 

"It’s my personal lullaby for a frenetic world." 

Acclaimed British composer Max Richter wrote a landmark recording: SLEEP, which is 8 hours long – the equivalent of a night’s rest – and is actually and genuinely intended to send the listener to sleep. A live concert of the full piece launched in Berlin, where audience members were encouraged to bring a blanket and wear comfy clothes so that they could enter a dream state. "It’s an eight-hour lullaby," says Max Richter. The ground-breaking new work is scored for piano, strings, electronics and vocals – but no words. 

You can listen to the hypnotic full album here. 

Dream On

And if you think the first two examples are not mainstream enough for you, don’t forget about Apple’s new Bedtime feature, reminding users when to go to bed for a full night of rest, and also keeping track of their sleeping habits. 

Waking Life - Body Hacking

Super human powers are becoming a reality. With the quantified self movement we are starting to look at our bodies as machines, ones that we can tweak and upgrade to perform at its ultimate potential. An underground movement, self-proclaimed as “grinders” are constantly toying with ways to upgrade the body but you don’t really have to be a grinder to put this trend into everyday perspective. Something as simple as drinking a Red Bull is a form of body hacking. Now more than ever we look to drugs to make us more alert. Consider the drug, Provigil (modafinil), which is a medication that promotes “wakefulness”.  

As Faith Popcorn put it: “We want to be hyper-vigilant. We want our eyesight to be better, we want our hearing to be better and ultimately, we want our technology to secure us.”

Image from: 9 CRAZY BODY HACKS THAT GIVE YOU SUPERHUMAN POWERS  

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TIME AFTER TIME

Scanning this year's Fall TV line-up I've noticed a new trend emerging -- a refreshing embrace of time travel. We haven’t had a show dedicated to time travel in many years, and in fact only a handful of movies deal with this theme on the big screen (i.e., Looper, Inception, The Time Travelers Wife...but you’ll notice that was some time ago). Mostly, this topic is left for indie movies because well, time traveling concepts are hard to sell to the masses because when done well, they are utterly confusing (see Primer, there is literally a drawn map to help you understand)! and when they're simple to understand they are in fact, boring. I think Star Trek was the only show I could handle for a while because it had a perfect combination of complex ideas mixed into a bite-sized format of under an hour. And my god, what would happen if the crew couldn't get out of the space-time continuum!? I must know. 

I myself, have a love-hate relationship with time traveling themes but recently I watched an HBO movie, Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel, which I found to be hilarious, silly, self-referential, nerdy and totally on-point in its authenticity. The other shows that air this Fall, span from typical corn-ball appeal, dealing with obvious moral bents like - "If you had the chance to go back in time and kill Hitler, would you?" (Timeless, NBC) or "what if I messed up the Colonial Revolution?!” (Making History, FOX), and if going back in time is getting boring, perhaps following Jack the Ripper into the future (2016) to stop him from being such a murderous creep will tickle your fancy (Time After Time, ABC). Lastly, who can forget HBO's Westworld of course, a remake of the original 1973 movie where the future and past are within reach for only those who can afford it, allowing hosts to live out their fantasies through artificial consciousness, but of course no operational system is ever fail safe.

The concept of "time" is no doubt complex and if we even begin to question that time isn't linear, that in itself is hard for most people to wrap their head around (including me) but it seems to me that with a plethora of emerging new shows (all coincidentally launching at the same time), I wonder...are we getting closer to embracing the complexities of this concept? Or can it also be related to the idea that our time quite literally is blurring? We are traveling time zones much more than ever, our computer light never dims (in some cases they even have replaced our sunlight -- binge-watching anyone?), and if you are one of the 15.5 million people in the U.S. who are self-employed, than your day is probably not linear at all.

"Every now and then, we connect with moments, place, and people who remind us of these eternities...We see our own selves as what we are: a fish swimming in the ocean, searching for water. In those instants, we move beyond time as linear, as something between a past and a future. Instead, we merge into the very eternity where/when we have always been." - OMID SAFI, All The Time in the World via On Being.

What’s more, we can’t ignore that various time periods are literally in the palm of our hands. I don’t just mean a simple google search of any era you’d like to know more about, I mean our daily lives and experiences which we are constantly documenting...an attempt to hold on to memories, to never forget, and with each upload we have the boundless option to resurrect a moment in the past and catapult it into the present and in doing so, we are contorting time. We are trying to control time, to possess time. “Having time” seems like a commodity nowadays...it’s become the definition of luxury and TV / streaming networks are constantly trying to figure out how they can own our time too (see NYTimes quote previously cited on this blog).

There’s clearly a lot to unpack in such a massive topic and I don’t attempt to provide any answers. I just want to keeping asking why. Regardless, I'm excited about the potential it brings to our collective consciousness, even if these TV shows are just scratching the surface.

In the meantime, if you’ve got the time-travel bug like I do, check out the links below:

See The Encounter on Broadway

Listen to Radiolab - Beyond Time and Paradox: The Time Travel Podcast

Read Why Time Slows Down When You’re Traveling

Photo 1: Corbis, and DMG Entertainment via NYMAG

Photo 2: Ilana Glazer, Time Traveling Bong, Comedy Central

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The End of Adolescence via Aeon

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The Illusionists is a documentary about the globalization of beauty ideals – shot in 8 countries, across 4 continents. 

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“With those new mechanics comes a new relationship with the audience. Traditional television — what the jargonmeisters now call “linear TV” — assumes that your time is scarce and it has you for a few precious hours before bed. The streaming services assume they own your free time, whenever it comes — travel, holidays, weekends — to fill with five- and 10-hour entertainments.” - JAMES PONIEWOZIK, NYTimes

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Unicorns & Heartache via Protein 

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“The idea that everybody thinks they’re specialists with voices that deserve to be heard has actually made everyone’s voice less meaningful. All we’re doing is setting ourselves up to be sold to — to be branded, targeted and data-mined. But this is the logical endgame of the democratization of culture and the dreaded cult of inclusivity, which insists that all of us must exist under the same umbrella of corporate regulation — a mandate that dictates how we should express ourselves and behave.”

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Overconsumed. 

A street fair in Amsterdam selling goods that no longer have a home. This stall had so much material that they didn’t even bother displaying the items on a clothing rack. 

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A topic I started looking into nearly three years ago when I wrote about The Advanced Target, back in 2013. The article above, featured in The Atlantic, was released in their August 2015 issue. This time stamp sparks some evidence that this trend is a cultural shift (and not a passing fad)….or it could just be an example of the media recycling content. Both seem valid. 

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Play as a competitive advantage. 

As we shift deeper into a 24/7 economy and a global infrastructure for continuous work and consumption is well underway, the "time" we've traditionally carved out for relaxing, having fun, or just shutting down is no longer neatly allocated on the clock. "Fun" is now pocketed in bits (literally and figuratively) throughout our day. The clear lineage between work and play is disapearing, which also means that we yearn to be entertained more often than not (i.e. that neat little device in our palms that we basically consider a limb at this point). It's no wonder brands and products are speaking to us like we're kidults.

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This is what context is on the internet.

Find Your Beach

Zadie Smith