Dina Robinson

Historically, documentation has served as a concept to preserve performed material as evidence of a live event (Auslander, 2006) and gain 'symbolic status' as our knowledge economy requires stable forms of dissemination (Stapleton, 2008). This being said, our method to document the process already brings with it a certain perspective and is subject to interpretation dependant on each individual. Therefore this project attempts to document touch and movement in a means which does not preserve the ephemerality but rather enhances it through accentuating what once was, as "disappearance would be mute, unknown and unknowable without some form of trace or residue" (Lepecki, 2004, p.27). By documenting dance as a "perpetual vanishing point" (Siegel, 1972, p.1) space and time become active living paradigms as we capture the essence of movement rather than the body itself which can construe a static objective (Karreman, 2013, p.124); something dance is not. When we document the concrete body we generate an idealisation of an outcome (Karreman, 2013, p.123) and cease to make the observer subjectively connect with the process and bodily being. They attempt to relive the same experience through the documentation, however this isn't feasible as the document will always be of a different medium to the original presentation therefore our perception will always be contingent (Foellmer, 2019, p.18). With this in mind, I find it much more stimulating to use this notion of documenting as a means to visualize choreographic thinking and mechanisms which the body cannot always exemplify to everyone (Ribeiro, dos Anjos & Fernandes, 2017, p.2). 

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This for me is the intersubjective notion of touch which served as a creative methodology in my practice as research residing within the body itself whilst the skin serves as a living observational documentation (Connor, 2004). As we can only perceive touch within proximity and subject to each individual, the mover may have a multidimensional experience however, the observer generally endures a singular objective perspective as they subconsciously attempt to archive the movement through a living memory. By recording the process through multiperspective expressions known as "interdisciplinary artscapes" (Whatley & Sabieschu, 2016) we acquire a much deeper understanding of this multifaceted phenomenon and each document can stand as a choreographic object of it's own accord or "a credential of the bygone event" (Jones, 1997, p.16). My enmeshment between the two methods of motion tracking and ethnographic study was inspired by William Forsythe's documentation Synchronuos Objects (2009) whereby we use these choreographic objects as translations "true to the original thinking space of the maker while allowing for new comprehension of the work" (Shaw, 2016, p.103). The objects stand as tools for perception and dance making through authenticity rather than being presented as a notation to replicate. Publishing these documents will steer the project to expand in a similar fashion to Wayne McGregor's site Motionbank (2010) where we question the multimodality of dance by "informing and exciting other disciplines in and beyond the arts" (Whatley, 2017, p.93).

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Below lies the two documentation processes 'motion tracking' and 'ethnographic study'. Please feel free to maneuver your way through these diverse archives in an inquisitive manner, they can be viewed in any order so choose which one you are drawn to. These serve as documents themselves, however for those of you who would like to see the movement in its literal form you may witness the third option 'screen capture'; the choice is yours.