dispositif / mise en scène II

III. Following up on Suzon's commentary:

DISPOSITIF from French:

DISPONIBLE (adj) available
DISPOSABLE (adj) disposable
DISPONIBILITE (n) availability
DISPOSER (v) to arrange

The facets of the word suggest freedom and emergence of possible structures, structural possibilities, Suzon suggests, and i could not agree more. At the same time, the imaginative range/freedom is to some extent driven or inspired by the arrangements that are made.

Making arrangements is a design and organizational principle, as well as a compositional process of course, and in terms of institutions or ideological patterns, grids, frameworks, guidelines, regulations, prescriptions, manuals, etc, one might assume that all dispositions hold an element of constraint or agreement for constraint, as one would imagine it also in a game (subject to game rules or the game would not work).

If one wanted to explore the conditions of production or knowledge (in terms of the lab) themselves, as they enable or facilitate designing operations and the spatial modulations that many members of the workshop carried out, one would perhaps need to reflect on the Studio we are working in, the pre-arrangements we found when entering, the EMPAC context, the RPI context and where such a workshop gets situated, the "open house" we have today and tomorrow (visitors standing behind me as i write this), how we situate ourselves as a group, an temporary research ensemble, and how we imagine our freedom or our time constraints, how do we (as group or individuals) use space, use open space and table space (laptop computers), and the various lines of flight we have seen here, projecting trajectories, trajets.

Is a lab studio different from theatrical spaces, and how? what is the key difference between a laboratory and audience-directed presentation spaces? why does a lab create similar sight lines as we have them in a theatre, and is it helpful perhaps to "re-mediate" the theatrical dispositif in/with the compositional languages, the lighting, the framing devices and performance techniques provided by live media traditions? what are our live media traditions, compared to cultural traditions of, for example, the performing arts, dance, theatre and music – and also the cultural traditions (somewhat newer) of cinematic, televisual and network experience?

Is not the televisual experience entirely different from the communal ethos of theatre? Have social networks and the internet replaced the participatory communal ethos of the theatre, and what new "communities" of interest have arisen, supported by network connectivity and interactivity? The latter, as a larger cultural frame, involves of course the emergent practices of social networks and multiplatform networked creativities, a subject we briefly addressed on Day 4 during the conceptual discussions. Suzon in fact raised the question, in response to my mention of the teleplateaux (a collaborative project initiated by TMA Hellerau), and wondered whether "platform" is a more suitable spatio-conceptual term for multiple diffusion and dissemination possibilities for live media art work in the 21st century.

(these images show lab members at work on their programming patches or editing softwares. the image on the top shows Ian Winters's "memory table" installation in the northeast corner)

In the next section, I shall try to add some reflections on platforms, as i just now watch the space change in front of my eyes, the architectural triangular cubist space Emily Putoff had worked with suddenly gone.

(Jennifer Woodin inside the cube created by Emily Putoff)

In front of me, a vast meadow, a green pasture has opened up. In the foreground, two persons seem to be resting, lying on the grass. Other people have come onto the pasture.

A small echo from a voice drifts across the valley, from the far corner, where Ian's memory table sits, I hear crickets and birdcalls, I feel how the warm evening wind touches my face, but that may be only my imagination.

(Joff Chafer's tracking meadow)

(to be continued: this is an open invitation to others, to write on)