Investigating the self and other in improvisational dance-making using 360° immersive technology

Abstract

Dance-making processes that engage with posthuman thinking have the potential to offerartists new perspectives and ways to relate to the world. This practice as research studydevelops choreographic making using 360° digital immersive technologies. This method ofmaking employs a posthuman lens to destabilise anthropocentric thinking within thecreative process. This approach is described as an ecological practice using improvisation asthe tool to develop the relationship between the body and the nonhuman. The practicetakes place in a range of outdoor environments. 360° dance film offers opportunities toobserve the self and to develop a consciousness that provides an expanded state ofawareness. Using 360° digital technology the research considers the ramifications of one'sown double embodiment, both being and seeing the body in the digital spacesimultaneously. The practice plays with the idea of body-object and body-subject (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) to generate an allocentric perspective and an autoscopic experience. In sodoing, the 360° immersive dance-making process shifts subjectivity and generates theecological self. This type of subjectivity encompasses four experiential bodies throughoutthe process. These bodies are not static, they are in a perpetual process of becoming, thebody is understood in an expanded sense (Haraway, 1991). The practice creates a largerecological network, the boundaries between bodies are unclear, the moment ofimprovisation enables practitioners to make change and be changed. They can move in theworld and simultaneously become moved by it, this practice is charged with both autonomicand visceral changes. The practice creates experiences, reflects, immerses, and reexperiencesto consider lived experience in relation to the nonhuman. There is a twofoldinteraction between the body and the sites, the body and the other, it is affected, and itsmovement also produces changes in the world. This creates a continuum between the bodyand the environment, between nature and culture (Massumi, 2002). The 360° dance-makingpractice offers a way to extend subjectivity, to embark on a process of viewing the body asthe other, to develop a new subjectivity, the posthuman cyborg.

Date of Award	Oct 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bedfordshire
Supervisor	Tamara Ashley (Supervisor), Maria Wiener (Second supervisor) & Alexis Weedon (Third supervisor)