Dance, technology and the material mutations of rhythm

The object of this thesis is the relation between dance and technology in all its
different aspects, i. e. video-dance. Motion Capture, the Dance Forms choreographic
software, interactive and Internet dance. The aim of the project is to take the analysis
of the dance/technology relation beyond the notions of conscious imitation,
resemblance and representation presupposed by structuralist and post-structuralist
readings of the `mediatised' dance-text, and beyond the subjective
perceptual/performative mechanisms explained by phenomenology. In order to avoid
this textual/phenomenological impasse, I will move the analytical focus on the
materiality of the body, perception and movement, as a common and undifferentiated
field of emergence in which specific corpo-realities and positions emerge.
This thesis will deploy a new methodology for the exploration of the
dance/technology link, mapping the processes of rhythmic material transmission
which link dancing human bodies and technical machines. Drawing on the
philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. this project will challenge
the centrality attributed by phenomenology to the human body. by considering it as
only one of the different components of a material process of rhythmic interchange in
which all elements (human bodies of dancers and spectators. computers, screens and
other technical machines) share the same rhythmic dimension. The trans-codification
of rhythm and dance will be explored at three different levels: physical, cultural,
technical. Nevertheless, the three analytical levels will not be considered as separate,
autonomous and hierarchical fields but as coexistent layers interconnected by a
common ground. The purpose of this process of stratification can be identified then
with the conceptualisation of a material and abstract rhythmicity (a field of emergence
in scientific, physical terms, or an immanent plane in philosophical terms) which is at
the basis of all different dance/technology formations.

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