Workshop Statement

DATURA is offering an interdisciplinary workshop on improvisation and performance at ISEA2015. The workshop is perfect for sound artists, real time media artists and movement artists seeking to expand their skills in real-time interdisciplinary performance practices. Members of the interdisciplinary performance ensemble DATURA will lead the session, with guest artist Julie Akerly from JAMovement.

Analog x Digital x Analog is a full day workshop based on interdisciplinary collaboration and improvisation used to create public performance works. This workshop is modeled on the Stramonium collaboration, the result of a multidisciplinary performance project consisting of dance, analog image processing, computers, sonic sculptures, and woodwinds.

The first phase of the workshop will focus on instrument building, including analog and digital musical instruments, analog media processing instruments, and improvisatory movement development. The second phase will deal with interdisciplinary group improvisation. We will explore the intersection of the physical, the analog and the digital spheres of experience. Our own bodies form lenses of experience, perception, cognition and disruption. In this workshop we will explore the essential role the body plays in negotiating physical habit, cultural experience and embodied sounds and images within the context of improvised performance. Duration: Whole Day. datura-phx.org

• John D. Mitchell,Arizona State University, USA
• Chris Ziegler, Professor, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA  ame.asu.edu  movingimages.de
• Joe Willie Smith, Independent Artist, US
• Julie Akerly, Artistic Director JA Movement, Phoenix, AZ, USA. Julie Akerly is the co-director of artist residency space, [nueBOX], founder of Phoenix Dance Observer, artistic director of J.A.M. (Julie Akerly Movement), and dancer with Jordan Daniels Dance. She received an MFA in Dance and Interdisciplinary Multimedia and Performance from Arizona State University. She is interested in expanding audience interaction and engagement through adapting the traditional proscenium performance stage into a generative communal space where the performance can be viewed through a versatile shifting lens. Julie received her BA at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, where her primary focus was on discovering the artistry of innovative choreography, and where she began to engage in dance technology and dance film. Julie has had dance film works screened in the UK at GLOW, and in the United States at Breaking Ground, Bustin’ a Madcap, and (e)Motion. Cross-disciplinary collaboration is also an important aspect of several projects Julie has been a part of. She is currently working on an interactive piece The Sill funded by EMERGE 2014 with media artist Matthew Mosher, and sound designer Tony Obr. She has also worked in interdisciplinary media design teams for her most well known works Vertigo (2013), Genesis (2013), and Separation: Short Range Repulsion (2012). She has also performed with D&Spair, an interdisciplinary improvisation group in the Phoenix area. Julie Akerly has also presented her research at Dance Under Construxtion XII, titled “Pixelated Interpretations of 3-Dimensional Woman,” in 2012. In 2010, she conducted a research project called “Resistance and Surrender in Tango Dance: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Social Class in Early Argentina,” at the Latin America Research Symposium, and has been published in the Journal of Scholarly Endeavor. She has been published in the 2014 NIME proceedings for her research of “Separation: Short Range Repulsion.” jamovement.com
• Tony Obr, Paradise Valley Community College, US