Upload…Download…Perform – score-sharing site for experimental performance

I just learned about this fantastic new wiki site, Upload…Download…Perform, that allows people “to share your scores, actions, rituals, choreographed movements, texts, instructions, suggestions, recipes, meditations, etc.” Scores are instructions, either written, visual or oral, that delineate some sort of performance action. Many of the scores on this site are for musicians, but there are a few movement and video scores too.

My favorite score so far is Laundry Mat Music by the site’s creator and maintainer, Adam Overton, that calls for a laundry mat, dryers, loose change, and any number of performers. At a designated moment, all the performers start up their dryers with one loose coin inside, and everyone sits quietly and listens to the music that ensues.

This site could also be a great resource for anyone suffering from creative blocks. When you’re too tied up in mental knots to come up with your own ideas, just follow someone else’s lead. No hurt egos if the work totally bombs either.

Check it out and add your movement/video/sound shenanigans to the pot!

An open letter to the videodance community

I have just started the 3rd week of Move the Frame blog, and I am completely amazed at the impact and reach it’s already had. It’s exhilarating and a bit nerve-wracking having an open forum like this, but I can tell by the comments I’ve received that it is a much needed outlet about a subject many people have passion for.

Mid-court line in a Brooklyn park, Photo: B. Brooks

On Tuesday I received a few more amazing comments on my post “A Wiki barn-raising for videodance.” Those, along with all the other comments I’ve received thus far, have sparked a conversation that is fueling the growth and advancement of this form. This dialogue among all members of the community – new and old, experienced and novice, amateur and professional, viewer and artist – is exactly what I hoped to achieve with this blog. If I appear to have any sort of agenda, I hope this is it: I want to see videodance flourish both on small scales and large scales, above ground and underground, be made and enjoyed by all people. Ultimately this vision is a subsidiary of my greater hope, which is to help move dance as a whole into a position of greater prominence, participation, and presence in the cultural landscape.

Wiki barn-raising for videodance Pt. 2

The village barn dance [music] by Mollie King — Montreal Delmar music, c1909

Let the shindig begin!

Briefly, I’m happy to announce that I’ve framed out an article about Videodance on Wikipedia. The barn-raising has begun! It is by no means finished, but at least the basic foundation and frame is there. Please help put up some posts and beams in there! You can just nail in a shingle, or board up the whole outside. Whatever you feel inspired to do is wonderful.

Some info and tips about using Wikipedia:
As Shosana of Dancespiration observed, Wikipedia is a complicated beast. First you will need to register and sign all your rights away to any material you put up there, and then you need to promise that you will not plagiarize or use anyone else’s content without their consent. Even then that may not be good enough, so just get used to screen after screen of expository legalese as you first get initiated to the Wiki program.  All this is in the name of the free-flow of information, so it’s cool…

A Wiki Barn-raising for videodance

If you are interested in learning about something where do you go first? In my case and for millions of others, we look it up on Wikipedia. Just about everything in the known universe that anyone has ever cared to think about is there. Being a user-generated site, the more interest there is in a subject the more comprehensive the Wikipedia articles on it will be. And the theory goes that this makes their encyclopedia more trust-worthy, up-to-date, and objective than any other reference source around, because it’s constantly being checked and edited by its users.

So I decided to look up my area of interest which is videodance.  Immediately I ran into a problem, because while I call this genre videodance, there are at least 5 other names it is known by (see my first entry “What’s in a Name” for further discussion on this dilemma).