Soi Moi: The Techno-Soma-Aesthetics of a Dance for the iPhone

Abstract

In the course of intensive research a corpus of artworks that instantiate dance performance in cyberspace have been inspected in order to understand how expert-practitioners used new technologies for production as well as the new means of public dissemination that they enabled. This paper is dedicated to Soi Moi, which was made for the iPhone in 2009 by n+n corsino using motion capture, synthesized environments and multi-sensorial human-computer interaction. Bringing the perspective of an expert-spectator, I am committed to demonstrate the value of this research-practice to inform creative processes and scholarly debates, and to understand technological developments and aesthetic experiences. This enquiry pursued a constructivist analysis of components and attributes that revealed the ‘remediation’ of disciplinary traditions. But intersecting close examination of formal elements and user experience with theoretical contextualization generated a productive dialogue that reinforces why securing a place for this artwork in the history of new media art and performance is a relevant contribution to knowledge. Despite solid proof that performance experts have provided computer technology and the information society with pioneering discourse, their practices have a marginal position in the new media art sector and market. Retrieving research results is paramount. Just as ephemeral live dance and performance artworks have succumbed to time, the spectre of redundancy haunts Soi Moi because the state-of-the-art technology in use is already outdated.