I’ve only had one week’s exposure to Contact Improvisation but already I feel that this is how humans were made to move.

I first saw this dance at Priceless last weekend. It was past midnight, having just turned July 4. I was wandering around the festival and decided to check out the chill stage. This stage was covered with a cloth shade structure, kind of like a futuristic circus tent. There was only one entrance which was crowded with people standing, so I had to push my way through.

Despite being outdoors — the night sky visible through the holes between the cloth structure — the chill stage was covered in carpeting and this carpet was strewn with large throw pillows. Within the perimeter were people sitting and lying down on these pillows, most with eyes-closed, listening to the ambient music the DJ was spinning.

But in front of the DJ was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. Five or six people were moving at about 4x slow motion, writhing, caressing and falling over each other. A multi-limbed, multi-headed, multi-torsoed human mass oozing at 4x slow motion at the center of an audience entranced by psychedelic ambient music.

In my current state, I couldn’t tell whether this was a performance or something that just spontaneously started happening. It was actually so intense that I had to leave.

The next night I hung around the chill stage in a more sober condition and was able to observe how these dancers initiated their dance and the protocols they used to communicate with each other.

I found out that the dance was called Contact Improvisation. And yesterday morning I took my first class here in New York City.

Here are some reasons why I believe that this will be the dance of the future (at least for me):

Intention not form. The form, the shape you put your body in, is not important. The art happens at the point of contact; very subtle pressure changes allow partners to communicate how the point of contact should evolve, whether it be pulled, pushed, slid, or pivoted. But only the participants experience this, everybody else just sees the form which follows from the intention.

Absolute expression. Although there is a vocabulary for common movements, there is no such thing as a wrong move. Other dances require learning fundamentals before one’s own style can be developed, but in Contact Improvisation you’re already developing your personal style on first contact. The personal styles of each partner flower in complexity as they interact. Every dance tells a unique story.

Intimate. All communication between partners is through touch. The dance can be done completely with eyes closed. There is a group that teaches Contact Improvisation to the blind.

Shared control. Like Capoeira, Contact Improvisation is explicitly an action-reaction, feedback-led dance. There is no leader and follower like many partner dances. Instead the subtle energy fluctuations at the point of contact lead the dancers, like the chaotic forces at an unstable equilibrium.

Physics-defying. Here’s the quick principle of a dance like the moonwalk: Michael Jackson goes up the toes of one foot, puts all of his weight on that foot, then slides the other foot (which is flat on the ground) backwards. The illusion in convincing because the audience sub-consciously thinks that MJ’s weight is on the foot that is flat on the ground, so when this foot is slid back it makes him appear weightless/frictionless. Contact Improvisation creates an entirely new dimension of possibilities for movements like this, because weight can be distributed to your partner.

Modular. Any number of “partners” can simultaneously participate in the dance, all linked through touch, the exchange of partners as effortless as the dance itself.

If you’re in NYC, I highly recommend Kayoko’s class. She gradually introduces the concepts of the dance in a comfortable way, has the class go through exercises which help you learn to communicate your intention, and makes very constructive suggestions on ways you can go deeper into the dance.

It’s hard to believe that we’re now seeing epic trailers for novels:

(via Nadja)

I’d love to watch the entire novel like this! There’s something so blatantly absurd about a medium entirely inappropriate for its content. (For something similarly wonderful, check out this read-aloud version of the US Tax Code.)

Interestingly, the Overton window is a political theory concept that is becoming a theme on this blog. Its premise is that the scale from absurd to self-evident is relative to the current mood of the collective consciousness. The “Overton window” is the range of political positions that are currently considered acceptable, or at least acceptable enough that people won’t laugh at you.

The political technique that emerges from this consideration is to inject opinions into public discourse which are more extreme than the position you favor. These extreme positions expand the Overton window. Now your favored position seems quite moderate.

This is, of course, exactly the strategy used by Glenn Beck.

The reason this strategy works is that most people gauge the range of others’ opinions and then choose an opinion in the middle of this. It’s like the story of two kids fighting over cake: Sam says he should get all of it, Paul says they should split it half and half, so the adult decides to compromise and gives Sam three-quarters.

Another strategy to expand the Overton window is to push hard in the other direction.

A while ago Matt Garcia and I wanted to launch a guerilla public policy campaign: Don’t Ban Smoking, California. Here’s Matt’s script for a TV spot:

Close up. Statue of Thomas Jefferson with a single tear rolling down cheek.

Voice Over (menacing):

In 2009, smoking tobacco inside restaurants and bars became illegal in Virginia, the heartland of tobacco country.

Zoom In

Recently, you may have seen ads that suggest smoking should be banned entirely in the state of California.

Smoking is a choice. Don’t let private interest groups bully the government into dictating your choice.

Don’t let Thomas Jefferson shed a tear for you, California.

Cut to: Man in California wilderness smoking. Panning Landscape shot.

Cut to: Jail cell slamming repeatedly from 4 different angles.

Cut to: Man in cell with face against bars.

Cut to: Thomas Jefferson’s face where man’s was, still crying.

Stay free California. Retain personal choice.

Now Matt swears that he’s actually seen ads and other propaganda to ban all tobacco smoking entirely in California. Any corroborators?

My interest in this campaign was to make people think that there are actually people mobilized against the (non-existent?) Ban Smoking movement. This would in turn strengthen the Ban Smoking movement, perhaps to the point where they would even succeed. I don’t really care about this policy but I think it would be interesting to see.

Of course, any time your plan involves people’s reactions and counter-reactions you’re in for unexpected consequences. Really the best you can hope to do is stir things up and make people scratch their heads.

Incidentally, it seems we’ve been beaten to the punch on our smoking campaign by the like-minded Billboard Liberation Front.

Well done!

When I first saw these anti-drug ads I thought they were a parody.

The anti-drug campaign in the US is grounded on loose “facts” and this PSA just points that out!

But when it comes to influencing public opinion, it’s enough to:

1. Show a debate around a topic.
2. Show one side winning through body language.

This technique is much more effective than supporting a position with “rational” arguments.

These high fructose corn syrup ads follow a similar formula.

The ads are carried by the expressions of the actors playing the losing side. These smart alecs think they know what they’re talking about but then are surprised and humbled by the unwavering resolve of the winning side.

It’s amazing to me how easily the human mind can be influenced. So much of what we consider true is based on what others consider true. And we grant the authority to decide truth based on signals of authority, such as body language. My favorite moments in Don DeLillo’s White Noise are the absurd situations that this leads us to.

One final propaganda ad, I recently saw this trailer on Hulu. Honda is running ads to change the public perception of robots. They’re not the bad guys!

Oh, I’ve started a Tumblelog, here.

Play my Flash Game! (has sound)

From September of 2005 for an attempted second semester of Joe’s video art class. Was to be one part of a three part installation on interactivity, about a man from the year 10000 traveling back in time to the year 3300.

Last night I started watching Ryan Trecartin’s I-BE AREA (full video) which I think captures really well the vision of the virtual future I was going for in Joe’s class.

My final project for that class from spring 2005 (or fall 2004?):

There was a discussion on names, particularly Thai names, on James Clark’s blog. James Clark is a heavyweight in the Standards Community, so names/identity and internationalization are on the tip of his brain.

When are two concepts–perhaps existing in separate systems or minds–the same and how do we communicate this identity? Names are one solution. We map distinguishable sounds or text to concepts via an arbitrary convention (language). We also have various ways of further specifying a concept when a given key maps to multiple concepts (collisions).

When it comes to naming individual people, different cultures have different frameworks or systems for naming. Most large cultures use at least a “given” name (given by the parents) and a “family” name. The family name provides an extra layer of hierarchy to prevent name collisions. I suppose the logic is that within the family, the parents can give each child a different name so that assuming every family name is different, every individual will have a different name. Of course family names often collide so you’ll end up with hundreds of James Clarks for instance.

But across cultures there are differences in the frameworks. For example, in Iceland and other Scandinavian countries, the “family” name is derived from the given name of the father (rather than the family name of the father). In Spain, people take two family names, their father’s and mother’s family names.

Thailand is an interesting case. Formally, people have first (given) and last (family) names. But last names were only introduced at the beginning of the 20th century, and bureaucracy and superstitions have resulted in a peculiar situation.

First, all names (first and last) must be sanctioned names (there’s a department of the government in charge of this) and last names are given out on a first-come, first-serve basis to ensure uniqueness. If two people have the same last name in Thailand, they are related.

When you become a citizen of Thailand, you have to choose a last name. The problem is, like domain names, all the good ones are taken. Further, people can change their name (including last name) very easily. And they do this often, usually on the advice of fortune tellers or numerology.

You can’t just choose any name. Every year, the Interior Ministry invents a few thousand new family names which are “released” on certain days (dates have significance in these superstitions). So on particularly auspicious days, people will wait in line for hours for a name!

The result is that many people in Thailand don’t bother learning each other’s last names. Phonebooks are sorted by first name. And most people just go by a nickname, which is used in situations where my culture uses a first name.

I’ve recently become fascinated by Rehabilitation TV. Shows in this genre include Supernanny, Dog Whisperer, and Kitchen Nightmare. Each have the same format: episode starts with a hopeless situation involving a troubled individual or group; the host/expert confirms that yes, it’s really that bad; as the episode progresses, the individual is rehabilitated, culminating in a tear-jerker climax. This is clearly reality TV territory (with all the editing gimmicks and after-the-fact voice-over and interviews), but I like it more than the elimination format.

There is always an ace in the hole, a trick played in every episode that gets the subject most of the way there. For Supernanny it’s structured activity, for Dog Whisperer lots of exercise, for Kitchen Nightmare simplifying the menu. This trick combined with the self-confidence boost from having the expert’s attention nearly always results in a happy ending.

Like all rehabilitation, these shows take the non-conforming, uncontrollable element of the population and show how they can be molded into a functional part of society. The tears come at that moment of connection, when the castaway is pulled back into the world with the rest of us. In so doing, the audience is given hope that they too can connect.

In a way, the shows are about prisoners accepting the fact that they’re prisoners. Dogs and children are clearly prisoners of their owners/parents, and the restauranteur is usually a prisoner of debt. The cause of the conflict is always the subjects’ struggling and panic at this situation. When the expert convinces the subject to conform, to resign to the world’s will, the problem dissolves.

Not to be cynical about this, conforming in this context is a positive thing. By conforming in one dimension (eliminating items from the menu), expressive power is gained in another dimension (improving the quality of the food). It’s like the paradox of standards: One would think that by forcing compliance with standards, possibilities would be reduced, but instead possibilities are created because of all the connections that can be made (think TCP/IP, mattress sizes, or language). Conformity enables coupling.

If Modern was about manipulating space, and Postmodern was about manipulating time (Western culture’s timeline), then Altermodern is about manipulating alternate universes.

Our understanding of time (with respect to quantum physics, for example) is beginning to suggest that alternate realities exist. Exist in that they have some sorts of relationships with our reality. Or at least are a useful extension of our understanding of our reality. Like complex numbers as an extension of real numbers.

So I’m excited about this new “movement”, though I don’t know if it has started moving yet. I don’t think we’ve yet started seeing the art. When we do it will manipulate contexts like a sculpture.

I’d like to do some future posts on the coming (already here?) age of sampling. In the meantime, I recommend this recent article on Girl Talk and related phenomena.

Technology obscures the fact, a simple one to me, that “mashing up” is the fundamental process for music making: i.e. combining and recombining different sounds into pleasing and/or at the very least hopefully-not-boring configurations. Lynyrd Skynyrd were known to mash up guitar and bass and drums into the configuration of “Sweet Home Alabama.” Weezer had a pretty good mashup called “Say It Ain’t So.” Some people/bands make terrible mashups. Other people/bands make pretty good mashups!

Incidentally, Marxy has got to be my favorite music writer/cultural analyst. I’m sure you’ve heard me play the Radio MXUT podcasts (episode 1, episode 2). Also I imagine his Westerner-in-Japan account of Shibuya Kei (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) is the most accurate English piece on the subject that’s out there.