Sarah Rubidge

University of Chichester, Dance, Emerita

Followers

205

Following

Co-author

Public Views

A practitioner-scholar whose artistic and theoretical research explores the nature of the dialogue between the sensory and new technologies, I was formerly Professor of Choreography and New Media at the University of Chichester, and was recently appointed Professor Emerita. I have now re-embarked on a freelance career as scholar and artist (see www.sensedigital.co.uk).
My artistic research specialises in choreographic digital installations in which the haptic senses are the primary interface between visitor and installation. I mount installations in dance and theatre venues and in non-dance venues such as art galleries. My academic writings have been published extensively, nationally and internationally, and recently co-edited book with Prof. Gretchen Schiller of the University of Grenoble. Entitled "Choreographic Dwellings: Practicing Place" the book presents a series of articles on extended choreographic practices that address issues of Place.
I am a qualified PhD supervisor and Examiner, having examined PhDs both in the UK and overseas, and continue to lecture and write for national and international organisations.
Address: Bishop Otter Campus
College Lane
Chichester
PO19 6PE

less

InterestsView All (14)

Uploads

Papers by Sarah Rubidge

A preliminary exploration of the choreographic potential of new motion tracking technologies in conjunction with interactive ambisonic surround sound

Title: A preliminary exploration of the choreographic potential of new motion tracking technologi... more Title: A preliminary exploration of the choreographic potential of new motion tracking technologies in conjunction with interactive ambisonic surround sound. Researchers: Dr Sarah Rubidge and Stan Wijnans (University of Chichester) in collaboration with Lila Dance Company 6 Alistair MacDonald and I used proximity as a parameter for an interactive sound system in Sensuous Geographies (2003). 7 Here I use the term ʻtechnicalʼ to include the development of choreographic/improvisational strategies, as these are, in a very real sense, part of the technical armory of the dance maker.

Download

Sensuous Geographies: research report

This report outlines the research methodology, research imperatives and process used in the devel... more This report outlines the research methodology, research imperatives and process used in the development of the multi-user interactive installation "Sensuous Geographies". A collaboration between composer Alistair MacDonald and choreographer Sarah Rubidge, this installation explored the sensuous geographies inherent in this immersive sonic environment.

Download

Sensuous Geographies: An interactive installation

Blurring the boundaries between dance, installation and music, new technology combines with chanc... more Blurring the boundaries between dance, installation and music, new technology combines with chance and ritual to produce an intriguing, disquieting and yet hugely accessible work. The actions of the audience generate and influence musical layers and projected imagery in an interactive/reactive environment. The soundscape created by these visitors, who can chose either to 'observe' or participate as 'players', shifts in quality and texture to produce a mood and atmosphere that is unique to each session.

Choreographing in the digital domain

An investigation into the incidence and role of dance education in the adult sector with specific reference to dance as a theatre art

This thesis examines the incidence and nature of dance in adult education in the context of arts ... more This thesis examines the incidence and nature of dance in adult education in the context of arts education in the adult sector, and investigates the characteristics of practitioners in the field and their attitudes towards their dance activities, It includes within its research remit provision offered by both statutory and non-statutory bodies. The thesis supplements previous studies of the arts in adult education and existing studies of dance education in the initial sector. Data for the study was collected by participant-observation and by questionnaires distributed to teachers and students of dance in the adult sector. The questionnaires elicited low returns which prevented the results being used as the basis of a statistical analysis. Instead they have been used as indicators in the formulation of a profile of dance students and teachers in adult education in the mid-nineteen eighties. Dance in adult education was found to have increased significantly in the last two decades in ...

How to devise ethico-aesthetic practices by moving between cartography and choreography?

Inflexions, 2009

Global Drifts: interim research report: creative development stage 1

global drifts research, Stage 1 was a draft score of fluid systems, of the choreography between s... more global drifts research, Stage 1 was a draft score of fluid systems, of the choreography between sites and bodies, the electronic conduits that transform movement, images, and sound and notions of the body. A mapping that creates a new form of cartography, that incorporates systems of flows between cultures, time , architecture, body and place as a multilayered experience. In stage 2 this system of choreography will be extended to Korea, the UK, and beyond to become a 21 st century body-altered and distributed using global networks to become a vast borderless body, which breaks the boundaries of rigid mapping systems as it moves between traces of memory, emotional and cultural cartographies sounds and experiences as a 21 st century choreography. expl o ratio n of t he co nce pt of the bo dy a s s ite a nd within site, The concept of body as site was explored equally between all systems of the work: that is, the choreography of movement, the design of the real time software systems, the collation of images libraries, the sonic environments, the interconnectivity and distribution of all these performatively as both live and virtual inhabitation of screen and the physical architectural environment of QUT Creative Industries Precinct. In this way we include the notion of the site (QUT) itself as an interconnected 'body', and beyond that the

Download

Dancing between the Traditional and the Contemporary with Digital Media : Sarah Rubidge 1 Dancing between the Traditional and the Contemporary with Digital Media

As an academic with the dual identity of digital choreographer and scholar, like many artists my ... more As an academic with the dual identity of digital choreographer and scholar, like many artists my practice interrogates ideas and concepts as much as any of the papers I write. This paper is written from the perspective of an artist-scholar, with the emphasis on the artist side of the equation. It explores through examples the possibilities that digital media can offer to developments that are starting to take place amongst artists in South East Asia whose practice is rooted in traditional dance forms. Although a new artistic medium it is argued that digital choreography can provide a means of thinking beneath the traditional forms of expression to the implications that they might harbour within 21 century society, and the implications that 21 century thinking might hold for approaches to traditional dance forms. Intended as an introduction to the use of this new medium in dance, it traces the development of the use of digital media in the choreographic domain, and introduces some of...

On choreographic space

University Press of Southern Denmark eBooks, 2011

In the context of the increasing use of new spaces for choreography and new modalities of choreog... more In the context of the increasing use of new spaces for choreography and new modalities of choreographic practice, such as the generation of choreographic installation spaces and screendance, this paper proposes that theorists such as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Brian Massumi, Manuel deLanda and Susanne Langer, Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, Nigel Thrift and Paul Rodaway offer a rich resource for a discussion of choreographic space. In this paper the notion of choreographic space is predicated on the conception of space as a dynamic, relational concept, and suggests that choreographic space is constituted as intensive space, a transient spatiotemporal network of forces, vectors and tensions, processual rather than stable and, crucially, experiential. It further proposes that extensive and intensive space are by no means oppositional forms of experiencing space, rather they are co-present in any experience of choreographic space whether that experience is of participant, performer or audience. The paper thus argues that choreographic space is an in/extensive space, one that interlaces the dynamic textures of qualitative space and the stable features of material space within a process of reconfiguration of the latter’s affective contours.

Dancing between the Traditional and the Contemporary with Digital Media

SPAFA Journal (Old series 1991-2013), 2013

In/Extensive Topologies

by Sarah Rubidge and Chris Jannides

Thai Tracings": Research Report

This report outlines the development of the choreographic digital installation Thai Tracings (201... more This report outlines the development of the choreographic digital installation Thai Tracings (2013). It weaves descriptions of the artistic and technological research processes undertaken, including the way technical and artistic issues encountered were resolved during the generation of the work with a) the very specific sociocultural context for which it was created b) the theoretical ideas that underpinned the decisions made during the artistic research. All of these elements were of crucial significance to the artistic project, and affected the working processes that led to the final manifestation of Thai Tracings at Bangkok University’s International Performing Arts Festival in 2013.

Reflections on the Choreographic Process in the Digital Domain

The question which arose after the machines and Migratory Bodies Lab was: how different is the ro... more The question which arose after the machines and Migratory Bodies Lab was: how different is the role of the choreographer in the domain of live performance and in the digital domain? Does the choreographer need to re-think his or her understanding of the choreographic process? Or is working in the digital domain simply a reorientation or transposition of choreographic processes which have been developed in the latter part of the 2Oth century? As with any question which addresses issues in contemporary art practices the answer to these questions cannot be couched in a simple 'yes' or 'no'. This paper constitutes a first attempt at unpick some of the artistic issues raised by the introduction of the digital media into the choregraphic domain. There are as many genres of digital dance as there are of live dance performance, and artistic propensities and stylistic preferences are as various. As a result choreographers will find themselves forging a path within the digital domain which may demand a reformulation of choreographic concepts, but which may equally likely simply be an extension of choreographic practices in which they have engaged in the past. In the late twentieth century the strict distinctions between art forms have begun to break down. The visual arts now encompass performance and video art as well as sculpture and painting, dance encompasses videodance and physical theatre as well as dance itself, physical theatre straddles the boundaries between dance and theatre, contemporary music-theatre uses musical, theatrical and dance conventions in equal proportion; certain types of installation art, particularly interactive installations, could be seen as a form of improvised performance. And all art forms are developing practices which make use of, or exploit, digital media. In short, a significant proportion of late twentieth century art practice is hybrid. Hybrid art forms integrate modes of practice, concepts and procedures from different art forms, generating new and distinctive genres and forms as they do so. Digital art forms incorporate modes of practice, concepts and procedures originally developed in the context of computer science into artistic practices. The meeting of the two modes of thinking have resulted in the development of new genres within the art world, and new roles for the artist. Digital dance specifically has developed through combining choreographic practice with arts practice in two distinctive domains, those of electroacoustic music, in particular compositions in which interactivity between performer and instrument takes place, or through a dialogue with digital artists who create graphic works which exploit digital media. The latter

Download

Fugitive Moments: Artistic Report on Art/Science Research Project (2004-6)

The original research intentions for this project were: a) to explore the possibility that viewer... more The original research intentions for this project were: a) to explore the possibility that viewers' physiological responses to digital imagery which emphasises movement and colour could be used to modulate that imagery through an interactive interface; b) to develop a generative system that would create an openended feedback system between the viewer's responses to an image and the generative system, c) to explore further a radical abstraction of human motion as the foundation for the development of visual imagery d) to explore the use of wearable sensors in the context of 'smart' clothing Fugitive Moments was an R&D art project, initiated by Sarah Rubidge (hereafter referred to in the first person) and grounded in a collaboration between the arts and the sciences. The initial idea for the project was derived from observations by viewers of Time & Tide (2001) and Sensuous Geographies ( ), both collaborative artistic installation works involving computer technologies (see www.sensedigital.co.uk). In both instances viewers/participants had reported that the installations made them feel sensations in the body more strongly than other installations that they had experienced. It also continued my ongoing artistic research into the 'open' work, which commenced in the mid-1990s, moving it into the field of generative systems as the grounding for such works. This constituted an extension of the complex open-ended, but not generative, systems that I had worked on in previous interactive installation projects. (Passing Phases;1995-199), Halo-in-Performance;1998,Sensuous Geographies; . In order to explore the possibilities offered by the above further I had decided that the starting point for the imagery in this R&D project was that it would be highly coloured and that its flow of motion would have qualities that could be associated with human movement, that is the imagery would 'dance'. These starting conditions were based on the intuition that a) colour had an effect on physiological systems and b) watching movement also affected the viewer's physiological state. As such, I surmised, physiological responses could be used as the interactive interface in an art work. This builds on the intuition held by dancers for many years that the observation of some movement generates a similar physiological

Download

Performativity/Space: Working Title

for the Creative Arts at Canterbury October 30 th 2008 This presentation was an experiment in usi... more for the Creative Arts at Canterbury October 30 th 2008 This presentation was an experiment in using choreographic practices as a means of articulating theoretical ideas about space. Taking the form of an improvisational workshop, in the presentation we asked delegates to explore the ideas through a range of movement activities, and to observe others as they acted the ideas out, having introduced them in the context of the theoretical focus that we were invoking on the occasion of each activity. What follows is the 'score' we followed for the workshop, interspersed with an outline of the information we were intending to convey verbally as the exercises were enacted, and quotations from theorists that resonated with the activities. (These were distributed after the workshop along with the bibliography.) This 'score' might not tally with the actual words we used, as, inevitably, we improvised as the workshop presentation developed.

Download

Performing installations: towards an understanding of choreography and performativity in interactive installations: Sarah Rubidge

Contemporary Choreography, 2012

This article explores the notion that many, but not all, choreographic installations generate the... more This article explores the notion that many, but not all, choreographic installations generate the conditions for performative events. It discusses choreographic installations in the context of performative installations from the visual arts and dance. In examining different forms of choreographic installation, it explores different meanings of the term 'performativity', proposing 'strong' and 'weak' usages in the context of the term 'performative installation'.

Download

Virtually Sensuous (Geographies): Towards a Strategy for Archiving Multi-user Experiential and Participatory Installations

Proceedings from the Document Academy, 2018

This article explores potential strategies for documenting an immersive multi-user digital instal... more This article explores potential strategies for documenting an immersive multi-user digital installation, Sensuous Geographies, using VR technologies. The installation was interactive, fully immersive and participatory, with the general public being the initiators of the details of the installations sonic and visual worlds. It was created in 2003 in collaboration with composer Alistair MacDonald, at a time when the very notion of choreographic digital installations, particularly multi-user interactive installations, was in its infancy. At the turn of the 21st century, many thought computers and dance strange bedfellows. At that time, the world of the digital was known for its tendency to distance itself from the messy world of sensation. The claim of digital technologists in the 1990s was that in the digital domain one could shake off the physical constraints imposed by the body and gravity (Benedikt, 1992). Disembodiment and/or dematerialization were considered intrinsic consequences of digital media by virtue of the immateriality of digital information and the assumption that the nature of the user's interaction with media was necessarily estranged from embodiment and corporeality. However, by the 2000s warnings were being sounded by writers such as Richard Coyne, Mark Hanson, Ken Hillis and Hubert Dreyfus that, although on entering cyberspace "we might leave behind our… intuitive, situated… embodied selves, and thereby gain a remarkable new freedom never before available to human beings," we should be aware that "we might, at the same time, necessarily lose some of our crucial capacities" (Dreyfus, 2001, 208). Because dance is an art form that is grounded in the sensation of movement, in the very experience of embodiment, in dancers and choreographers a distrust of digital media and all that it represented was rife. Nevertheless, in the 1990s a number of choreographers, and their counterparts in theatre, began to explore the potential of a dialogue between the mathematical, scientific and "disembodied" world of digital media and choreographic practice, and to embark on collaborations with programmers and digital artists . Although Merce Cunningham was an early user of digital media in the 1980s, in the 1990s the use of digital media as an integral aspect of choreographic practice emerged in the work of companies such as New York based Troika Ranch, Germany's Palindrome and Australia's Company in Space. Rather than simply integrating a range of digital media into their stage works, their choreographers began to explore the use of interactive media as a means of performers generating the audiovisual environment in which they performed in real-time. This gave dancers the agency they thought they might lose in "digitalized" choreography. However, from the mid-1990s another strand of digital choreography was making an appearance, with experiments being undertaken by choreographers who were interested in not only working with digital media for the stage, but also in taking their choreographic ideas into the digital domain. A number of 1 Rubidge: Virtually Sensuous (Geographies)

Download

Sensuous Geographies and Other Installations: Interfacing the Body and Technology

Performance and Technology, 2006

Download

Sensing Sounding Place

theartofwalking.org

The presentation of this paper at the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference 2009 sat somew... more

The technological poetics of global drifts

… expanded dance. Lisbon, Portugal: Faculdade de …

Originally given as a performative paper at the TeDance conference in Lisbon in November 2007, I ... more

Download

Sarah Rubidge

Uploads

Papers by Sarah Rubidge

Log In