Excitable tissues in motion capture practices : the improvising dancer as technogenetic imagist

Abstract

This article outlines the potential of dance improvisation practices to function as a technological interface with one’s environment, drawing parallels between the performances of Twig Dances and technologies used in the life sciences to map living matter onto still frames. A postphenomenological approach is used to compare improvisation scores with image-making technologies, highlighting scores which seek to kinaesthetically respond to organic matter, or to perform one’s corporeal response to the nonhuman, as technologies which stand further exploration and examination as they mediate our experience of the world. A diversifying field of somatic practices is proposed as a means to investigate the potential knowledges generated by ‘excitable tissues’ enlivened through improvisational practices.