books/releases
BOOK RELEASE 2021
Kinetic Atmospheres: Performance and Immersion, by Johannes Birringer
Abingdon: Routledge. Pb: 978-0-367-63261-8 | £34.99
« This book offers a deeply experiential pragmatic study of performance environments and scenographies, here defined at unstable, emerging, and multisensational atmospheres, open to interactions and travels in augmented virtualities. The writings challenge common assumptions about embodiment and the digital, exploring and refining artistic research into physical movement behavior, gesture, sensing perception, cognition, and trans-sensory hallucination.
Written by a scenographer/choreographer, the book is above all a critical reflection on the kinetic dimensions of material and immaterial architectures, based on many years of practical work in the theatre and in the building and designing of stage productions and installations. These kinetic dimensions of the design can be considered elements of the choreographic, but they are often also sonic, digital, telematic, wearable and interactive. The kinetic is also participatory and engages the experiencers.
If landscapes are autobiographical, and atmospheres prompt us to enter blurred lines of a “forest knowledge” (a concept used in ethnographer Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s study of mycelia and mushroom hunting) where light, shade, and darkness entangle us in foraging mediations of contaminated diversity, then such sensitization to elemental environments requires a focus on processual interaction. Nine provocative chapters in Kinetic Atmospheres probe various types of performance scenarios and immersive architectures of the real, the augmented, and the virtual. They break new ground in analyzing an extended choreographic – the building of hypersensorial scenographies that include a range of materialities as well as bodily and metabodily presences.»
BOOK RELEASE 2019
Tanz der Dinge/Things that Dance
co-edited by Johannes Birringer & Josephine Fenger, Yearbook of the German Dance Association, vol. 29, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
« Dance brings things to life—dance is embodied life in relation to many other life forms, materials, and substances that move and transform within an animated cosmos.
This book explores the transformative choreographies of beings, elements, and bodies suspended within atmospheres of becoming. It brings together the perspectives of artists and researchers on the world of materials—organic and artificial, human and non-human. Their essays and artworks focus on the properties of materials, on the perception of what moves and what can be moved, on the flow of relationships between bodies and things, and on entanglements with our environment.»
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Tanzen erweckt Dinge zum Leben – Tanzen ist verkörpertes Leben in Beziehung zu vielen anderen Lebensformen, Materialien und Substanzen, die sich in einem animierten Kosmos bewegen und transformieren.
Dieses Buch untersucht die transformativen Choreographien von Wesen, Elementen und Körpern, die in Atmosphären des Werdens schweben. Es vereint die Perspektiven von Künstler_innen und Forscher_innen auf die Welt der Materialien – organisch und künstlich, menschlich und nicht-menschlich. Ihre Essays und Kunstwerke richten den Fokus auf die Eigenschaften von Materialien, auf die Wahrnehmung dessen, was sich bewegt und bewegt werden kann, auf den Fluss der Beziehungen von Körpern und Dingen, auf Verstrickungen mit unserer Umwelt.
BOOK RELEASE 2014
Manifest der Interaktionskunst / Manifesto of interactive art
Interaktionslabor, the media lab founded by Johannes Birringer, celebrated its 10th anniversary (in 2013) on the grounds of the former coal mine Göttelborn (Germany). In the summer of 2014 the lab completed its third book publication: “Manifesto of interactive art.”
Edited by Johannes Birringer and Klaus Behringer (for PoCul Publishers), the book describes the history of the interaction laboratory and its gradual evolution into one of the most unusual cultural phenomena of the Saarland region. Since 2003, this autonomous media lab has attracted artists, engineers and computer scientists from around the world, offering two-week residencies every summer for the exploration of the artistic potential of new interactive media. The participants experimented with software and sensors, performance, sound and film compositions, conducting research into interactive architectures and real time processes. They also developed prototypes for productions that were later presented on stages or in galleries, while debating the possible outlines of a manifesto. This book takes stock not only of the interactive experiments, but also of these programmatic and poetic discussions that took place over the past years.
After a historical review of the laboratory by its founding director (introductory chapter), the book presents two versions of the manifesto in German and English, followed by seven further chapters written by members of last year’s laboratory, including a video essay by Turkish artist Hayriye Koç Basara, a critical essay on interactive dance by Italian choreographer Vanessa Michielon, and a detailed analysis of interactive wearables by British designer Michèle Danjoux who had prototyped several of her remarkable costumes in Göttelborn. The American dancer Anna Kroll reflects the phenomenon of temporality in art, while Vanessa Vozzo writes about interfaces in interactive installations. Local authors Uschi and Andreas Schmidt-Lenhard enrich the book with humorous meditations on the problem of interaction, while co-editor Klaus Behringer offers a moving account of his „outsider perspective“ as a photographer and longtime observer of the working methods of the laboratory. The longest chapter in the book transcribes the „Göttelborner Debates” on the apparent impossibility of a “manifesto” for interactive art, illuminating contentious issues, technical and philosophical implications, and the social and political significance of contemporary media practices.
The book is available in bookstores or can be ordered at http://www.pocul.de/html/buecher/manifest.html.
An overview of all projects can be found on the website: http://interaktionslabor.de
This project participates in the transeuropean research project METABODY: Media Embodiment Tekhne and Bridges of Diversity (EU Culture Program). It has received support from the Ministerium für Bildung und Kunst des Saarlandes and Saartoto Gmbh, as well as from IndustrieKulturSaar (IKS) and Willi Meiser Computertechnik.
BOOK RELEASE 2011
Tanz und WahnSinn / Dance and ChoreoMania
ed. Johannes Birringer & Josephine Fenger
Yearbook 21 of German Society for Dance Research.
August 2011 / Leipzig: Henschel Verlag, ISBN-10: 3894877103 In German and English. € 24,90
Throughout the history of civilization, dance and madness have been intricately linked to each other – from the Dionysian Mysteries of antiquity
to contemporary flash mobs and techno raves. Individual and collective states of exception have found expression and reflection as well as
cathartic healing through dancing. „Tanz und WahnSinn/Dance and ChoreoMania“ presents a provocative collection of interdisciplinary studies
on dance and madness combining historical, cultural, schizo-analytic, medical, philosophical, therapeutic and artistic perspectives
that explore the phenomenon.
Please do visit our website http://www.choreomania.org
BOOK RELEASE 2010
Johannes Birringer, “Corpo, Carne e Espírito: Musical Visuality of the Body” in
Blood, Sweat & Theory: Research
through Practice in Performance, ed John Freeman. Middlesex Univ. Press.
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BOOK RELEASE 2008
Performance, Technology, and Science by Johannes Birringer
Paperback: 338 pages
Publisher: PAJ Publications/New York (December 2008) ISBN: 978-1-55554-079-1 . List Price $ 24.95for ordering go to the distributor: TCG
« This ground-breaking work of scholarship explores convergences between performance and science through an investigation of new
technologies that drive computer-mediated, interactive art. In tracing the evolution of digital performance within a particular
history of engineering and theatre that now expands to a wide range of practices in dance, design, architecture, fashion, games, music,
robotics, telematic performance, and „post-production“-theatre, the author focuses on interactive performance, installation and Internet art.
Internationally known practitioners and their works are introduced to formulate provocative ideas on computation, complexity, emergence and self-organizing systems in contemporary performance which are inspired by biology and biotechnology. Wide-ranging and richly illustrated essays uncover shifts that have occurred globally in the aesthetic understanding of performance within computer-augmented virtual and networked environments.
The work of key artists, theatre/dance companies, and laboratories demonstrates how scientific concepts have influenced digital performance, and how performance relates to neuroscience, biology and the life sciences. Challenging common assumptions about embodiment and the digital, this study addresses how artists use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and sensing technologies not only to enhance the range of expression and visualization, but to bridge the gap between the work and its user. »
BOOK RELEASE 2007
Die Welt als virtuelles Environment, Johannes Birringer, co-editor with Thomas Dumke, Klaus Nicolai, Dresden: TMA.
critical review:
« Mit der TMA verbundene Autoren stellen ihre Gedanken virtueller quasiglobaler (Welt)Kommunikation vor und bringen zur CYNETart 2007 „encounter“ den Essayband „Die Welt als virtuelles Environment“ heraus.
Mit der Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau (TMA) und vor allem der diesjährigen telematisch orientierten CYNETart verbundene Autoren aus dem Gebieten der Medienkunst, Regie, elektronischer Sound-Komposition, Publizistik, Kulturwissenschaft und des Films mischen sich ein in die Diskussion über die Aktualität interaktiver Telepräsenz in Performance, mobiler Grafik, Spiel, audio-visuelle Komposition und dezentraler Kommunikation – kurz: „Tele-Plateaus“. Gestaltet ist die Publikation „Die Welt als virtuelles Environment“ von Thomas Dumke, Johannes Birringer und Klaus Nicolai im Stil der Publikation von 2005 »Globale Medialisierung und integrale Kultur«.
Das Buch wurde zeitgleich zur Eröffnung des diesjährigen Festivals computergestützter Kunst CYNETart_07encounter herausgebracht. Thematisch beschäftigt es sich so mit dem ureigenen Interesse der TMA: der Förderung einer telematischen (Medien)Kunst in den Formen menschlicher Dimensionen und Wahrnehmungsmöglichkeiten im Sinne interaktiver – und damit vernetzter – computergestützter „Klang-Bild-Räume“. Das Nachdenken und Experimentieren über Telematik und die künstlerische Anwendung computer- und internetbasierter Möglichkeiten ist zwar nicht neu. Jedoch aktualisiert die Beiträge die Diskussion durch ihre konkret praxisbezogene Ausrichtung. Die Texte sind in Englisch oder Deutsch geschrieben, was eine multilinguistische Biographie erfordert, (japanisch oder slowenisch aber zum Glück nicht vorkommen). Ein benutzerfreundliches Lesen wird durch die Gliederung in vier Bereiche und ein Anhang ermöglicht, und durch jeweilige Literaturhinweise zur weiteren Beschäftigung angeregt wird. Viele Fotos lockern die Gestaltung angenehm auf.
Die Essays sind einer allgemeinen Bestandsaufnahme telematischer und virtueller Performances (u.a. Ghislaine Boddington, Johannes Birringer, Yukihiko Yoshida, Maria B. de Medeiros, Floyd Scott Taylor) verpflichtet sowie einer Standortbestimmung in einer mediatisierten Aufmerksamkeitsgesellschaft (Vorwort, Klaus Nicolai, Florian Rötzer). Daneben sind Konzeptionsbeiträge zu Festivalbeiträgen der CYNETart 07 „encounter“ verstreut zu finden (Wilfried Jentzsch, Klaus Nicolai, Markus Kison, Friedrich Kirschner Dave Griffiths, Jo Fabian und Detlev Schneider, Sonja Cillari, Michael Takeo Magruder, Bonjana Kunst/ Igor Štromajer/ Brane Zorman). Ein Beitrag zur Festivalkonzeption selbst fehlt leider. (Heide Lazarus)
BOOK RELEASE 2006
Spielsysteme: Internationales Interaktionslabor 2005-06.
Exhibition catalogue, Co-edited by Johannes Birringer with Klaus Behringer
Detailed essays, photographs and analyses of the international performance and media laboratory in the former coal mine Göttelborn, focussing on the large-space pre-production research for the See you in Walhalla performance that premiered in Athens, Greece.
(in English and German, with DVD). Saarbrücken: Pocul Verlag.
BOOK RELEASE 2005
Tanz im Kopf/Dance and Cognition
Johannes Birringer and Josephine Fenger (eds), Jahrbuch 15 der Gesellschaft für Tanzforschung. Hamburg: LIT Verlag. ISBN 3-8258-8712-x
« Tanz im Kopf / Dance and Cognition (Yearbook No. 15) is a bilingual anthology of new dance studies reflecting the annual research focus proposed for 2004 by the German Association for Dance Research. The title refers to tendencies both in contemporary dance practices and in dance scholarship. The discursive thread of the eighteen essays collected in the book runs from a historical understanding of dance which tended largely to separate dancing from thinking to the current proposition that dancing is thinking. Theoretical considerations regarding contemporary concept dance are examined along with sociological dimensions of dance culture and pedagogical concepts. Intercultural projects are included and analyzed along with approaches to dance improvisation and dance experiments with media technologies.
The discussion forum „Dance and Science“ offers a special focus on various new research approaches in the cognitive neurosciences and experimental psychology and their impact on dance research and aesthetics. The essays in this forum present innovative models for the analysis of cognition and movement, and provide a critical framework for examining the influence of media and visualization technologies in dance production and research. Observational analyses of sensorimotoric behavior yield new findings that are relevant both for composition and performance practice as well as for dance pedagogical and therapeutic methods and improvisational techniques. This yearbook breaks new ground in international dance research advocating a strong cross-disciplinary emphasis on aesthetic and scientific investigations of performance and cognition. »
BOOK RELEASE 2004
Wechselwirkung: International Interaktionslabor 2003-04.
Exhibition catalogue. Co-edited by Johannes Birringer with Uschi-Schmidt-Lenhard, Klaus Behringer (in English and German, with a DVD), Saarbrücken: Pocul Verlag.
This is the first publication released by the International Interaktionslabor, after its first two summer laboratories held on the campus of the former Coal Mine Göttelborn in the Saarland.
The catalogue details the first experiments conducted on the vast terrain of the disused mine, and offers descriptions, analyses and interviews, with numerous photographs.
BOOK RELEASE 2000
PERFORMANCE ON THE EDGE
Transformations of Culture
by Johannes Birringer
« Performance on the Edge takes the reader on a journey across geographical borders and conceptual boundaries in order to map out the new territory of contemporary theatre, dance, media arts and activism. Working across social, cultural and political fault lines, the book explores performance as both process and contact, as the commitment to political activism and the reconstruction of community, as site-specific intervention into the social and technological structures of abandonment, and as the highly charged embodiments of erotic fantasies.
Performance on the Edge addresses the politics of community-oriented and reconstructive artmaking in an era marked by the AIDS crisis, cultural and racial polarization, warfare, separatism and xenophobia. Provocatively illustrated with work from North and Central America and Eastern and Western Europe, the book challenges our assumptions about the relations between media and activism, technological imperatives and social processes, and bodily identities and virtual communities.»
(London/New Brunswick: Athlone, 2000). ISBN 0 485 00418 6 hardback: $ 69.95
New paperback edition, 285 pages (1st and 2nd impression) Publisher: Continuum; ISBN: 0826457797, Price: $ 29.95
CONTINUUM: The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX – www.continuumbooks.com
BOOK RELEASE 1998-99
MEDIA AND PERFORMANCE: ALONG THE BORDER
by Johannes Birringer,
with film stills and photography, and chapters on theatre, dance, dance films, video art, video activism, AIDS activism, visual art, the body, digital art and virtual reality/virtual communities. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, $ 19.95.
« This book examines the border line between performance and the impositions of reality. Birringer discusses the performance aspects of such political events as the breaching of the Berlin war, the destruction of Sarajevo, and gay liberation (including the act of „coming out“ itself) and also shows how the dance — a „movement of fantasy“ — has been mediated by technology and political consciousness. The blurring of this border line has been more often appreciated — and seen as necessary — by artists than by critics, as was seen when Arlene Croce, writing in The New Yorker, denounced Bill T. Jones’s performance Still / Here for incorporating the video testimony of individuals dying of AIDS.
Birringer begins by tracing the origins of avant-garde dance and then shows how it has been transformed politically in, for example, the anachronistically utopian work of the Slovenian choreographer ivanidov; sexually, in the awkward yearning expressed in the performances of Pina Bausch’s Tanztheatre company; and technologically, as in the work of the Australian performance artist Stelarc, who literally wires himself into robotic machinery and imaging equipment. Later chapters explore the creation of digital-based interactive art such as Dancing with the Visual Dervish; Virtual Bodies created by Canadian artists Gromola and Sharir or „The Cave,“ a virtual reality environment at the University of Illinois; the use of video in the works of performance artists such as Vito Acconci and Naim June Paik and the creation of video sculptures such as Francesc Torres’s Oikonomos, which was never exhibited due to a protest by the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the artist’s plan to install a video monitor on the genitalia of their copy of a statue of Zeus; and the use of video and agitprop performance in political activity, including protests by the gay activist group ACT UP and the disquieting performances of the former pornography actress and sex worker Annie Sprinkle. Birringer ends with a discussion of the continuing incursions of business into digital media, including the „imperialism of technological enhancements“ as experienced in the culture of constant „upgrades“ and the omnipresence of Bill Gates.»
BOOK RELEASE 1989
Theatre, Theory, Postmodernism
What do the theater, Los Angeles, and a bodybuilder have in common?
Although the combination seems unlikely, new and innovative drama studies construe these and other postmodern „constructions“ as part of a theoretical paradigm that relates |textuality‘ to performative and cultural production. Making short order of the demand for poststructuralist analyses of contemporary drama and performance, Johannes Birringer formulates a „second stage“ of theater studies by demonstrating that cultural production and representation affect more than technology, shaping aesthetic models and ideologies of the subject as well.
In Theatre, Theory, Postmodernism, Johannes Birringer explores the theory and aesthetics of performance understood as a social practice struggling with the growing impact of technological and electronic culture that reduces human experience and transforms our relationships to reality, the self, the body, and the social imaginary. His critical investigations focus on recent developments in theatre, dance, performance art, video and multimedia performance, and he makes a series of aggressive forays into the relationships between theory, critical discourse nd social history.
As response to the dematerializing and dehumanizing effrects of postmodern technologies, Birringer argues for the reinvention of theatrical consciousness based on the experienced of thye dispossessed body-in-performance. Among the artists discussed are Robert Wilson, Laurie Anderson, Pina Bausch, Heiner Mueller, Meredith Monk, Eugenio Barba, Squat Theatre, Philip Glass, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, and Karen Finley.
Originally published in 1989
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Paperback: 256 pages
Reprinted in 1991 John Wiley & Sons
ISBN-10: 0253208459
Reprinted in 1993. ISBN-13: 978-025320845
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For further information on book, video and audio releases, contact:
orpheus (at) rice.edu
