Abstract:
This research aims to choreographically explore the algorithm, specifically how the algorithm interacts in social media platforms. It aims to do this directly in relation to audience in my performance work 5 Ways to Master the Choreographic Algorithm. I aim to explore how choreography in the theatre context can be created for specific purposes through exploring various aspects of an algorithm such as categorisation, personalisation, transparency, and authority. Furthermore, I aim to explore the norms and everyday use of social media algorithms, and how the algorithms contribute to the construction of our social media identities. I have worked with five dancers engaging with various approaches to choreographic tasking within this performance. This research has been conducted through an algorithm, a set of tasks determining actions that transform inputted data into an output (Gillespie, 2014; Lerner & Lerner, 2014; Martigon, 2015). This algorithmic approach has contextualized the output of this research, situating the choreographic performance as one possible outcome of the research, dependent on the environmental aspects in which it has occurred in (Gillespie, 2014). Throughout this algorithm, I have conducted ‘tests’ as understood through the writings of Avital Ronell (2005). I have understood choreography in this research through Jonathan Burrow’s (2010) description as a series of choices, as well as through William Forsythe’s (2011) term ‘choreographic objects’ which defines choreography as an action upon an action where the possibilities of the choreography are everything that can occur in the choreographic environment. Thus, understanding my choreography as choreography in the expanded field, not bound to one understanding of form, structure, or style (Harvey, 2011; Wood, 2015). This work was choreographically created in the form of an algorithm. This algorithm also relies on outward factors such as the audience for the piece to be structured and certain elements of tasks to be decided. This research reflects upon the notion of the human/non-human as understood by Karen Barad (2003) and Rosi Braidotti (2013) in relation to social media algorithm cultures. Practitioners such as Merce Cunningham (1951), William Forsythe (1999), Mårten Spångberg (2007), and Seren Powell-Jones (2017) have all been cited as whakapapa (genealogical) sources of influence. Specifically, Forsythe’s (1999) Improvisation Technologies program was utilised in movement vocabulary exploration, and developing some of the works movement algorithms (tasks). Though, in departure from these reference points, my research intends to ask how social media algorithms may interact with aspects of choreography such as the structure, tasking, and the choreographic output. I intend to explore how social media algorithms may influence users, as well as exploring possible intentions behind them.