body, space & technology journal review

I read the article" Digital Dance Theatre: The Marriage of Computers, Choreography and Techno/Human Reactivity ", written by Kathryn Farley ,in the body, space and technology journal. http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/vol0301/index.html Farley appeared as an observer in the Live-Interactive workshop operated by Troika Ranch in 2002 and later wrote down her investigation of the unique tehno/homan reactivity in this paper.

Being an entrant of this field, I almost had no idea about Troika Ranch artists' performaces at the beginning. After visiting their website, I discovered that they are a company located in Brooklyn,NY, and have innovative ideas, for example, dancers can control multi-media devices (image or audio) by their body motions. The interactivities between human bodies and media attribute to the softwares, midiDancer and Isadora, created by Mark Coniglio, who's also one of the funders and media artists of the company.

In the article, Farley brings up an issue about the technology part of digital dance:
" Central to Troika Ranch’s mission of integrating digital media into live performance is the
conviction that technology must serve the dance’s narrative structure and composition. In order
to facilitate a story or unify a sequence of events, technology needs to be both useful (i.e. easily
accessible) and purposeful (artistically). Throughout the workshop, Coniglio and Stoppiello
reiterated the mantra: know technology before need. In other words, technological instruments
must be mastered before they can be implemented in a live-performance setting. "
I think what she said exposes the fact that digital dance theater is in an experimental stage and relies heavily on technology equipments, maybe much more than any other genres of performances. Therefore, knowing about technology becomes crucial to artists and ideas can not be created without the notion of multi-media application. However, this is also the part I
hardly can understand and long to see in person.