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In this article I explore my current choreographic work with human and flying robotic performers. I adopt a number of existing conceptual lenses for the analysis of my choreographic approach, including ‘interdisciplinary choreography’, ‘post-choreography’, ‘processing choreography’, ‘generative techniques’ and ‘metacreation’. Following a brief discussion of choreographic practices in digital (live) performance environments, I propose two new terms: ‘transmedia choreography’ and ‘transmedia score’. Examples of multimodal video annotation in the creative process of our recent social robotics performance piece I-Care-Us will serve to discuss novel approaches in the production process of current transmedial performance works. Transmedia choreography How do you describe and situate choreographic work with human and flying robotic performers? Conventional notions of choreography inevitably will not suffice to discuss recent choreographic practices in interactive mixed reality environments, as these conceptual frameworks have been developed in different historical and technological contexts. For example, problems in choreographic analysis arise when interactive system design comes into play, posing questions such as: how do you choreograph an interaction between a human performer and a semi-autonomous agent, for instance, a flying robot programmed to make decisions, which may not be repeatable? Is the motion design of the robot’s behaviors choreography, or something different? What kind of notation or documentation could support such choreographic practices? Building on existing novel conceptual frameworks that re-evaluate the term choreography in the context of digital (live) performance, I will propose two new terms and exemplify their utilization with reference to the work of several well-known practitioners in the field as well as illustrating my own choreographic approach. Sophia Lycouris suggests that ‘the impact of interdisciplinary practice in contemporary choreography’ has contributed to the ‘emergence of an expanded definition of choreography’ (2009a: 347). This led her to propose the term ‘interdisciplinary choreography’ (2009a: 348). In her artistic work as well as her research activities she has been exploring the idea of a ‘compositional meta-system on the basis of which the choreographic edifice work’ (2009a: 350). Lycouris came to the conclusion that it is possible to develop appropriate ‘compositional meta-systems in order to support the creation of new choreographic work (and work incorporating new technologies in particular) in which the relationships between all heterogeneous components of the work can be defined in a coherent manner’ (2009a: 359). In another recently published article Lycouris writes in depth about the artistic concepts that led to developing interdisciplinary choreographic techniques for her project E-Motions in Urban Networks, a single screen animation film/installation project discreetly integrated in the urban space of Chelmsford, UK. Here choreography is seen as ‘a set of techniques used to design dynamic changes in a given environment, be that physical, virtual, hybrid or conceptual’ (Lycouris, 2009b: 143). On the other hand, Lycouris’ choreographic methodologies are developed drawing on appropriate extra-disciplinary ‘vocabularies’, for example, ideas of space in contemporary architectural discourse such as Hillier’s ‘Space Syntax’, or Eisenman’s fluid environments (Lycouris, 2009a: 359 and 2009b: 148). Lycouris’ choice of terms clearly situates her artistic research and practice in the field of contemporary choreography. She adopts an integrative approach regarding the transfer and influence of concepts and techniques from other artistic and scientific fields, which is conducive to a compositional meta-system supporting choreographic work in interdisciplinary and hybrid settings. Johannes Birringer, a well-known writer, researcher, choreographer and media artist, has adopted an interesting discursive strategy to discuss contemporary choreographic practice within the context of digital performance. The title of his article After Choreography (Birringer, 2008a) indicates that sufficiently radical changes have occurred to suggest the term ‘post-choreography’ to differentiate current artistic practice from conventional conceptions of choreography. He argues that: Although the notion of choreography has not disappeared in the context of contemporary twenty-first century digital performance and virtual art, it has undergone a re-evaluation in terms of how bodily movement produces data or how a performer or “immersant” engages with an interface environment that is programmable and networked, and thus open to unpredictable and emergent states. These states evolve from the system behaviour as a whole, from the digital body-environment interaction (Birringer, 2008a: 118). Paraphrasing the title of this important article, one could ask: what existed before postchoreography? According to Birringer, the ‘conventional organization and articulation of dance as choreographic practice relied on a coding that fixes the steps and sequences of movement (located in real space and, more often than not, within patterns/rhythms of music) and makes them repeatable’ (Birringer, 2008a: 118). Conversely, authors such as Friederike Lampert perceive choreography as a fluid continuum. Entirely planned and closed choreographies represent one pole, and entirely unstructured and unplanned improvisation the other end of the spectrum, which comprises ten distinct degrees (2007: 187).This approach allows Lampert to describe a large variety of contemporary choreographic processes. By contrast, Birringer’s suggestion aims for a re-assessment of the complex relations between the ‘performers’ behavior’ and the virtual ecologies they inhabit. Elsewhere Birringer states: In an indirect interface, the performers (or participants) are challenged to re-organize their motional, affective, perceptive, and proprioceptive behavior in the environment. The desired aesthetic aim would be to anticipate direct dance transformations or acting transformations in realtime. In other words, the more complex the technologies behind the interface become, the more attention, creativity, and originality need to be applied to transformative techniques and synaesthetic processes (Birringer, 2008b: 154). Many choreographers in the field of digital performance share the view that there is a need for the development of adequate performance techniques for work with (interactive) technologies in live performance situations. American choreographer Kenneth King has suggested the term ‘processing choreography’, which describes the performance of dance works that make it possible for us to see ‘the dancer’s awareness, intelligence and spontaneity allowed to function on stage’ (King, 2003: 8). In his essay Transmedia (1984) he writes: I like the idea of a technic rather than a technique, because there are larger, organic, holistic connections in the moving body, and another energy source. I mean, with whom or where can one train to move synergetically? (King, 2003: 6). King’s idea of ‘moving synergetically’ reflects his approach of dance training as ‘collective kinetic investigation and exchange’. He encourages his students ‘to bring something else or other an interest, a vocation, a system, even another art to the dance, to discover a larger organic understanding of the moving body’ (King, 2003: XV). King’s transmedial approach to dance training and performance have been instrumental for my study of forms of ‘synergetic training’ for digital (live) performance situations (Jürgens, 2011) developed by well known practitioners in the field, such as Schiller and Lovell, Wechsler, Coniglio and Stoppiello, McGregor, Sermon and many others. Birringer’s perspective is very valuable to my attempt at identifying what might be the constituent elements of a ‘transmedia choreography’, beyond developing techniques of moving synergetically in a digital (live) performance environment. He writes: For many artists working with computational and interactive systems, models of real-time sequencing and intervention in image and sound projection have become vital, and these are often derived from mathematics, cybernetics, biology, neuroscience and AI rather than from a primarily notational understanding of “choreography” (the writing of dance) based on principles of organizing movement in space and time (Birringer, 2008a: 118). In excluding postmodern and post-post-modern choreographic approaches from his definition of choreography, Birringer is able to detect and eloquently designate what I call ‘transmedial choreographic techniques’ in complex digital (live) performance ecologies. According to Mitchell Whitelaw new media art practices have integrated Artificial Life (ALife) and Artificial Intelligence research and computation techniques. Genetic algorithms for example imitate the way DNA functions, in that the ‘genotype’ (the code written by the programmer) causes the corresponding ‘phenotype’ (the graphic user interface and the media) to appear. Another example is agent-based systems, which may simulate interaction in an artificial environment, or exhibit the behavior of flocks. Cellular automata can account for yet another technique, denominating the affecting or being affected by ‘cell neighbors’ in a formal system (2006: 8-10). Whitelaw dubs these kinds of art practices as ‘metacreation’, a concept that allows him to integrate complex scientific research and techniques into new media art practice. I have recently proposed a Methodology for Bi-Directional Transfer between Contemporary Dance and New Media Technologies (Jürgens, 2011). In this Ph.D. dissertation I link Whitelaw’s ‘metacreation’ to Phillip Galanter’s discussion of (complex) generative art, in particular to his well-known definition of generative art, which he describes as any art practice where th

Transmedia Choreography: Integrating Multimodal Video Annotation in the Creative Process of a Social Robotics Performance Piece