Playful Frustration - 31/07/18

After last weeks unexpected turn of events, I was looking forward to meeting with Andrew to finally make some headway of my piece, however, unfortunately he had to cancel. Nevertheless I came into the studio with fresh thoughts on interacting with the drone. 

I set myself the task of refusing to use anything but my body and its movements to control the drone. I started slow and at first this seemed fine and this began to seem like a possible beginning to my piece. However, it's become more and more apparent that the only way to interact with the drone, is very slowly, but watching this slow interaction for 30 minutes I imagine must become very tedious for an audience member. And even if I try to move quicker, as soon as the drone starts to go off course its almost impossible to get it to come back and the more frustrated I became, the harder the drone is to control. 

The drone never reacts in the same way, or sometimes it doesn't react to me at all, like it chooses when it wants to acknowledge me. I'm beginning to see the drone as a petulant child, always unpredictable and you have to teach it the correct behaviour. Whether the drone is capable of learning however, I am yet to find out.

Within this interaction between the drone and I, referring back to Ben Spatz's method of documentation, I become the Practitioner and the drone is the Director, as the drone is the one providing ideas of movement, by reacting to my presence beneath it. As the Practitioner, I chose whether to follow or disregard the drone's ideas, but almost always found myself following the drone as it is very stubborn and will not accept any suggestions apart from its own. And so despite the fact I am moving my hand underneath the drone and controlling it using my body, the drone's reactions are never the same, so who is the one in control and who is reacting to whom becomes quite blurred. Its almost as though the drone and I are fighting for control of one another, yet in a slow and deliberated quality of movement.

Battery life is also become extremely frustrating. As soon as the drone and I build up a sort of movement pattern and our connection is there, the battery dies. Leaving me then unable to carry on interacting. I'm still yet to decide on how to incorporate this in to the final piece, I was hoping I wouldn't have to, however the more I use the drone, the quicker the batteries wear out. I'm going to have to include one of two battery changes in to performance, yet the trouble is making this appear seamless without disrupting the flow of the piece for the audience.

Backwards Breakthrough - 25/07/18

Today was another meeting with Andrew, and again it was full of ups and downs, and thats not the drone! It started off similarly to previous meetings, being a very slow process with the hours moving too quickly for me to believe I'm actually getting anything done. As I had made significant headway in putting the drone spreadsheets together, I'd noticed that each section had between 30-60 commands... and considering there are 6 sections in total that adds up to a lot of programming. I had sent some drafts of the spreadsheets to Andrew for him and his interns to start working with before this meeting and so today Andrew started to show the progress... which was... slow. It took a long

Andrew and I attempting to tame a disobedient drone

time for the drone to perform the command to take off and rotate, and sometimes even if it did take off, it would then veer off in expected directions. This is because the drone needs to stabilise itself as it rises, and depending on the floor, for instance the black dance floor we have in the studios and in the theatre, is almost too black as there is nothing for the drone to recognise its location and hover above it. The amount the drone veers off to also changes every time, so there is no way to predict where the drone will end up. So if I hope to set up a starting position on stage, and drone veers away, it is then out of sync with its starting position and the rest of the programming will remain out of sync. This is very unwanted as the chances of something going wrong are now significantly higher. 

Whilst I was watching this happen and observing Andrew struggle to get the drone to take off efficiently, I panicked slightly and considered thinking of a back up plan. All that was coming to mind was reverting back to the playful exploration I had with the drone when Georgi watched, and all the interesting reflections she made. I mentioned this to Andrew and showed him the video and he also found it quite interesting, especially from an academic research point of view. Ultimately it was decided that programming the drone was going to take up too much precious time, which initially felt like a complete u-turn in my research. 

Andrew and I thus had a long detailed discussion about the theories behind my research and reminding me of my research questions which I think had become a little lost in my quest for programming. Andrew reminded me that drones are not designed to be programmed by code, and what happens with code is that, if we send a command for the drone to move backwards for 5 seconds, it receives the backwards command and starts moving before it has received the command for how long for, therefore the drone travels further then intended. Andrew called this a problem with transmission time and if we had months to complete this project, we may be able to find a solution, however, we have weeks, not months. 

On the subject of interacting with the drone naturally, Andrew had this to say 

"The beauty of it from an academic point of view is that you are interacting with it native, it is responding directly to you, in all other scenarios it is not responding directly to you at all. You have created a routine that you want it to do. If the premise of your work is the interaction of human and technology within dance, you already have a lot of information about the difficulties. The theory part is really interesting academically and all these problems that are occurring are all part of it and how you adapt."

This reminds me of one of my key research questions: Are machines able to organically create its own choreography? And by allowing the drone to react and move with me, I'm allowing it to do just that. Andrew reminded me of another one of research questions: How can we set paradigms for working with technology in dance in the future? By reminding me of the importance of setting boundaries.

"First thing you have to do when discussing autonomy and having machines think for themselves and robotics, is who defines the boundaries, how far can they go, in this case, how far can the drone go in distance, creates a physical boundary. But in the case of a military robot, how far is that robot allowed to go, is it able to make the decision to shoot someone? Its the same with autonomous vehicles, the autonomous car is built on the fact that you set it boundaries and you try to teach it the same boundaries that we have as humans; the white lines on the roads, the traffic lights, giving it all these restrictions to try and teach it to fit within our boundaries. And that is exactly what you're trying to do, and that is what you will overcome with this research." 

I hadn't realised that all the problems I am currently having are actually making my research all the more valid, I'm addressing my research questions without forcing the answers to appear. And when further problems arise, I need to remind myself of this and the progress I have made already although it may seem small. This was always going to a difficult process as I'm exploring things that don't always get the chance to be explored. Our lengthy discussion ended with this statement from Andrew:

"I think you are a lot further along than you think you are, because you started to detract from your research questions, because you are trying to perfect a performance as thats natural for you. Everything in dance is all about getting it right, practice practice practice until its faultless as a fault gets picked up. And you need to move out of the space as what we are doing here is improvisation, in an environment in which you don't yet understand the boundaries of. Don't focus on perfection and its the imperfections that answer your research."

And so, despite the slight upset in the intended research process, I feel as though I've had to move a few steps backwards to practically leap forwards. The discussion left me not feeling disheartened at the change in method, but feeling re-energised after discovering the achievements I have already made. I really feel as though I'm learning more and more every day and I'm starting to see that successes and failures are still valid progress. In fact, Andrew did warn me in the very first meeting that I would suffer from a lot of back and forth, and he was right, this drone flying malarky is proving to not be such a smooth ride after all!

Playful Reflections - 12/07/18

Amongst putting together the drone spreadsheets and spending hours in the studio trying to choreograph what might not be possible to choreograph, I invited my friend Georgi to come to one of my rehearsals. I didn't have a plan for the rehearsal, I just wanted someone to watch me interact with the drone and see what the reaction was from an audience member. So I connected to the drone via my mobile phone, set it to take off and hover and then only interacted with it by moving around it,  underneath it, sometimes pushing it in different directions, rather than controlling it by my phone. Her reaction surprised me a lot, and not to sound too arrogant, I wasn't expected her to be so amazed by me simply playing with the drone and seeing how it reacts to my touch and presence. You can see the result of this playful session in the video, where you can also hear Georgi's reaction. A lot of her comments interested me, and proved to be very valid for my research, she mentioned how she sees the drone as "like a person, like its got a brain" and she feels as though she is watching a duet between two humans, not a human and a drone. She also mentioned ways in which I could take this further, for instance by having a playful section where I'm chasing the drone, like playing a game of tag. I hadn't originally thought of interacting with the drone in this way and improvising with it, as it was decided in the research proposal stage for this project that all the drone movements would be pre-programmed, Georgi asked me that is what I am going to include in my piece, and I replied no, but maybe I should consider it?

From here I then asked Georgi to try interacting with it herself, to see how the drone would react to a different human body. And the movement quality proved to be not as fluid, and it became more of an awkward interaction of both the human and the drone being unsure of how to move with one another. Of course this was to be expected to some extent, as prior to this Georgi had no previous experience of moving with the drone. But by watching me, Georgi said she didn't anticipate how hard it would be. She said "You've got to have a good relationship with it to make it work, because otherwise if you're not connected with it, its not going to work, you've got to move it and its got to move you". This really got me thinking, as I hadn't realised to relationship I had built up with the drone, I was completely unaware of how both the drone and I had got used to moving together and this could potentially prove to be an extremely valid and important observation in my research. 

Finally, Georgi also observed that my performance, "as much as its set, it might not work, so there's an element of improvisation" and she is absolutely right. Even if Andrew and I succeed in programming the drone, due to the drone's stabilisation features and sensors, it may react unexpectedly, so there may always be a need for slight improvisation. So perhaps rather than working against this, I'm going to consider working with this improvisation and seeing what I can create with the drone reacting to me.

Spreadsheets - 11/07/18 to 24/07/18

Head to Head P1

Head to Head P2

As mentioned in my previous blog post, my last meeting with Andrew resulted in having lots to do in order to prepare for the next meeting. I was instructed to put together detailed spreadsheets with a list of every single movement I want the drone to do in the piece, this includes height, distance, time, rotation and speed. I am more than happy to do this, as it forces me to think about the choreography I want to include in each section. So, not including the first section as that is a film, I began with the second section. This was relatively easy as I had already choreographed this when I planned the sections, it was just the case of putting it into a spreadsheet. 

Head to Head P3

The third section, Head to Head, is proving to be extremely difficult and is taking me a long time to complete. The difficulty is that I'm trying to choreograph a duet that would arise from contact improvisation, without having done any contact improvisation yet. Improvisation is impossible to plan, otherwise it isn't improvisation. I've tried to guess how I would react to the drone and how the drone might react to me without being able to experience it. Even if I were to try and remotely control the drone whilst moving with it, that still isn't improvisation as I'm telling the drone what to do, and then as I have the controller in my hand I am then unable to move as freely as I would like.

Head to Head P4

Another difficulty is getting the timing precise. The drone is programmed by seconds, however myself as a dancer I am more used to working with counts and beats in music. I had already picked out a couple of songs I liked a couple of weeks back and I'd began assigning them to particular sections, however its becoming harder to resist choreographing to the music and ultimately I may end up doing so. Yet how on earth I'm going to get a drone to perform alongside counts in the music I have no idea!

And so I'm already doubtful this will work even before my meeting with Andrew, but I guess I shall carry on until our next meeting and see what he says. 

Adjusting - 10/07/18

Today I met with Andrew to discuss all the plans I had made out following his instructions and as per usual, I came into the studio ready to work quickly and get things set straight away in order to use the time efficiently. However, this meeting proved tricky for me, as technology does not always work just like that, especially when you're trying to get a drone to do something it wasn't built for.

Overall I felt as today's meeting wasn't productive and ended with not much done and a lot to do before my next meeting with Andrew. But I do think this is me having to cope with some adjusting. I'm getting used to working with a collaborator who before volunteering for this project has had no experience of the art industry, and myself who has no experience of working with such an individual nor a drone before.

What I'm learning is, that like the technology I'm working with, this process is very unpredictable. As much as I can plan and plan and plan, I can only work as fast as the technology allows. This doesn't necessarily bode well when you are at university and subject to many time constraints. But at the same time as I am learning, the drone is also learning too. The drone is constantly searching for information, with its sensors and when receiving code etc, so for instance, when Andrew sends it a command that it doesn't understand, it won't ignore it and wait for the next command, it will constantly try to understand the original command. Therefore it takes a long time for the drone to learn what it's required to do, especially when the commands are unfamiliar with the drone. You can see in the video how the drone performs the take off and the flip command but any further commands Andrew tries, it struggles to do until Andrew is able to get it to land. In this video, I see the drone as the Practitioner, waiting for instructions from Andrew, who becomes the Director whilst I here become the Videographer. Having the drone as the Practitioner creates a different effect as it waits for  Andrew's instructions and but doesn't necessarily always follow them.

Hopefully, like me, the drone is a quick learner in order to perform in September. Maybe humans and machines aren't so different after all.

Structured Chaos - 02/07/18 to 05/07/18

Following my meeting with Andrew, the purpose of this week was to thoroughly plan out my 30minute piece as best as I could, however, I couldn't do that without playing with the drone and investigating its natural functions. It took me a couple of days to get accustomed to controlling the drone, (in other words, I crashed it many, many times) but after a while as all things do it became slightly easier. 

This being said, I've decided upon 6 sections, each lasting about 5 minutes. The sections are as follows:

1. Opening film

The purpose of the opening film is not only to set the scene for the performance thats about to happen but it also means that the drone is required to fly live for a less amount of time. It was obvious from the start that the battery levels for the drone would be an issue, as a large battery allows for roughly 20minutes flying time, whereas the regular battery allows for roughly 12minutes. Considering my piece needs to be 30minutes long, an opening film was decided upon. The opening film will also be filmed from the drone's perspective, as seen in the video above, as it creates a nice aesthetic for the viewer. In this instance also, referring back to Ben Spatz from my previous blog post, the drone becomes the Videographer and the Director, deciding what it wants to film by deciding where to fly, and I remain as the Practitioner, presenting the idea to the Director.

2. Territory

My idea for this section is for the drone to appear to be literally marking its own territory, the stage is it's domain, and therefore when I enter the stage it sees me as a possible intruder. This hopefully will demonstrate how usually the theatre and the stage are usually largely dominated by a human presence however more frequently nowadays technology is making its home on stage.

3. Head to Head

Following on from the previous section, I envision that myself and the drone will scope each other out, much like two wild animals would before fighting. In order to portray this I hope for the movement vocabulary to be on a low level, quite slow and animalistic with the drone very close to my face the entire time. The head to head idea has also been inspired by contact improvisation techniques, in which usually two humans come to contact for the first time via their foreheads touching, and gradually find ways to move together. Similarly here, the drone and I are discovering ways in which we can move together.

4. Birds Eye View

Here I want the drone to use its advantage of height by looming above me, just out of my reach. As the drone has a secondary camera to film a bird's eye view I may also experiment and see what the movement looks like from above and perhaps include some footage of that within my piece. I also want to include some movement phrases where it seems as though the drone is controlling me from above, pulling me in different directions around the stage, using fall and release in my movement vocabulary.

5. Dodging

This is where I want the drone to take over the stage, flying round and round at quite a fast pace, perhaps causing me to quickly dive or jump out of its path, investigating how far the drone can challenge me, visibly showing how exhausting it is for me.

6. Fading

After the drone has rapidly picked up energy in the previous section, and imagining that it's battery level is next to nothing, the drone here will begin to slow down as if it is becoming weaker. I plan to interact with the drone as if I'm trying to encourage it to keep going and keep flying, using the depleted battery level to my advantage, and the drone may possible lose all energy completely and die out in my hand, therefore signalling a clear end to my piece.

These sections all sound quite interesting and exciting, but whether or not its possible for the drone to perform how I envision it will is a completely different story. I already get the feeling I may be being too ambitious but only time will tell. Unfortunately Andrew cancelled our meeting for the end of this week so I'll have to wait until Tuesday to see whether this is all possible.