Error, Ambiguity, and Creativity: A Multidisciplinary Reader

260 Pages·2020·7.336 MB·English

by  Sita Popat, Sarah Whatley

Error, Ambiguity,
and Creativity

A Multidisciplinary Reader
Edited by
Sita Popat · Sarah Whatley
Error, Ambiguity, and Creativity
·
Sita Popat Sarah Whatley
Editors
Error, Ambiguity,
and Creativity
A Multidisciplinary Reader
Editors
Sita Popat Sarah Whatley
University of Leeds Centre for Dance Research
Leeds, UK Coventry University
Coventry, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-39754-8 ISBN 978-3-030-39755-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39755-5
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
namesareexemptfromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreefor
general use.
Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinforma-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respecttothematerialcontainedhereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeen
made.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregardtojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmaps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Gibson/Martelli in front of ‘Ruth Rolling’
Photograph by Christina Seely
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to the memory of Calvin Taylor (1963–2019)
Acknowledgements
Aseditors,ourthanksgotoallourauthors,fortheirpatienceandcommit-
ment to the “error” project and in sharing in their chapters such a
wonderfully diverse range of error experiences. We thank the Arts and
Humanities Research Council, for providing funding support for the
network project that gave birth to this collection. We are grateful to
Palgrave Macmillan for their support throughout the production of the
book, and particularly for their confidence in a book that, in the spirit
of its theme, is deliberately taking some risks in terms of writing conven-
tionandsubjectmatter.Finally,wewishtothankeveryonewhohasgiven
permission to include their images to be reproduced in the book, and we
trust that we have credited everything correctly and have acknowledged
allcopyrightholders.Ifanythinghasbeenoverlooked,thepublisherswill
bepleasedtomakethenecessaryarrangementsattheearliestopportunity.
Sarah Whatley
Sita Popat
vii
Contents
Introduction 1
Sarah Whatley
Creative Thought-Spaces Nested in Ambiguity 9
Efva Lilja
Tactical Ambiguity: Materiality, Representation
and Interaction in Evan Meaney’s Glitched Portraits 21
Vendela Grundell Gachoud
Ambiguity in Psychology 43
Jon May
Art of the Accident 63
Ruth Gibson and Bruno Martelli
Beyond Error: Philosophy of Indeterminacy in the Age
of Algorithms 85
Jaime del Val
‘Queer, Wonderful Misunderstandings’: Catachresis
as Aesthetic in Contemporary Poetry 107
Callie Gardner
ix
x CONTENTS
Medical Error: A Misnomer? 127
Rory O’Connor
On Counter-Mapping and Media-Flânerie: Artistic
Strategies in the Age of Google Earth, Google Maps
and Google Street View 137
Emilio Vavarella
Perhaps This Cannot Be Anything (on Exercises in Text
Production and Critical Typography, Which Make
Use of Machine-Made Errors in Processes of Visual
and Semantic Translation) 167
Paul Wilson
Error as Music Composition: Human and Material
Agencies 187
Scott McLaughlin
Crashing Creatively: Trial and Error in the Hip Hop Battle 211
Sherril Dodds
Written in Error: Definitions and Methods
for Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Research 235
Sarah Whatley
Index 241
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Sita Popat isProfessorofPerformanceandTechnologyattheUniversity
ofLeeds.Herresearchliesattheinterfacebetweenbodyandtechnology,
withaparticularinterestindigitalavatarsandvirtualworlds.Sheisauthor
of Invisible Connections: Dance, Choreography and Internet Communities
(Routledge, 2006) and co-editor with Nicolas Salazar Sutil of Digital
Movement:EssaysinMotionTechnologyandPerformance (Palgrave,2015).
Sarah Whatley is Professor and Director of the Centre for Dance
ResearchatCoventryUniversity.Herresearchinterestsincludedanceand
new technologies, dance analysis, somatic dance practice and pedagogy,
and inclusive dance practices. She is co-editor of Digital Echoes: Spaces
forIntangibleandPerformance-BasedCulturalHeritage (Palgrave,2018)
and is editor of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices.
Contributors
Jaime del Val is a transdisciplinary media artist, philosopher, activist,
promotor of the Metabody Project, Forum and Institute, and the non-
profit organisation Reverso. Since 2000, he develops transdisciplinary
projects in the transvergence of arts (dance, performance, architecture,
visual and media arts, music), technologies, critical theory and activism.
xi
xii EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
His projects propose redefinitions of embodiment, perception and public
space that challenge contemporary control society as well as normative
conceptions of affect, sex, gender and ability and have been presented
withover100performancesandinstallationsinover50citiesof25coun-
tries,acrossEurope,NorthandSouthAmerica,aswellasAsiaandAfrica,
mostly under the collective Reverso.
Sherril Dodds is a Professor of Dance at Temple University. Her books
include Dance on Screen (2001), Dancing on the Canon (2011), Bodies
of Sound (co-edited with Susan C. Cook, 2014), The Oxford Handbook
of Dance and Competition (2019) and The Bloomsbury Companion to
Dance Studies. She has been a visiting scholar at Trondheim University
in Norway, Griffith University in Australia, Stanford University in the
USA and Blaise-Pascal University in France. She was awarded the 2015
Gertrude Lippincott prize for her article, “The Choreographic Interface:
Dancing Facial Expression in Hip Hop and Neo-burlesque Striptease”.
Callie Gardner is a writer and editor based in Glasgow. They are the
authorofNaturallyItIsNot (The87Press,2018)andPoetry&Barthes
(Liverpool University Press, 2018) and editor of Zarf poetry magazine
and its associated pamphlet press, Zarf Editions. They have taught at
CardiffUniversity,theUniversityofGlasgowandtheUniversityofLeeds.
Vendela Grundell Gachoud is an art historian, photographer and
teacher.SheisapostdoctoralresearcherattheDepartmentofCultureand
Aesthetics at Stockholm University, and a visiting fellow at the Depart-
ment of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths,
UniversityofLondon,withherproject“SeeingDifferently/SeeingDiffer-
ence: Emancipation and Aesthetics in Photography by the Visually
Impaired”. Her publications include “Navigating Darkness: A Photo-
graphic Response to Visual Impairment” in Liminalities (2018), Flow
and Friction: On the Tactical Potential of Interfacing with Glitch Art
(Art & Theory, 2016) and a chapter in Art and Photography in Media
Environments (Lusófona University, 2016).
Efva Lilja is a choreographer and activist working with performances,
visualart,filmandwriting.From1985to2005,shewasArtisticDirector
of the E.L.D. Company based in Stockholm, producing work in more
than 35 countries around the world. She is the author of 11 books,
lecturer and a forerunner within artistic research, with an active role as
a member of various international bodies. She has been decorated and