Both WDA members and non-members are invited to submit proposals for presenting dance works in performance, presenting scholarly research, holding a panel discussion, conducting a class, or leading choreographic labs.

With Evolve + Involve: Dance as a Moving Question… as the focal point of the event, WDA-A encourages broad investigations into the following questions: How is dance evolving in the 21st century? How are we as artists, educators, and researchers engaged with these emerging developments? With whom and how will we be involved as new practices emerge? How might these new engagements and involvements open further questions for dance’s future? With these questions in mind, we urge participants to propose new possibilities for the many different modes of presenting, experiencing, producing, and teaching dance. Proposals need not be limited to or by the Conference and Festival’s theme, which should be considered as a catalyst for discussion rather than a restraint.

World Dance Alliance – Americas (WDA-A) is delighted to announce our 2013 Conference and Festival will be held July 29 – August 4, 2013 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre in beautiful Vancouver, BC, Canada. This event is hosted by WDA-A in conjunction with the 2013 Dance Critics Association Conference with support from Texas Woman’s University Department of Dance, University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Department, and the Dance Centre.

For more information or to submit a proposal, visit: www.wda-americas.net/conference

Here we (*) are again. The young Art.On.Wires festival opens its doors for the second time.

Like last year, we arrived in a very warm and wellcoming atmosphere here in Oslo. Not just because the sun is shining...

Today the day starts with an introduction talk by Alexander Eichhorn, the founder of this festival.

The day is reserved for talks and lectures. People introduce themself and their work in general or more specific, talk a little about the workshops they will give and answer some questions.

Marko Ritter (D), co-founder of the company intolight, starts the lecture about his work and research. Intolight got a grand from the E.C.A.S. network to develope their project CHET (collective hedonistic toolkid). One part of this software mainly based on vvvv is switchboy. It's a toolkid for Vjing. You basically can do everything with it. The software will be open-source and Marko hopes for many people who will contribute new patches for switchboy in order to develope this multi-functional toolkid. You can do mind mapping, project 3D graphics, Videos and all the things a good Vj programm should be able to provide.
Marko will give a workshop together with Valérie-Françoise Vogt for vvvv - An introduction into the Multipurpose Toolkit on Thursday and Sunday.

Marko Ritter // intolight // intolight.de
Valérie-Françoise Vogt // veevee.de
E.C.A.S. // ECAS/ICAS
CHET // chet toolkid
Switchboy // switchboy

After the lunch break the talks continue with 5uper.net/DAAL and DKIA.

Based in Vienna Philip Fischer, Erkin Bayirli, Michal Wlodkowski, the guys from 5uper.net/DAAL, talk as well about their artist collective and their artistic-research work. Michal gives us a short overview about their projects, one is the international festival coded cultures. Erkin introduces us to the roboter plant superViVo and some other agiland mobile cybernetic plants. It's all about playfulness and an easy access to solar topics, agil cybernetic plants and gadges.
They will give their workshop on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

superViVo robot // supervivo.daal.at

5uper.net/DAAL (AU) // 5uper.net
DAAL // 5uper.net DAAL

DKIA are based in Vienna as well, working and researching in the fields of media art, electronics, prototyping and sustainable innovations. In the last two years they focused on LED technology and realized several LED driven projects.
To just drop in some words what they're doing: web development, participating activism art, interactive talking cubes.
They gonna give a full day workshop Thursday and half day on Friday.

Jacob Korn talks about his main projects over the last years, beside being a musician and producer for Techno and House music. Automatic clubbing is one of it. Now called I.D.A (interactive dancefloor application) which is a collaborative instrument. In the beginning it would run with kalypso and max.msp stand alone. He collaborates with different people to realize several performances, such as Frieder Weiß, Matthias Härtig, intolight. Next project is Harmony Universe. An instrument mainly for children. They learn playing with music and rhythm through an interactive software and visuals on the floor (for instance). It is a collaborative instrument, so if the kids play well, it sounds well...max4life and vvvv is used for the software stuff. Another baby of Jacob is Uncanny Heroes - a workshop based development for a tool to let people interact with the sound and visuals they're confronted with in a normal party situation.

He will give a workshop for Abelton live on Thursday

Jacob Korn // jacobkorn.de
Harmony Universe // vimeo.com/9935622
Uncanny Heroes // intolight.de/projekte/uncanny-heroes

Lars Graugaard is basically talking about his great wish to have a software which does everything for him. Well, who doesn't. His longstanding research in music, working as a composer and programmer brought him to a constantly improving "organism" to make music and performances happen. One software, huge possibilities where and how to use it. Together with his students he enlarges the necessary patches for max.msp. Lars' aim is to have a flexible system to work with many different instruments and their very specific characteristics.

His workshop will be on Sunday.

Lars Graugaard // l--l.dk

After a small coffee break we continue with Jason Geistweidt (US/NO) and Brock Craft (UK).

Jason Geistweidt introduces us to his projects and philosophy of his work. It's all about collaboration  and trust and communication. Working on a huge project called "world opera" Jason is connected to 6 different countries in order to create and research how to make a world opera happen. In realtime of  course. Using video, OSC, vvvv and all you need, there is still the problem of time delay. Even if it is just about milli seconds still a lot of artists (musicians, dancers...) have problems to interact over camera to a different place in the world. Where am I? What is your time, what is mine?

Friday night there will be a linked performance with Oslo and California.

Last but not least Brock Craft talks about his work. Brock is an Interaction Designer, artist, and specialist in Physical Computing and Information Visualization. One of his many projects is "NetChimes". Basically you need a chime and a station to live stream it. Over a server you can listen to any chimes  listed on the server. We checked it out during his lecture and it worked perfectly.

His workshop for Arduino will be on Saturday.

Brock Craft // brockcraft.com
NetCHimes // netchimes.org/

Tomorrow starts an exciting day full of interesting workshops. I'll keep you updated!

(*)We is:

Marko Ritter - VVVV programmer - http://blog.intolight.de

Valérie-Françoise Vogt - graphic design - http://veevee.de

Jacob Korn - musician (Abelton, Max 4life) - http://www.jacobkorn.de/

Johanna Roggan - dancer, choreographer - www.moveonit.net