Monologue on performance with technology

Easter is great. It gave me enough spare time and space in my mind to watch TV and search the internet.

I saw on TV about a multi-disciplinary group called Troika, who creates weird devices with technology that can interact with people and the society.

I am interested in a new way of presenting dance. Well, it does not need to be "dance"(what's dance anyway). Something to do with body, space, movement, people and the society. Something that suggests different ways of seeing, and can communicate with individuals.

One morning as I get up, I will have a super original idea for that!????

And this Troika seems something that feeds me some inspiration.

So I went to the website, and click, click, click... Once you start, you cannot stop following the links.

I have found this article on the magazine Icon.
digital poets

Quotes:

Now people are finally doing work where the expression is more important than the technology behind it.

“Interaction design is an approach – a process of designing relationships rather than things. It emerged from designing for electronic systems, but that thinking can be applied to all sorts of areas.”

As interaction design proliferates, there is also scepticism about some of the work being produced. “A few of these projects come from [a perspective of] ‘here’s a technology, so let’s see what we can do with it’ – rather than having a real question, desire or need,” says Loop.ph’s Mathias Gmachl. Others have pointed out the limits of work that is mostly experimental: “Many of these kind of provocative projects wouldn’t make it through as products,” remarks Jack Mama, creative director of Philips Design. “Elements get taken on and put into something else; the interesting thing is how they get translated, but they can get lost in translation.”

“It’s not really about solving a problem, it’s about solving a psychological need for poetry and inspiration,” he says. And this means thinking laterally about how we use the technology.

By appropriating illusion and narrative, designers are rediscovering modes of communication that have evolved over millennia. Products and buildings are being infused with the power of storytelling and dialogue. “The choice is between the familiar and the abstract; the practical task-based design versus an enjoyment of aesthetics that is closer to art,” says Moggridge. “Any product has to sit somewhere on that scale. It’s happening not because we didn’t always want it, but because it’s now much more possible. Because of the dispersal of technology you can make magic with almost anything.”

I have been working on performance with technology for four years, with five projects including two ongoing and one to come. These comments reflect so well what I have been thinking (Or do I just interpret in a way I wish because I already have some opinions?).

My big question is WHY TECHNOLOGY???
I keep asking this question as I work on a project.
It cannot be there just because it's cool.

What I want for performance with technology is.....
Maybe a unique poetry and inspiration?

Then aren't they anyway what a performance aims at?

Then can technology let a performance engage the audience more direct way?

But is that the way you want to go?