Meta-academy: Embodied Online Co-Creativity

“I entered Yeong’s room in a new way when we danced together via Skype last summer during Meta-academy. I experienced the space as a two-chambered room…Although gravity is undoubtedly left a bit out of the conversation of the weightless Internet communication, when Yeong’s chair chrashed into the floor in the other chamber of our two chambered room, I could feel my gravity informed mass respond directly and my embodied imagination go to town…”

            -Nancy Stark Smith  Editor’s Note: Moving Without A Body? Contact Quarterly. 39 (1). 3.

Meta-Academy Introduction

Meta-Academy investigates online learning as simultaneously an embodied creative collaboration and a unique pedagogical co-design opportunity. It creatively explores the implications of co-creation in networked environments for the humanities. In simple language, we use free, massively available platforms such as Google+, FLICKR, and YouTube to enable collaborative, creative learning around a core idea, community, question, or expert.  We call each collection of activities, resources, and discussions a “Lab”.  Rather than broadcasting existing realms of thought into the online space, Meta-Academy works to translate ideas and practices into activities that only exist online.  This produces a low-hierarchy alternative to the MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) in which all participants are treated as contributing artist-scholars. It is free, hosted by the social network dance-tech.net and is open to all interested parties.  Meta-Academy increases the digital literacy skills of its users by providing well-documented instructions and granular, step-by-step activities that allow participants of all levels of digital literacy to participate easily. No specific experience or environment is necessary, other than an Internet-enabled computer and webcam.

Meta-Academy, an experiment in embodied online learning, brings together my interests in digital technology and dance documentation with dance pedagogy and online education at large. This is an original area of research that is breaking new ground for the dance community. My collaborator, HZT Berlin Associated Researcher Marlon Barrios Solano, originally conceptualized Meta-Academy, but the project remained theoretical until I joined him as an equal partner and creative producer in the spring of 2013. Online education expert Josephine Dorado (The New School, New York) signed on to collaborate with us on the first pilot of Meta-Academy at the Bates Dance Festival July-August 2013.  Focused on the work of world-famous contact improvisation teacher Nancy Stark Smith, the pilot brought together 66 participants from 4 continents to study improvisation through online creativity.

There have been two major Meta-Academy Labs and a third will take place September 1-12, 2015.

In brief, the labs are:

1. Meta-Academy@Bates 2013: Minded Motion Lab
   • The first pilot for Meta-Academy, entitled ”Meta-Academy@Bates 2013: Minded Motion Lab“ focused on collaborating with master dance improvisation teacher Nancy Stark Smith to translate elements of her Underscore to the online space.  We asked the question, “What does a collaborative, embodied practice like the Underscore look and feel like if transposed to the internet with all its connective, social, visual, remixing and re-sampling capabilities?”
2. Meta-Academy Impustanz-BDF 2014
   • Dance festivals create intimate, hyperlocal communities where dancers exchange creative processes, pedagogies, finished work, and ideas. In 2014,Meta-academy connected three dance festival communities to each other, and opened them to users at home. Meta-academy invited users to engage online with three international dance festivals in the summer of 2014- Taking Place (July 1-13 in Columbus, OH, USA),Impulstanz/(July 21 -August 18 in Vienna, Austria), and Bates Dance Festival(July 21-August 11 in Lewiston, ME, USA).  We  also be participated inIDOCDE international symposium on contemporary dance education (August 1-3 in Vienna, Austria)
3. The Pattern that Connects | Meta-Academy@HZT-Bates 2025 Exploring choreographic knowledge in networked environments
   • meta-academy@HZT-Bates is an online lab investigating the  potential of networked environments  (from internet to mobile devices) for performance, contemporary choreographic practices, and collaborative knowledge production. The participants will explore online resources and cutting edge digital internet technologies to remotely connect, perform, register, aggregate, map and visualize the knowledge articulated in their own creative/artistic practice and research. Online lab activities include synchronous encounters, discussion forums, individual and collaborative projects and a presentation of final projects.

I have given each lab its own portfolio page due to the complexity of the lab project.