The combination of art and technology combined has shown expeditious
development as was predicted by Paik Nam June - “In the 21th century, painting will take the form of electronic machines coloring across a canvas”. Technology is to art, the source for imagination and an efficient tool for expression, signaling challenge within arts’ history. Art, based on technology, transformed into various media and continued together with it through time. In dance, the combination to technology is exemplified in Loie Fuller’s integration within theater art, Ted Shawn’s imagery of dance, and in mid 20th century, New Technology dance as emphasized by Alwin Nikolais’ ‘Total art’, and Merce Cunningham’s dance and video imaging as an independent medium. In fact, many dancers have combined dance with present technology and have joined in the experimentation of dance identity. In the late 20th century, we see an active use of objet d’art. Thus, dance, in a new field of computers and digits, endowed with traits of mass media greets an era of visual dance.
Now, dance newly embodies the image of the moving body in a virtual time
and space, of which Marshall Mcluhan referred to as ‘a global village’. In Katrin Hall’s 「Burst」(2003), a traditional sense of time and space was broken by a form of digital image. Moreover, through the so-called mixing of images, it established an artificially combined sensual reality where two-way communication in which the constructed audiences can also participate is attained. So it ascended from a purity of bodily movements to a new imaged domain with the use of video media. A mutual understanding of multilateral communication and interactive form was also made possible. Furthermore, we have parted from an era where the identity of dance was one of momentary and instantaneous documentary arts and created a spectacle on screen of dance having eternity which can be viewed upon the audience’s freedom and choice.
Hereafter, dance will greet its audience with a globalism of an artificial digital
form, alternative to the previous conventional system which emphasized the
visual/sensorial structure of dance. The imaging project, an outcome which headed the transition of ideas along with technological advancement, is just another genre of dance which reflects the spirit of the time mentioned by Sparshott. Now the imaging project of dance has come into the spotlight as a promising cultural enterprise that will lead dance of the 21th century, forecasting future dance on account of an original, passionate form.