credit: Framemakers

Complementarity: An Archipelago

Publication

Chapter in the book Framemakers:Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change, published by Daghdha, Ireland. Available on Amazon. October 2008.

Description

The article riffs on Niels Bohr’s complementarity, the requirement that, in order to appreciate reality, we must balance two contradictory concepts in our mind at the same time. A consideration of quantum foam, childhood nightmares, the measurement of sound, the pigeonhole principle, musical chairs, Alexander’s pattern language, post-punk musicians Wire, the Observer Pattern and cybernetics forms a game system anyone can play.

An archipelago is a sea containing scattered islands. This paper is a scattering of texts embedded in the particular context the reader provides, a context that is the axis about which the islands spin. The goal is the open-ended generation of new connections, unexpected by both the reader and this author.

This book was an outcome of the Framemakers series of seminar/performance events at Daghdha. I collaborated with dramaturge Steve Valk on several of these events, contributing photography, text, design, and music.

Thanks

Thanks to choreographer Michael Klien and dramaturge Steve Valk for creating the conditions under which these thoughts could crystallise. Thanks also to the dancers and other artists who made Daghdha such a vital creative force. The work lives on…