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Analívia Cordeiro on Perpetual Motion

Computer dance icon Analívia Cordeiro spoke in person with Peter Bauman (Monk Antony) at the Digital Art Mile during Art Basel 2024. The text below is based on—yet extends—their conversation.

Peter Bauman: You made M3X3 in 1973, when you were only 19. What was your inspiration from such an early age to combine these two apparent opposites—technology and the human body?

Analívia Cordeiro: I began that first work when I was 18 years old, although it took almost one year to finish it, from conception, programming, dance rehearsal and video recording. I worked at the State University of Campinas’s computer center on a PDP-11 with 5 MB of storage and 256 KB of memory—a real challenge.

I began to dance when I was seven, which means I’d been an artist for eleven years at that point. I loved mathematics and also had Oskar Schlemmer, the Bauhaus theater master, as inspiration. I was exposed to art because my father—at lunch and dinner time—always showed me art and paintings from the classical to the most avant-garde.

The way a dancer understands the world is not rational. It's through the body. I had a very practical idea of what I wanted: for the computer to plan the dance for video cameras because I anticipated our video-forward lives.

At that time, computer artists and engineers were trying to understand how human expression in several fields like visual arts, music and dance could be coded for a computer. But at that time, generally speaking, society was afraid of technology in the arts. People even gave me the nickname “Bionic Dancer,” meaning that I was cold and mechanical, without emotions. My classmates preferred theatrical dance, which originated with expressionistic art. We had classes together on Rudolf von Laban’s system of movement, where I learned how to analyze motion through its four elements: weight, space, time and fluency.

This is the basis of my research on computer dance. I saw a way to combine the human body and technology, proposing a dialogue between rules and freedom. The computer output was stick-figures and the dancer had the freedom to connect these figures according to their individual movements, leaving a way for each dancer to interpret for themselves. This way, they were emotionally motivated and happy. Today, this means a lot because technology imposes many rules on us and people need to find personal space to survive. An example is the video's rectangular frame, which imposes a structure where we are compelled to put all the messages of movement we want to share.
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Then, artists were trying to put the real world inside the computer; now, we have to push people off computers and tech devices.

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In M3X3, the dancers move according to diagonal or orthogonal lines. Why? I thought dance did not have a language like the Constructivist aesthetic regarding urban and industrial society. I said, “I love Mondrian. So why not incorporate Mondrian?”
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I began to work on this new aesthetic because a new medium deserves a new aesthetic. I created a new dance language.

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‍Peter Bauman: Before we cover that new dance language, let’s talk about your real-world experience of that time. What was it like to be part of this group connected by computers in art from all over the world? What artists did you know and how often were you able to see them?

Analívia Cordeiro: I lived in Brazil, far away from Europe or the United States, where all the events were happening. In 1974, 50 years ago, I went to the Art and Science Congress in Israel, where I met many artists and theorists I had only seen before in books. They had now become my colleagues and were very welcoming, even though I was at least twenty years younger than any of them. At the seminar, they wanted people to interact. So we went on a trip around Israel by bus, finishing in Tel Aviv. There’s a nice photo of us sitting on the grass together at the Bezalel Academy garden. Even after, they were very kind to me. We exchanged letters of support and they encouraged me to continue my work after my father’s death.

I was invited to many events at that time. It was a very collaborative group where they supported me like we were a team. Someone might say, “Oh, I have something that maybe can help you.” For example, Jeanne Beaman was working with movement and she wanted to do an event about computer dance at MIT as well as on the public TV channel WGBH in the USA. She included my work and wrote a very nice letter to me for the reception of the project. She signed it, “Your friend in art.” So we all became friends.
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Peter Bauman: Even then, you were harnessing the power of code to negotiate the special challenges of portraying, paradoxically, something intimately human: the body. What does technology tell us about being human?

Analívia Cordeiro: Technology can make the invisible world visible, like Nota-Anna translating movement into a notational form. It can graphically show the body’s articulations in the air, which we can share with each other like regular writing. Everybody sees the movement because of our visual perception, which we maintain as fact. Technology can transform it into graphic information, enabling us to analyze it in detail and understand the meaning of the motion analysis.

Movement visualization also allows us to observe movement from different points of view. You can see the volume; you can see the path; you can see just articulation points in space. These are different ways that we can talk through movement. It's like the different ways you can say a word depending on intonation.

In our world, we still lack a notation for movement. We have words to register our voice, musical notation to register sound, mathematical notation and so on. For movement? Nothing.

Technology is providing the devices we need to create a system of writing for movement and share the motion of our bodies. By approaching it positively and constructively, technology can open marvelous possibilities for human beings.
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‍Peter Bauman: You mention Nota-Anna, which Nilton Lobo also co-created with you, and how technology enables us to express ourselves visually with meaning. By notating movement, you equate it with other types of communication, like language. What does the human body communicate that other forms of communication cannot? 

Analívia Cordeiro: First of all, if we stop moving, we die. Nobody ever stops moving. The second thing is that we don't have a Harry Potter cape that lets us disappear. We are always visible. Even if I think I am not moving, I am still visible. Movement transmits many messages at the same time.

When the body moves, it displaces several parts at the same time. If you look carefully at a body’s movement, you can understand the behavior of the person you are looking at. This happens with everybody intuitively. Even if you are not aware, you understand body movement. This is part of our daily lives. Body communication is very rich. Sometimes you can see that someone is lying because what the person says is different from how the person moves their body.
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With words, you can be silent. With movement, you are always moving, even when you stand still. If you don't move, you die. 

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‍Peter Bauman: How does Nota-Anna reveal that communication?

Analívia Cordeiro: Nota-Anna transforms two-dimensional video into three-dimensional notation. Using Nota-Anna, old films can be translated into a body-movement notation, keeping the movement information preserved. Nota-Anna allows people to create freely and express themselves. It shows pure movement independent of the body’s appearance; it is not an avatar or an animation. The movement notation is the same visualization for everybody.

Nota-Anna is still in its beginning. People are not used to seeing pure body-movement images. It will take time before their minds become used to these images; its an educational issue. Then other contributions will come. What I can say is that Nota-Anna goes in the right direction; it can be used by everybody, even by a child. It is easy and efficient.

‍Peter Bauman: Can you tell us more about the work you recently exhibited as part of the Digital Art Mile during Art Basel 2024? You created the piece with Nilton Lobo, called MUTATIO Impossible to Control just Contribute. Can we break down that title? How does the work convey what you’re seeing now as an artist?

Analívia Cordeiro: This title, Impossible to Control just Contribute, is a portrait of our society today. Nobody controls anything and in our daily lives, we do what we think we have to do as a contribution to a better world or as a contribution to enrich ourselves; it depends on individual choice.

‍Mutatio means change in Latin. In this work, there is a live motion capture element of the viewer’s movement with pre-programmed background visualizations. The software randomly chooses parts of this body visualization and arranges them on a randomized geometrical structure, emphasizing a lack of control.

When we talk about random choice, we are talking about probability. The artist defines the probability according to the visuality they want. This implies knowledge and the study of art. The final painting is almost unpredictable. This is attractive, the surprise. At the same time, the paintings created can have good and bad aesthetic quality. As nobody selects them, the public sees them all. Sometimes I wish I could choose the good and delete the others. But this means controlling it. I decided to leave it to the public to choose their preferences.
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‍Peter Bauman: The project highlights inherent questions of control that follow generative work. As you mentioned, the results and aesthetics are more unpredictable due to your creative choices. How do you think about intentionality and aesthetics in your practice?

Analívia Cordeiro: Intentionality means a good algorithm. It means having an understanding of how much the artist controls the final results of the work. This is independent of technology. For example, when Pollock just threw the black paint on the canvas, he could not control exactly where the paint would fall. It was random behavior, let's say. The aesthetic concept presupposed the random behavior.

When I created a new dance language based on orthogonal and diagonal lines, proposing a new body movement for a new technological society that was being born, I was aware of my intentions. These dances are statements of this intention: to create a new dance language.
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To define the body movements of this new language, I used chance, which means I decided that some decisions could be taken by complete chance without control. Intention and chance are partners.

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‍Peter Bauman: Your work spans a range of disciplines, including video art, performance, and interactive installations. How do you integrate these different forms of expression into a cohesive artistic vision?

Analívia Cordeiro: The different forms of expression are a consequence of the need to use different languages to make ideas a reality. In the beginning of my research in the 1970s, the challenge was to put the world inside the computer; now the challenge is the opposite: how to put people back into reality, off the computer or mobile phone.

‍Peter Bauman: Your practice demonstrates how working with technology allows artists to continue asking the critical questions of society even as our behavior entirely shifts. Looking back on your extensive career over this shift, what do you consider to be your most significant contribution to the fields of dance and media art?

Analívia Cordeiro: My contribution is to approach bodily expression respecting human biological nature.

To give people the opportunity to express themselves.

To aim for harmony and happiness.

To test and share with many people to be sure it is good for them in many senses to share or to watch my creations.

To be simple and clear.

Never in a hurry.

Patience and respect.

Technology works for me. I don't work for technology. I have this very clear.

Artists should be clear about expressing the ideas born from their minds.

This idea will be transformed into a work of art to be shown to the public. When the work is ready, it exists by itself, independent of the artist. It doesn't belong to the artist anymore.

The artist should understand that they are giving people the opportunity to see, to listen, to feel, to think about a subject that is independent of the artist’s personal point of view anymore. It is the work of art’s statement. It is the work affecting another person that matters. If this is very clear to artists, they will know when to stop during the composition of their work. The art clearly shows the artist's conception, and that's it. Simple.

It is possible that this resulting work will have a place in the past and future of art history.



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Analívia Cordeiro is a Brazilian dancer, choreographer and architect who pioneered the use of computers and video in the design and performance of dance in the early 1970s. Her work has been exhibited and performed globally and is included in collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Reina Sofia.

Peter Bauman (Monk Antony) is Le Random's Editor-in-Chief.