Temporal Scaffolding: A Collaborative and Networked Infrastructure of Techne, Screendance, AR, Affect, Audiences and Smart Mobile Devices in the Project AffeXity

This paper describes the collaborative process that shaped the creation of the Screendance and AR (Augmented Reality) project AffeXity. The main artistic collaborators are Susan Kozel, professor of New Media at MEDEA, Malmö University, as artistic director and myself, the Screendance maker and editor, with a team of academics, Computer Science master students, interaction designers, dancers, choreographers, composers and software developers.

It describes a process of collaboration that philosopher Félix Guattari refers to as a “temporal scaffolding,” (Bourriaud, 2002, p. 96), an infrastructure or an operator of temporal junctions and attractors [2]. Collaboration and creativity expert Keith Sawyer (2006, p. 1) maintains that this interaction should be collaborative for it to be effective and the support both “adjustable and temporal”. As a metaphor and verb, it will help me describe the agency and temporal relations of artists, academics, art disciplines, software, internet, smart mobile apps, and audiences that met up at different times to collaborate on the project AffeXity. The project’s evolutionary nature of temporal formations is a good example of a project using a performative relational aesthetic not only in its outcomes, but also in its stages of development. Furthermore, the AR used in the project extends the notion of relational temporality as it invites an audience to move from place to place, connecting with the project, using networked smartphones and tablets