Summer Dance and Technology '05 (SDAT05)

Seminar 1
Wearable Interactive Devices: leader - Yacov Sharir

Wearable interactive devices and systems are in most cases either subsumed into the personal space of the user, controlled by the user, and/or placed in a desired location where the performer can activate them as needed. They possess operational command systems when placed on the physical body of the user/performer, and interactional constancy when used as an interactive element, i.e. while used in performance they are always on and always accessible. Most notably, these devices have become an integral part and extension of the user body, and into which the user can always enter commands while operating.

This seminar will focus in the use of animation software to create cyber-partners and cyber-spaces. These elements will be based on personal journeys, not to abstract, virtual "outer" spaces, but to the inner reaches of the way we make things work and   the physical spaces with which we are most familiar. During the afternoon seminar and workshop these elements will be incorporated into the stage space using wearables and other interactive environments.

Software will include 3D Studio Max, DanceForms, and Poser.

Seminar 2
Interactive Performance and Media Integration: leader - John D. Mitchell

What is the native form of a technology? To what kind of work is it best suited and how does this correspond to current notions of dance performance? How do we create structures for performances that open up unfamiliar technologies to the audience/viewers? Where is the choreography? Is it in the creation and invocation of media objects? Is it n the movement of performers within a space, or in the interactions and coordinated effort of people acting together thousands of miles apart?

This seminar will examine the issues surrounding the integration of live performance and new media technology and provide hands-on training in the creation of integrated multimedia performance works.   This will include critical analysis of existing works and theories as well as the development of skills with hardware and software used in integrating live performance with new media technology. Interactive, immersive and tele-mediating technologies empower the performer, but only if the structure of the work takes these new abilities into account. In this workshop we will look at interactive, mediated and tele-mediated performance from the perspective of human performance in its broadest sense, the most appropriate use of these new technologies, and issues for future development.

Software will include Max/MSP/Jitter and softVNS.

Afternoon Seminar and Workshop
The Interactive Space: leaders - Ellen Bromberg with Yacov Sharir and John D. Mitchell

Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material, or the impinging of mind upon material. They stem out of the human wish to formulate ideas, to recreate them into entities, so that meanings will not depart fitfully as they do from the mind, so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.
-Ben Shahn

Interactive space is the space of possibilities in form, image and motion. Beyond the unique experience of the dancer within an interactive environment or within the interactive wearable computer, what role does interactivity play in the shaping of performance events? As we develop skills in the creation of sonic and visual material (both virtual and video), how do we create effective and meaningful performance works that integrate this material with, or emerge from the moving, conscious body, the politicized body, the gendered body, etc.? How does work "arise from the impact of ideas upon material" within a mediated environment? How do wearable computers affect the creative process and the aesthetic outcomes? How might we also address the telepresent body within an interactive space?

In this seminar we will work (and play) intuitively with the materials at hand to create performance work(s) that not only give form to the concepts and processes presented and discussed in morning sessions, but that begin to engage the fuller dimensions of the artists' beliefs, attitudes, and concerns.

Data acquisition technologies will include the use of the Kroonde Gamma and the Teleo Tools systems for body-based sensors, and softVNS and Jitter for optical sensing.

S-DAT05 builds on the success of earlier workshops at ASU including CELLBYTES 2000, http:// dance.asu.edu/cellbytes2000/, SWIPT (2001) http://ame2.asu.edu/sites/swipt/, and SDAT04 http://dance.asu.edu/sdat04.