October 13, 2005

Brain Wave Projections of Dance Performers

At the September Ingenuity Festival or Art and Technology in Cleveland, Ohio, MorrisonDance performed a work, "Inside," that integrated projections of real-time EEG (electroencephalograph) brainwave readings of the dancers and a pre-recorded video of Sarah Morrison's arthroscopic elbow surgery.

For the brain reading component of the performance, Morrison wore a brainwave-reading FlexCap developed by BrainMaster Technologies.

Images of brainwave scans of dancer projected onto screens in real-time during performance.

Dancer wearing FlexCap.

Detail view of FlexCap.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:31 AM - Permalink | Comments (0)

October 3, 2005

Merce Cunningham at Stanford Interdisciplinary Course

During the winter semester earlier this year, Stanford University offered "The Anatomy of Movement: an Interdisciplinary Course" that featured the participation of Merce Cunningham through a one-week residency. This hands-on study of anatomy brought together physicians and surgeons, engineers, animators, and visual and performing artists.

There are a number of online resources that you can access to learn more about this fascinating program:

- The Anatomy of Movement Course website

- Enconter: Merce

- "Dancing with data adds to the show", article in March 2005 edition of Stanford Report

- "Anything Can Happen: Dance pioneer Merce Cunningham keeps the campus on its toes", article in March/April 2005 edition of Stanford Magazine

- MotionAnalysis (manufacturer of motion capture equipment) write-up about the participation of Merce Cunningham in this Stanford educational program with video of Cunningham dancer being tracked via motion tracking sensors.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:00 AM - Permalink | Comments (0)

September 27, 2005

Motione Performance at ASU

Motione is an interactive, multimedia dance performance that featured Bill T. Jones and Trisha Brown and premiered on April 9, 2005 at Arizona State University. The performance and companion website are a joint project of the Arts, Media and Engineering Program at the Herberger College of Fine Arts and the Fulton School of Engineering at ASU.

The motione website is fantastic. I must have spent more than two hours late last week watching the videos, reading research papers, and learning about the participants.

Posted by Doug Fox at 1:13 PM - Permalink | Comments (0)

September 22, 2005

Symposium on Live Performances and Digital Technologies

Radiator and Digital Cultures Lab are hosting a symposium December 1-4, 2005 in Nottingham, England, that

brings into focus artistic practices of live performance that make use of digital technologies in the form of lens based, networked or locative media and other capturing/processing techniques, i.e. motion tracking, motion capture, wearable and soft interfaces.

The symposium brings together leading dance and media artists, scientists, designers and theorists from different cultural backgrounds and disciplines to debate how the digitisation of the arts has transformed cultural traditions and practices.

I'd love to go to this conference - I might do that. They are covering many of the topics that I'm interested in learning about and exploring. Plus, I've offered to underwrite a local DC-area dance company's use of a number of Internet and interactive technologies for an upcoming performance.

Posted by Doug Fox at 2:45 PM - Permalink | Comments (0)