March 2, 2006

Yacov Sharir Interview - Wearable Computers and Performance

Today I interviewed dance and technology pioneer Yacov Sharir about his research in wearable computers and performance. In this post you'll find a profile of Yacov Sharir, pictures from his research, and external links to related articles and performances.

Click here to listen to audio interview (MP3 format - Stereo - 8.85 MB - 19:20 Minutes)

Profile - Yacov Sharir

Yacov Sharir is a choreographer, dancer, technologist and innovator. He is a professor of Theatre/Dance and Virtual Environments at the University of Texas-Austin and artistic director of the Austin-based Sharir Dance Company.

He has performed under the direction of Martha Graham, Jerome Robbins, Jose Limon and Anna Sokolow. Sharir is the founder of the American Deaf Dance Company and the Sharir Dance Company. As a multiple recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Choreographic Fellowship, he has choreographed for the Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Hartford Ballet, Dallas Ballet, the Kibbutz Dance Company of Israel, the Utah Repertory Dance Theatre and others. He was a recipient of an "Arts And Virtual Environments" two-year fellowship awarded by the Banff Center for the Arts and is engaged in extensive international lectures and workshops directly related to the issues of virtual environments, cyberspace and computerized choreography.

Image Gallery - Wearable Computers

During the audio interview Yacov Sharir refers to the below pictures.

Click on pictures to view larger images

Links - Articles, Papers and Research

- Yacov Sharir - Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas-Austin

- Yacov Sharir Studio

- Explorations in wearable computers

- Cyber Human Characters and 3D Worlds

- Virtually Dancing

- Interfacing Virtual & Physical Spaces through the Body: The cyberPRINT Project by Yacov Sharir and others (PDF)

- cyberPRINT project and performance

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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)