April 24, 2006

Crossing Flash Mobs and Site-Specific Performances

What would happen if you crossed a site-specific dance performance with a flash mob? I'm not sure, but you'd probably generate a large, engaged audience.

A flash mob is when a group of people -- who may or may not know each other -- use the Internet to arrange a public gathering to perform a specific act that takes place at a specific time and location. A dance flash mob would be when a group of dancers agree to meet at a designated location to dance for a few minutes and then disappear into the crowd. Here's an example of an Argentine Tango flash dance mob in Vancouver:

Or a more recent example of a flash mob took place at the University of Florida earlier this month to recreate a banned Xbox TV commercial that never aired. Here's the bizarre video of this recreation on YouTube:

The above flash mob is based upon a commercial that Microsoft never ran probably because of the excessive simulated violence -- just about everybody in the video is pointing their fingers at others as if they are going to blow each other's heads off. You can watch the original commercial:

What I find interesting is that within 12 days almost 50,000 people watched this University of Florida flash mob, which gives you an idea of what types of videos are most popular on YouTube -- ones that are inane, silly and meaningless. But I still think that there is some value that can be taken from this video and its success.

What is it about flash mobs that intrigue people? Why do people participate in flash mobs? Why do others want to watch videos flash mobs? I think it has to do with the compelling nature of spontaneous collective action. It's also an intriguing premise to consider how digital communication tools can be leveraged to bring strangers together within a very short time-frame to act in unison.

I was thinking about flash mobs when I came across a write-up on the Networked Performance blog for the upcoming Sitelines 2006 series of site-specific performances that is organized by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. You can view a map mashup that shows the locations for all of the performances:

The program kicks-off in Early May with a performance by Benoit Maubrey's Audio Ballerinas, which features dancers that wear "electro-acoustic clothes and dresses that make sounds by interacting with their environment."

I haven't figured out the answer to my opening question about the end result of crossing site-specific dance performances and flash mobs. But there must be something fun and intriguing that can be created - especially when you start with an outside performance by a technology clad dance troupe. So I ask you: how would you add a flash mob component to this performance to get more people involved and build greater levels of excitement and interest around this event?

Technorati Tags: dance, flashmob, performance, xbox, youtube

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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)