Here are links to my posts for the past two weeks:

- Will Muscle and Musical Memory Inform New Interface Designs?

- The Chanel Contemporary Art Container Opens in Hong Kong

- Introduction: High-Tech Fashions and Wearables

- Advancements in Prosthetic Devices Are Transforming Our Perception of Dance and the Human Form

- Art Installations Require Whole Body Experience

- Gesture Patents Point Way to Full-Body Interfaces

- Swarm Intelligence and Self-Replicating Systems

- The Sources of Vertical Movement

- Lecture-Demonstration Dance Videos Would be Invaluable and Fun

Here are links for and summaries of my latest posts:

Gestures Control Life-Sized Holograms
Tokyo-based LM3Labs created AirStrike, which lets you use gestures and hand motions to interact with life-sized holograms. In this post, you'll find a video that demonstrates this hologram interaction technology and an additional video of Kate Moss projected on the runway of a 2006 fashion show in the form of a holographic image.

How Might Dancers Contribute to the Movements of Autonomous Robots?
Germany-based Festo has created autonomous robots based on the structure and movement of jellyfish. The videos below highlight the elegant shapes and propulsion system of these digital creations. How might choreographers and dancers contribute to the movements and communication patterns of such artificial life forms that mimic biological processes? At the end of this post, I ponder this question while watching a wonderful video about choreographer Luciana Achugar that I highly recommend.

How Tango Dancers Would "Walk" in Virtual Landscapes
Despite the many advancements that have been made in virtual world software programs and technologies, the act of walking in three-dimensional environments has not yet been mastered. The CyberWalk project and their omni-directional treadmill represents an effort to solve this digital landscape locomotion challenge. I think that tango dancers can contribute to the creation of new approaches to walking in immersive 3D environments as well. Tango dancers devote years to perfecting their walk and have created many different walking styles as you'll see in these seven videos.

The brief description:

The Kinetic Interface blog starts with the premise that by focusing on the body and movement we can better understand, engage with, and contribute to many of the technological and scientific changes that are reshaping our daily lives.

First Two Posts:

- Welcome to The Kinetic Interface Blog!

- Commissioning Dancers Through "Movement Score" Initiative

Background Pages:

- About The Kinetic Interface

- Movement Is at the Heart of Scientific and Technological Change (Video Guide with 16 clips)

- The Popularity of Dance Continues to Grow at Rapid Pace

Additional Resources:

In right-hand column of The Kinetic Interface blog, you'll find:

- My Del.icio.us links for the many scientific and technology-focused resources I'm bookmarking.

- My new blogroll that covers a number of different topics.

Please share your thoughts and feedback.

So far I've created two main bundles: "Gesture" and "Wearables."

Please let me know if you have link suggestions or have your own bookmarks on del.icio.us.

One of the things I hope to do is highlight the intersection of dance and movement with developments in many spheres including:

- Fashion
- Architecture and design
- Interaction design
- Environment and sustainability
- Mobile and wireless
- Gaming and entertainment
- Transhumanism
- And other areas

After about two months of research, what strikes me is the extent to which movement, motion and gestures are an ever more important element of our increasingly digital, high-tech world.

Here's the blogroll for my new blog, which I think will give you a good idea of some of the topics I'll be covering:

Architecture and Design
Arch
Architechnophilia
Architectradure
Architectural Videos
Born Rich
Crib Candy
Dezeen
Inhabit
Interactive Architecture
Yanko Design

Dance, Art and Music
(Links to be added)

Digital Future
Accelerating Future
AI Panic
Blogging the Singularity
Broader Perspective
Fresh Creations
Future Blogger
Grinding
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
Smart Mobs
TEDBlog
Think Artificial

Environment and Sustainability
AutoblogGreen
Eco Geek
Jetson Green
Metaefficient
TreeHugger

Fashion
Fashion for 21st Century
Talk2myShirt

Gadgets and Technology
Engadget
Gizmodo
Make
Technabob
Walyou

Gaming and Entertainment
Avant Game
Future-Making Serious Games
Pixelsumo

Interaction Design
Adaptive Path
Digital Experience
Front to back
Flow Interactive
Interactive Gestures
Interactive Multimedia
Logic + Emotion
The Motion Applications Report
Petitinvention
Technology-Supported Human World Interaction
Multi touch - Natural User Interface

Internet/Web 2.0
Mashable
ReadWriteWeb
TechCrunch

Mobile and Wireless
MobileActive.org
The Mobile Audience
PicturePhoning
Textually.org

Transhuman
Biosingularity
Metamagician and the Hellfire Club
Sentient Developments

Trend Sightings
Cool Hunter
Springwise
Trend Hunter

Visualization
Information Aesthetics

The goal of my new blog is ambitious: I'd like to engage a much larger number of people outside of the dance community in conversations about dance, movement and gestures.

Much more to come.

A Bit of a Teaser

Here are three stories and videos that "point" to new directions in how gestures are being used to interact with our increasingly digital world:

In Robots Controlled by Gestures on Technabob, you can read about the robotic work of engineer Tsuyoshi Horo at Tokyo University. He has created robots that move based upon hand gesture directions.

Architectradure writes about a research project called BodyMnemonic.

Body Mnemonic is a concept for using different parts of the body to control a range of mobile devices. A tap to the ear can activate an iPod, for example. Watch videos on project web site:

Also in Technabob, you'll find a story about the Touchless Touch Screen User Interface. The post is about Eliptic Labs' development of a 3D touchless mouse that uses gestures to control on-screen activity:

In left-hand column, you'll find a selection of links to posts from the dance blogosphere. If your dance blog is not listed in the right-hand column of Great dance home page (scroll down a bit), I might not be tracking your blog. Please email me info. about your dance blog so that I can include it.

Also, as you'll see, I've added rotating dance videos to top of home page.

Creating special programs of films that are organized around a specific idea helps to provide a lens for viewing work in a different way. By grouping films under a new name, you can imbue them with meanings they didn't necessarily have before.

Kinetic Sculpture Vs. Robotics

The following YouTube video "Boston Dynamics Big Dog" will soon be watched more than three million times. Big Dog, a large robot propelled by its four legs, crosses snow, ice, hills and other terrain and manages to continue even after slipping. It's disturbing to watch the 36 second mark when Big Dog is kicked and almost falls over. Overall, the generated sounds, unaesthetic housing for the robot, and outdoor and indoor test environments don't make for much of an artistic experience. It feels more like we're in a research lab with innovative scientists that want to push the frontiers of computerized mobility.

Theo Jansen is a kinetic sculpture. Here are two wonderful videos that show his wind-powered intricate sculptures made of plastic tubing. I'd like to see higher-quality videos of his work to have a better understanding of how the many parts interact as his kinetic sculpture is propelled across the landscape. I find his work fascinating and visually intriguing. But I wouldn't be distributed if somebody kicked Jansen's sculpture -- at least not in the same way as I was with Big Dog. [via Fresh Creations]

And here's a BMW ad featuring Theo Jansen [via Fresh Creations]

Don is a wizard. Don has been teaching me since about the beginning of January and we've been communicating through weekly phone calls and emails. In just over two months, my ability to hear the rhythm and understand the structure of dance music has improved significantly. Don said that when we started I had about an average ability to hear the beat in dance music.

Yesterday was one of those aha moments for me. I was listening to some Salsa songs I bought on iTunes a few months ago. When I first listened to them, I couldn't hear the "1" count (the first beat of a measure) for my life. But when I tried yesterday, I was able to find the "1" in many cases without too much work. On top of that, I was able to count through the "breaks" (more or less pauses) in the songs and know exactly when the musicians would come back in full force. There's nothing like the feeling of being in perfect time with the music -- especially when you're on the dance floor.

As Don writes in his Saturday post about the process we're following, we haven't even delved into the specifics of Salsa or Argentine Tango music. Since the beginning of January, I've been tango dancing (classes and practices) pretty much non-stop. And my ability to hear the beat while dancing has improved dramatically. There are three types of dances (and music) in Argentine Tango (Tango, Milonga and Vals). The only one that's giving me real trouble is the Milonga rhythm -- I still haven't figured out how to dance to it.

The reason why listening to Salsa and Tango music is becoming easier for me is because Don is providing me with the basic tools to develop a solid understanding of the structure and characteristics of dance music. I'm learning how to:

- Count the beats in each measure and throughout an entire song.
- Pick-up the rhythmic patterns in the middle of a song
- Analyze the structure of a song (e.g., 8-bar intro...)
- Identify specific instruments and voices
- Document the lyrics, and
- Identify changes in tempo

This process does require a lot of work on my part. I've listened to some songs we've worked with many, many times in order to understand how the tune works.

Don is excellent at helping me develop my listening skills in an incremental manner. We start with basic songs where the rhythm and other characteristics are easy to identify and then work with more complicated tunes once I have a good foundation.

Some Salsa music students start by learning the patterns of specific instruments such as the clave. Maybe this approach works for some. But it definitely doesn't work for me. Just being able to hear the most common sounds and patterns of instruments used in Salsa music is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. The main objective, I think, is to develop general music listening skills in a structured manner along the lines of what I described above. Then, once this structure is in place, it makes sense to study the specifics of each genre of dance music.

So I'm delighted. One of the reasons why I didn't pursue Salsa dancing a few years back was because I was very frustrated that I couldn't hear the rhythm. I asked dance teachers and others to help, but none of the guidance I was given made any sense to me.

Now I'm certain that by working with Don for a few more months, I'll have no trouble hearing the rhythm in Tango, Salsa or any other dance music.

Below I offer a specific example of what I mean. But first, two candid quotes from dance bloggers that I think illustrate the disconnect between the contemporary dance community and non-dance communities.

Washington, DC-based dancer Amanda Abrams writes the following after reflecting on negative audience reviews for a recent dance performance:

It depresses me most because I don't like to feel so disconnected from the "real" world. I can't convince myself that living in a bubble of art and listening only to what my contemporaries think is going to keep my dancing honest and relevant. It's very strange how we got so disconnected from the rest of the world...

Megan Sprenger, director of marketing for New York City-based Dance Theater Workshop, shares the challenges of building audiences for contemporary and experimental dance in "TV Dance Mania":

With the launch of yet another dance reality television show - Step It Up & Dance on Bravo - my heart drops as I know that dances success on television will not effect contemporary dance as I know and love it. The marketing department at Dance Theater Workshop is constantly brainstorming ways to reach new audiences - YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, distribution, public performances, previews, reviews - you name it, and yet our performance sales remain relatively the same.

Maybe, to generalize, the modern/contemporary dance community has isolated itself too much from mainstream interests and pursuits? Maybe there is a need for the dance community to engage with non-dancers in new ways in order to create new types of interactions and dialogues? And maybe these new types of conversations can be pursued in ways that expand possibilities for dance artists while not constraining or compromising their approach to art-making?

A New Interface for Connecting with Non-Dancers

I think a good starting point for considering alternative types of engagement with non-dancers is through the "interface." Everyday, we access, manage and edit digital data through a range of human-computer interfaces (HCI). We use keyboards, computer mice, remote controls and other devices to control the environment in which we live.

Experimental interfaces are being introduced on a regular basis. ReadWriteWeb has a post from Wednesday, "User Interfaces Rapidly Adjusting to Information Overload," that includes video demonstrations of different types of interfaces.

The video "ShadowReaching: New Perspective on Wall Display Interaction" is especially relevant to this discussion about creating new types of conversations with non-dancers. Researchers at the University of British Columbia (Garth Shoemaker, Anthony Tang and Kellogg S. Both) are experimenting with various approaches to user manipulation of data on large visual panels. Their methodology is called "Shadow Reaching," which you can see demonstrated in their video:

I think the section of the above video that starts at the 1:30 minute mark is especially intriguing. You'll first see a user manipulate local and distant objects. The next illustration then includes a demonstration of bi-manual input.

As I watch this video of "Shadow Reaching," there's no doubt in my mind that I'm watching a dance performance. Although I doubt that the computer interface researchers have dance on their minds.

How could the dance community engage these researchers in a conversation about dance?

I have many thoughts, but I'll offer one possibility for now. I'd ask these interaction designers to create a "movement score" for dancers. For an example of an improvisational dance created in response to a movement score, see Matt Gough's post, "Ecdysis."

So I could see sitting down with these researchers to better understand the focus of their explorations. I'd be especially interested in the challenges that they faced in terms of how different parts of the body must move in order to manipulate digital objects in the desired way. Then, I'd work with these interaction designers to create a movement score -- maybe we would shoot a video and post it to YouTube. On this video, the researchers would invite dancers to create a dance piece that explored specific elements of their research. Dancers would then create their video responses, which might end-up being very abstract or more gestural in nature - there are many possibilities.

I think that there are some intriguing questions and possibilities that would spring from this non-dancer/dancer fusion approach to art-making:

- What can dance artists bring to experiments with new types of interfaces? Are we talking primarily practical ramifications or does art help interaction designers see and experience their work in fundamentally new ways?

- Getting back to Amanda's feeling of a disconnect between dancers and non-dancers. How would this type of collaboration help bridge the gap? Would both dancers and non-dancers now have a better way and better "interface" for understanding and appreciating each other's work?

- And to answer Megan's challenge: The road to success in building new dance audiences is to connect with non-dancers on their own turf. In the case of human-computer interface designers, the goal is to figure out how to fuse art-making with practical explorations in the lab. And once this connection is made, then the possibilities for audience building grow significantly.

I've always been intrigued by how the modern/contemporary dance community can connect in new creative and practical ways with non-dancers. Next week, in conjunction with a New York City choreographer, we'll be launching a new project aimed at pursuing these objectives.

Here's a description of this project from her fundraising page:

My name is Makeda Thomas and I am New York/Trinidad based choreographer and dancer who also makes dances for the National Company of Mozambique. This past December, Augusto Cuvilas, one of Mozambique's most highly regarded choreographers was shot in his home by Maputo police. They were responding to a robbery (he called them) and instead - they killed him. This happened in front of his pregnant wife (another dance artist).

I received a call last month from his wife, Chimene Costa. She is, in the midst of doing press conferences and filing reports, working to keep Augusto's work alive. She has invited me and South African choreographer Boyzie Cekwana to develop the project they were working on during his untimely death. This project is titled "Fin" (The End).......

I want to respond to this call for artists. I have never received a more profound call to make my art. And it is my prayer that you can help me get to Mozambique.

Continue reading...

Makeda is looking to raise US $1,700 to cover her travel expenses. As I write this post, she has $260 in pledges.

Here's Matt's video that he shot with the built-in camera on his Mac. The soundtrack is "First Brain" by Kaki King (iTunes link):

I didn't really follow Matt's advice and watch his video before understanding the context of his creative approach. I first listened to Nancy's movement score so I could learn about the source of Matt's improvisation.

In the creative/improvisational dance world, we don't really see much of this type of online collaboration taking place. I can't think of another example where a dancer posted an idea, in this case a movement score, and another dancer created a dance video based on the idea. Why does this not happen more?

For me the experience of watching Matt dance in response to the "feel the top of your head opening" score was a richer, more meaningful experience than watching him dance without knowing what the experiment was based upon. The viewer experience for me was also less passive than online video watching usually is. Essentially, almost all dance videos are posted without any guidance or suggestions for how one might experience the digital dance performance.

Matt's video leads me to two questions:

1) What do you want from viewers who watch your dance videos? And,

2) What background and context can you provide viewers so that they can experience your dance videos in a manner that you believe to be optimal?

I believe that both Danciti and Article19 are way off the mark. YouTube is one of the most popular websites and their traffic far exceeds sites such as Vimeo and Blip.tv, which the two publications reference.

Here's an Alexa comparison chart of traffic rankings of YouTube, Blip.tv and Vimeo - click image to see larger version of chart:

In addition, Danciti and Article19 make no effort to explore the different types of videos that dancers create (previews, performances, instructional, interviews, rehearsals, dance-on-camera, user-generated content, etc.) for online distribution and the ways that dance videos can be used to engage Internet viewers. They simply conclude that YouTube video quality is bad and inferior, and thus not appropriate for dance.

Danciti writes:

...when you go to put your dance on the Internet, why do you degrade your hard work by using YouTube? Setting aside the campy interface, the poor encoding quality and the mono audio sampling, why do you want your videos to sit in the company of the YouTube userbase?

Article 19 compares video site Vimeo to YouTube:

...Vimeo provides you with a far superior experience to YouTube in terms of uploading and presenting your videos and for your end users in watching and perhaps interacting with your content. The range of features is better, the presentation is better and the embedding options are better. In fact, your users need never visit your Vimeo page at all to see your content.

Article 19 concludes by criticizing New York City Ballet for creating a new YouTube channel: They are "backing the wrong horse." And Danciti follows-up with:

Maybe not the wrong horse, but certainly the losing one. The appeal of YouTube for NYCB is probably the ubiquity of the site as well as the customized channel page that YouTube allows not-for-profits since it allows them to have a more professional presence on the site. But if professionalism is your concern, why even worry about a custom channel when you can embed your own videos in a custom site?

Is Internet Video Quality the Sole Deciding Factor?

Article19 and Danciti are working under the assumption that video quality is just about the only factor that matters when it comes to dance. What evidence do they have to support their contention? If you put higher quality versions of your videos on Blip.tv and Vimeo, what does that mean? Do audiences look at dance videos on YouTube and say, "The quality is inferior to other video sharing sites. As a result of the somewhat grainer feel of this video, I'm not going to buy a ticket to see this dance company." I'm obviously being sarcastic. My point is that if Article19 and Danciti are going to dissuade dancers from using YouTube, they ought to do a better job of explaining why YouTube should not be used. How does it actually hurt dance?

In addition, I've seem some decent quality videos on YouTube. Why don't we figure out what the optimal way is to encode videos for YouTube so that they look their best? Or find reference material that describes the optimal way to encode YouTube videos?

Article19 does explore how to create video for Vimeo. But they don't appear to have tested Vimeo's new high-definition video offerings. Here's the Article19 channel on Vimeo. And here's the HD video gallery on Vimeo.

Conclusion

Yes, video quality could be better on YouTube. But YouTube is a cultural phenomenon that has helped get people excited about dance. So instead of criticizing YouTube, I think that Article19 and Danciti could devote more coverage to how to use video sharing sites to further the artistic, creative, educational and marketing objectives of dancers.

I've always liked how the Anaheim Ballet uses YouTube to get people excited about ballet. Here's one of their recent videos:

During the first half hour of the program, I highlighted a number of websites and applications that illustrated important trends and developments for the dance community. Here's my Google doc with the sites that I demonstrated - actually, I only showed a fraction of these sites since I wanted most of the program to be spent on Q & A and discussion. (Danciti offers suggestions of additional links for my Google doc.)

Taylor was kind enough to share her thoughts about the program.

This introductory technology session is just $5.00 and will take place at Dance/NYC's offices:

63 Greene Street, Ste. 605
New York, NY 10012
Google Map link

You can RSVP at the following link.

This workshop will offer a practical overview of how dancers and dance companies can use the Internet for marketing, audience development, publicity, fundraising and related topics. I'll show many examples of how dancers are using video, social networking, blogs and other applications. I'll be asking participants at the beginning of the session what specific Internet questions and interests they have so that the program addresses immediate needs of the audience.

I hope that readers in New York City area can make the program!