Overall, the panelists (see profiles below including videos and links) were highly talented and accomplished but, for me, the program did not live up to its title and description of:
...illuminates questions about whether creativity is innate or learned, whether the innovative brain has distinct structural or chemical features, and whether we can enhance our ability -- and that of our children -- to be creative.
Part of the problem was that there were way too many panelists (eight) and too short a time (one hour and a half) for any of the speakers to shed light on the nature and source of creativity and genius. And part of the time that was available could have been better used to illustrate the specifics of brain research that were discussed such a Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), synesthesia and how scientists study and analyze brain activity. Good one-minute videos of these and related concepts could have nailed down these topics for audience participants.
And the implicit premise behind the panel is a bit far-fetched: Let's bring together neuroscientists and accomplished artists such as Bill T. Jones and Matthew Ritchie (profiles below) and have the scientists explain why the artists are brilliant. How can you really do that given some of the limitations of this program that I described above.
Bill T. Jones Does Collaborative Improvisation
My favorite part of the program was watching Bill T. Jones do a dance improvisation with cellist Chris Lancaster. Jones said to Lancaster: let's create a musical feeling to reflect upon President Lincoln's legacy. Jones then said his objective was to create as many different shapes as possible within a one-minute time frame.
Then, they started. It was a pleasure watching Jones improvise. Sometimes, he moved in a quick, fluid manner from one shape to the next and at other times, he would hold a pose for a fraction of a second before moving on.
I thought that this collaborative improvisation would have been a great springboard for discussion of the neurological basis of creativity, but I feel that this only happened to a limited extent.
The Battle Between Scientists and Artists
I think that Bill T. Jones and Matthew Ritchie were responding to what they felt was too much focus on the part of the neuroscientists on the operation of a single person's brain to understand the sources of creativity.
Ritchie was highly scornful of the notion that there are mad geniuses working in isolation who have their movie-made "aha" moments. The real world doesn't work that way, he said. Artists and others work with collaborators that they admire and ideas are generated from long hours of dedication and on-going exchanges.
Jones said that he was essentially a socialist and that we struggle with the nature of authorship. The best work that results from his collaborations do not come about because he has all the answers. It comes from multiple collaborators.
I think this idea of collaborative intelligence could have been explored more by the other panelists.
A Possible Alternative Approach for This Panel
I would have preferred to see a much smaller panel for this session. Maybe a moderator, an artist and a neuroscientist.
I'll pick Bill T. Jones to illustrate my idea. I would have based this program around short, improvisational dance demonstrations that Jones performed throughout this conversation.
So if the program opened with the improvisation that Jones did perform last, a good, non-rushed conversation could follow. Not one where the bar was set too high and the goal was to answer ultimate questions about how the brain works and sources of creativity. But for a meaningful, non-adversarial discussion about the creative process in action. As moderator I would simply ask, "Bill, what was going through your mind as you performed the improvisation." Then the neuroscientist, based on the latest research and insights from this field, might offer different ways of thinking about Jones' creative approach. And, I hope, an interesting in-depth conversation would emerge from these simple beginnings.
Maybe the Armitage Gone! Dance program I'm seeing Saturday night at the Guggenheim will be more along these lines.
Yes, I take issue with the structure and focus of last night's panel. But I think that all of the panelists have a wealth of knowledge and insight that I look forward to learning more about. I put together the following annotated bios of the speakers (with videos for all but one of the presenters). The bios themselves come from The World Science Festival website with some minor editing on my part.
Psychologist and biomedical engineer David Eagleman studies how humans perceive time as well as synesthesia, a condition in which stimulation to one sense triggers an involuntary response in others (seeing music in colors, for example). He is director of the Laboratory for Perception and Action and an assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. The following video about synesthesia features Professor Eagleman:
Saul Griffith
Saul Griffith is the president and chief scientist of Makani Power, a company that is seeking to harness clean energy from high-altitude wind. He is a 2007 MacArthur Award-winning inventor, entrepreneur and writer. Here's a video interview with Griffith in which he discusses his efforts to reduce his carbon footprint:
John Hockenberry - Moderator
John Hockenberry is an award-winning journalist with twenty-five years experience in radio, broadcast television and print. He is co-host of WNYC and PRI's The Takeaway, host on The DNA Files, and a contributor to The Infinite Mind. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the MIT Media Lab. Hockenberry interviewed Kurt Vonnegut in Second Life in 2006 - Vonnegut's last sit down interview:
Bill T. Jones
Bill T. Jones, a Tony Award-winning choreographer and dancer, has changed the face of American dance. He has infused issues of identity, form and social commentary into hundreds of award winning shows worldwide. Jones is the artistic director and co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in New York City.
Excerpts from Chapel/Chapter (2006):
Excerpts from The Breathing Show (1999):
Vilayanur Ramachandran
V.S. Ramachandran investigates the nature of self and human consciousness. His work spans the causes and effects of synesthesia and phantom limb pain to questions about visual perception and the brain. He is Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. Ramachandran talks at 2007 Ted conference on "A journey to the center of your mind."
Matthew Ritchie
Matthew Ritchie is a painter, sculptor and digital artist. His work combines science, architecture, history, and the dynamics of culture to explore the idea of information, and is featured in the collections of numerous institutions, including MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum. In 2001, Time Magazine listed him as one of its 100 innovators for the new millenium. Ritchie profile on PBS's Art:21:
Michael York
Michael York has enjoyed a successful international acting career for over 40 years, creating an impressive body of work on stage, screen, and in the recording studio. As well as lecturing, he is the author of five books, including one on acting Shakespeare. And here is a brief glimpse and a single "shocking" word from Michael York in the closing minutes of Cabaret:
Below I've included a wonderful Ted conference video that features the eclectic kinetic sculptures of Arthur Ganson who considers himself both a mechanical engineer and a choreographer. The video is 15-minutes long and I encourage readers to watch the entire presentation, which consists of highlights from a speech he gave in 2002.
In this video, Ganson shares some of his many creations from children's flip-books and fragile moving machines to racing sculptures and self-cleaning machines that bathe themselves in oil. Building kinetic sculptures is for Ganson the perfect blend of the physicality of precise hand movements and the exploration of the logical flow of energy through a system.
The last section of this presentations features what Ganson calls a gestural dance between a machine and a chair:
Researcher Daan Hobbelen of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands will receive his Ph.D. this week for the development of the Flame walking robot. Traditionally, robots have walked in an unnatural, stiff and awkward manner. The Flame, according to a write-up on the TU Delft university website, comes much closer to replicating the "falling forward in a controlled fashion" and "energy-efficient movement" of humans.
Dance.Draw - Interdisciplinary Project Fuses Interaction Design and Dance
The Dance.Draw Exquisite Interaction project is an interdisciplinary collaboration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte that combines human-computer interaction (HCI) and dance. In the project's performance work, each dancer holds two wireless Logitech Air mice (one per hand). The movements of the mice serve as input for real-time visualizations that are projected on to a large screen behind the dancers.
Click the following screen shot to watch a video clip of the performance on the Dance.Draw website:
Participating in this project were Dr. Celine Latulipe in the Software and Information Systems Department and Professor Sybil Huskey from the Department of Dance along with student dancers and other contributors. In her research in interaction design, Dr. Latulipe explores two-handed interaction techniques or symmetric interactions that require both hands to actively contribute to a task.
This research focus is reflected in this collaborative dance project. You can learn a bit more about the software, visualization and input techniques behind this dance performance on the project's technology page.
As part of my on-going research for The Kinetic Interface blog, I use YouTube, del.icio.us and Google Reader. In this post, I provide links to my favorite videos, bookmarked links and blog subscriptions:
- On my YouTube channel, you can access my 200+ favorite videos (dance, science and technology) and my 70+ subscriptions. These are the videos I use for the home page of Great Dance. I don't have any of my own videos uploaded to YouTube. If you have recommendations for videos I should take a look at, please share.
- On del.icio.us, I keep my annotated bookmarks. You can subscribe to my bookmarks. Also, if you have suggestions, please let me know.
And, I use Google Reader to track over 300 blog feeds. Here is a file in what is called OPML format that you can download to your PC and then upload to your favorite blog reader application. (You can try it on Netvibes, example). This OPML file includes all of the blogs that I track categorized by different topics such as dance, arts, architecture, interface design and many others.
Dance Helps Improve Movement and Balance of People with Parkinson's Disease
Recent research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) who took Argentine tango classes fared better than patients who participated in non-dance exercise programs in improving their balance and movement abilities. You can learn more about these therapeutic tango sessions in "Tango improves balance, mobility in patients with Parkinson's disease." The following video provides an overview of this program:
The researchers, led by Gammon M. Earhart, Ph.D., assistant professor of physical therapy, said that
while dance in general may be beneficial for patients with Parkinson's disease, tango uses several aspects of movement that my be especially relevant for these patients including dynamic balance, turning, initiation of movement, moving at a variety of speeds and walking backward.
Dance Classes for People with Parkinson's at Mark Morris
This fall, radio and television producer Dave Iverson, who has PD, is hosting a PBS Frontline program, "A Report on Parkinson's Disease."
The Q & A section offers a good introduction to PD including this definition:
Basically, it's a degenerative neurological condition usually characterized by movement difficulty such as tremor, balance problems and muscle stiffness that become more debilitating over time. Those motor difficulties are caused by a loss of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which helps regulate muscle control...But defining Parkinson's is actually not a simple question. Scientists are discovering that Parkinson's is much more complex than was originally thought.
The Wikipedia page for Parkinson's Disease is also a good place to learn more.
How do choreographers create dances that speak to software developers? In other words, how can layers of meaning and "hidden features and functionality" be made known to people who specialize in creating user interfaces?
First, I encourage you to read Alex Iskold's post "The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces" in ReadWriteWeb. This article points out that software interfaces have for too long been difficult to decipher and encumbered with too many features. We are moving to contextual user interfaces that present users with just the minimal number of features that they need when they want them.
Vimeo is offered as a good illustration of the new generation of minimalist user interfaces. As you'll see in the following video, once you start to play the clip and then move your cursor away from the video player, the available features will disappear from the screen. Then, a small number of features reappear once you move your cursor back over the player. Here's a site-specific performance by Sahra Huby and Philip Bussmann:
To see the contextual functions of the Vimeo player in action, place your cursor over the video player, then click the "Embed" link. Finally, select "Customize size, color, and other options." In all instances, just the functionality you want at any given point in time is made available to you. You are not presented with too many options or irrelevant functions.
Revealing the Layers of Complexity in a Dance
Getting back to my initial question: Say, you were creating a dance piece for a geeky audience of software developers. How would you go about creating and structuring a dance so that developers could relate to it as if it were, in some sense, the user interface for a software program?
How is meaning, in all its forms, made known and revealed? How do the layers of a work that build one on top of another reveal themselves to viewers? How do hidden elements of a work all of a sudden make sense and, possibly, transform the dance? What contextual cues are offered to viewers so that they can get inside a work? How dense or minimalist is a work and what are the trade-offs of each approach? How, overall, does the audience make sense of the structure, movement vocabulary, connections (or lack of connections) among dancers, the emotional quality and changes over time, the narrative and aesthetic flow?
I would find it very interesting to speak with choreographers who have pondered some variation of my questions connecting dance to user interface design. Or who have created dances for non traditional dance audiences.
Wind Turbines - At Sea, In the Air and on the Ground
Among the expanding sources of alternative energy include wind generated from blimp-like structures flying above and wind farms on the ground as well as new systems based on biomimicry that capture the energy of waves.
I hope that the images and videos of these air, ground and sea-based energy-producing systems provide some inspiration to choreographers and dancers seeking to create dances about the environment and sustainable energy. If you are creating works that address alternative energy topics, please let me know.
Wind Farms Take Flight
EcoGeek writes in "Spinning Blimp Wind Turbines Take Test Flight!" about Magenn Power's pending introduction of their MARS lighter-than-air turbine that floats from 300 to 1,000 feet above and transmits energy through cables that tether it to the ground.
Wind Farms Populate the Landscape
Wind farms generate sustainable energy but can also pose a threat to local animal populations.
Biowave mimics the swaying motion of the sea plants found in the ocean bed. The system looks like three buoyant blades which are constantly oscillating to the motion of the sea. As they sway in the tide, electricity is generated. If at any point the system is in danger because of the strong currents, it simply lies in flat until the ocean calms down.
Wayne McGregor's Random Dance Explores Cognition and Artificial Intelligence
"Entity" is the latest work from Wayne McGregor's London-based dance company, Random Dance. Entity, which premiered at Sadler's Wells on April 10, 2008, is part of McGregor's on-going exploration of the relationship of cognition and physiology to dance.
McGregor, 37, belongs to a generation of choreographers who take ideas, rather than music, as their starting point, and are more interested in presenting audiences with an intellectual challenge -- "disrupting their expectations," as McGregor puts it -- than entertaining them in the traditional fashion.
A slightly higher quality version of this video, "The Making of Entity," is available on the home page for Random dance.
And you can watch performance excerpts from Entity:
The Guardian Unlimited published a story, "Can science and dance work together?" which includes a video interview with McGregor about Entity. In the interview, the choreographer expands on the themes of this work:
The piece draws on ideas from artificial intelligence and intelligent agents to create an environment in which we can explore ideas dealing with kinesthetic intelligence.
Click following image to watch this interview on Guardian Unlimited site:
This new dance piece is part of the Entity research project. The ambitious focus of this research initiative is "to develop adaptive software agents that can generate unique solutions to choreographic problems; and to continue to work towards establishing principles of choreographic and physical thinking (distributed and embodied)." [Source: Sadler's Wells]
Choreography and Cognition
The website for Choreography and Cognition includes extensive reports and research that resulted from a project initiated by arts researcher Scott deLahunta and Wayne McGregor. The goal of this project (2002-2004) was to "engage practitioners from the field of cognitive science in seeking connections between creativity, choreography and the scientific study of movement and the mind."
Scott deLahunta describes the origins and focus of this project in "Choreography and Cognition: A joint research project" (view research papers) and outlines the three primary objectives:
Shared objective: to seek connections between choreographic processes and the study of movement and the brain/mind that are scientifically and artistically interesting.
Artistic objective: to integrate the participation and contribution from the scientists into the fabric of the choreographic process while maintaining the integrity of the modes of looking and questioning pertaining to their respective research areas.
Scientific objective: to start to formulate specific questions and research methodologies that arise from the individual interests in this project in the context of the creative choreographic process.
"AtaXia," a dance work choreographed by McGregor and part of this interdisciplinary research project, premiered in London in June 2004. To learn about AtaXia, you can read a 2004 paper by Sanjoy Roy in the projects paper section. Or click this link for the paper in rich-text format. The paper opens:
Is Wayne McGregor losing control? AtaXia, his newest piece, takes its ideas from the neurological condition of the same name, which causes progressive loss of muscular co-ordination. For dancers, this is potentially risky territory to explore: mastery of movement is the foundation of their craft. Perhaps it's riskier still for a choreographer like McGregor, whose work so often looks super-human, demanding superlative skills of balance and timing from his performers.
See photo gallery for images from Choreography and Cognition research and AtaXia performance:
Of the Heart
Of The Heart is another interdisciplinary project (2004-2005) that, in this instance, combined insights and expertise of cardiologists and choreographers. From this cooperative effort came McGregor's Amu, which premiered September 2005. You can watch excepts from Amu.
There are two video sections on the Of the Heart website in the form of questions and answers that are very helpful and insightful. The first video section deals with the science of the heart and features interviews with two cardiologists. The second video section deals with choreographic topics and features a Q & A with Wayne McGregor.
I appreciate the efforts of the heart specialists and McGregor to address specific questions about how this research into cardiovascular topics (the heart, blood flow and related issues) influenced the actual choreography. For example, watch the answer in the choreography section that McGregor offers to the question: "How has the shape of the heart and the flow of blood through the heart affected the choreographic ideas in Amu?" Here's the transcript:
There are many things that we learn...things to do with this notion of symmetry and asymmetry in the body. Whether or not symmetry or asymmetry creates stability or instability. So those kinds of things have very clear spatial references and relevances to the piece.
This idea that there are different types of flow inside the body and the exchange of blood inside and through the heart is really quite extraordinary. The work of the heart as both a pump and electrical device if you like has resonance in the way in which I have thought about structure of bodies in space.
So through the piece you start with an ensemble and an individual. By the end you are working with a plural set of bodies that are behaving almost like blood flow, if you like. They are rapidly working through choreographic ideas that are related to physicality in the body itself.
I'm excited about seeing this program, which was inspired by Brian Greene's popular book "The Elegant Universe." This performance combines two of my passions: dance and science. And I'm very interested in seeing how Karole Armitage and her dancers synthesize quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of relativity.
Each program (Friday, May 30th and Saturday, May 31st) consists of a performance followed by a discussion featuring Armitage, composer Lukas Ligeti and physicist Jim Gates (May 30th) and Brian Greene (May 31st).
Background Videos for Armitage Program
Brian Greene gives a presentation about superstring theory at TED:
James Gates in an interview about Super Symmetry on PBS:
There are no dance videos of this upcoming performance, but you can watch a handful of profiles of dancers from Armitage Gone! Dance on their YouTube channel including this one of Mei-Hua.
Synchronization: Metronomes and Dancers in Search of a Common Pulse
I like the premise behind this popular video "Synchronization." At first you'll see five metronomes on a table oscillating in a random fashion -- the pendulums are not moving in rhythm which each other because they are "uncoupled." They do not share a common pulse which directs them to move in a unified fashion.
But when the five metronomes are placed on a board that rests on two slightly rotating soda cans, they become coupled devices and the metronomes, after an adjustment period, become synchronized. It's this common pulse that creates the unified action.
In a 2000 New York Times Article, "Making Order Out of Chaos When a Crowd Goes Wild," Henry Fountain explores the sources of synchronization that reach back to 17th Century Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens who observed that pendulum clocks placed on the same wall would eventually find the same beat -- they were coupled together by vibrations transmitted through the wall. [via Networked Music Review]
This New York Times articles focuses on how randomness can become ordered. For example, why does clapping at the end of a performance start out in a haphazard fashion but evolve into synchronized clap in some instances? Researchers now have a scientific basis for understanding these transitions from chaos to order.
What I would like to find are choreographers and dancers who have incorporated these ideas into their dances. How do dancers intentionally go in and out of rhythmic synchronization and use the music or other sounds to eventually find a common pulse? And what types of coupling and uncoupling have been experimented with in choreographed and improvised dance performances?
Watching Dace Performances from the Dancer's Point of View
I've always been intrigued by the possibilities of mobile and wireless vision technologies to transform how the audience experiences a dance performance. How, for instance, can viewers change their perspective so that at one moment they are viewing a dance piece from their own point of view and at another moment, they are seeing through the eyes of one of the dancers?
The Anaheim Ballet (their YouTube video channel) has experimented a bit with the possibilities of experiencing dance from different perspectives. Watch the following video, "Ballet: Spin Cycle." At the one minute and three second mark, you'll see that the video, for a few seconds, is shot from a videocam mounted on the dancer's head:
In a performance setting, it's possible to connect wireless videocams to different parts of one or more dancers' bodies. Then, the live video feed could be projected in real-time on to screens on the stage so that the audience can enjoy different viewing angles. My guess is that this has been done before, but I have not seen it.
First-Person Goggles for Real-Time Remote Viewing
And as a result of new remote video-watching technology created for games and remote-controlled cars and planes, there are additional ways that viewers can enjoy multiple vantage points in real-time.
The Pilot View FPV 2400 lets users, while wearing goggles, experience their remote-controlled plane as if they were in the cockpit.
And the Fat Shark wireless video glasses give you the same type of first-person view of your remote-controlled vehicles. Plus, you can pivot and tilt the small video camera to change the viewing angle at any time:
I'd like to learn about dancers and dance companies that have experimented with different approaches to offering audiences multiple ways of seeing a performance as in the above examples.
Students at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program showcased their latest research and projects at the ITP Spring Show Monday and Tuesday here in Manhattan.
I was hoping to see more movement-based inputs and dance-related technology projects, but it was still fun to see what the students invented. (Learn about all of the student projects).
Amy Khoshbin developed the Perceptual Expansion Space/Suit, a video and sound mixing project. In the following video, she is wearing a modular body suit with light sensors. Videos and sounds change based on the amount of light allowed to be directed at the sensors under her arms and on her legs. Marlon Barrios Solano posted the following video interview he conducted with Khoshbin at the show:
Siftables, Choreographing a Tangible Interface of Sensing Video Blocks
Created by David Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi at MIT Media Lab, Siftables aim to make it as easy to manipulate virtual objects as it is for us to handle and organize everyday physical objects.
I've included the video first followed by a brief description. As you watch the video, consider how the small Siftable video blocks interact with each other based on their proximity, content, function and groupings:
Imagine overturning a container of nuts and bolts, then looking through the resulting pile for a particular item. Or spreading photographs out on a tabletop and then beginning to sort them into piles. During these activities we interact with large numbers of small objects at the same time, and they utilize all of our fingers and both hands together. We humans are skilled at using our hands in these ways, and can effortlessly sift and sort - focusing on our higher level goals rather than the items themselves.
And a bit about the technology behind Siftables:
As an interaction platform, Siftables applies technology and methodology from wireless sensor networks to tangible user interfaces. Siftables are independent, compact devices with sensing, graphical display, and wireless communication capabilities. They can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital information and media. Siftables can be used to implement any number of gestural interaction languages and HCI applications.
At the heart of this project is the idea of using multiple sensors as a tangible user interface. And as you'll see in the above video, the possibilities for the individual Siftable blocks to influence and manipulate each other seems limitless. Colors can be transfered from one block to another. Video images of faces turn to each other on adjoining blocks. Gestures can change multiple video block displays simultaneously. And physical organizations of blocks can be reflected on a nearby computer screen.
Flare is a modular, computer-driven system that creates a moving skin for the facade of a building. This kinetic membrane is formed by the changing positions of thousands of metal flakes that are controlled by pneumatic cylinders.
Here's a video clip that shows the different patterns that are created based on how the tilting flakes reflect natural light:
A higher-quality video is available on the Flare site.
Dancers have a highly developed ability to see and replicate dance moves. This skill is based on muscle memory and dancers, over time, learn to master extended dance pieces after just one or a few viewings.
One of the world's finest dancers, whose powerhouse technique and dramatic intensity propelled him from his native Spain to American Ballet Theater when he was still a teenager, Mr. Corella also has a rare, less visible gift: he is able to reproduce a dance simply by seeing it once -- not only his part, but everybody else's too. After observing Ms. [Gelsey] Kirkland [former ABT star], he was soon following behind her, humming as he mirrored her movements. Forty minutes after they began, he had the hundreds of steps down cold.
You can watch an excellent profile about Angel Corella, although it does not relate directly to muscle memory -- click this screen shot to be taken to YouTube:
Solway then explains the neuroscience of muscle memory:
Where initially dancers see one move and then another, eventually they merge the steps into phrases and then into longer sequences. Brain scientists refer to this process as "chunking." Dr. [Daniel] Glaser likens it to learning to tie a shoelace. First you think "left over right, right under left," and then you make a bow. But once you've learned the steps, they become one seamless movement.
"What dancers are able to do, which you and I cannot," he said, "is to take a set of those moves and turn that into one long phrase and then take a dozen of those phrases and put them into one long movement."
Dance is a language. Once you learn the language, you can begin to predict what steps could come next based on combinations that have become familiar to you. This is obviously very useful when it comes to ballet, where when someone says "tombé pas de bourrée glissade assemblé" you aren't thinking of each individual step on its own, because it's a recognized sequence in your ballet vocabulary. For the most part, in classical dance, there are only so many steps that can physically link to other steps based on where your body, your weight, and your momentum are at that moment. The fact that you can predict, to some extent, a handful of next possible steps, greatly cuts the amount of time it takes to learn a full sequence of steps.
The ability of dancers to remember patterns of movement always impresses me. It took about a year and a half to two years of modern dance and jazz classes before my body would start to remember dance routines taught by instructors during class. It's a very gratifying feeling to have your body magically remember a routine you have seen for the first time and then go onto the dance floor and do it. (I started dancing in my 40s and have been dancing for a few years).
Lecture-Demonstration Dance Videos Would be Invaluable and Fun
I would like to encourage choreographers and dancers to create lecture-demonstration style videos for the Internet. There are literally thousands of topics that dancers can present in engaging video format that feature brief spoken explanations and dance demonstrations.
For example, in The Kinetic Interface blog I write about body and movement-centric developments taking place in science, technology and other fields. Yesterday, I wrote "The Sources of Vertical Movement," in which I discussed Capuchin, a robot that scales walls and cliffs, and can be used for geological research on earth and other planets. Here is a video of Capuchin:
I think that a fascinating video would be one that features a choreographer who discusses what he or she has learned about vertical-climbing robots from a dancer's perspective. These insights would be interspersed with solo movements and snippets of choreography that spring from this exploration of robotic locomotion. Maybe the choreographer would start a video section by saying, "I'd like to see the robot try this type of propulsion," "What would happen if the rhythmic patterns were altered," "The leg movements of the robot remind me of a dance piece I created two years ago..." or "What would happen if the robot used a different approach to balancing itself." There are many ideas to explore at the intersection of dance and robotics. My main point is that there are many topics to delve into and that dancers can help visualize movements in a way that few others can.
One of the advantages of this interdisciplinary approach is that by definition this video will be of interest to the dance community and the technology community. And the posting of this video provides an excellent opportunity to foster a conversation amongst people with different interests and areas of expertise.
Capuchin, a new robot from researchers at Stanford University, scales walls and cliffs, and can be used for geological research on earth and other planets. Lean more in NewScientist's recent article, "Climbing Robot Throws Its Weight Around."
"Capuchin's climbing is more human in terms of speed and agility," says Teresa Miller who worked on the 7kg robot before leaving Stanford last year. "When you look at Lemur [an earlier robot], it's hard to tell if it's climbing; it moves very slowly."
I'd like to see how dancers experiment with the weight-shifting approach of Capuchin as they scale vertical surfaces and inclines.
Dancers Go Vertical
Here are two examples of site-specific dance performances that use different architectural structures.
The aerial dancers of Project Bandaloop perform at the opening of a new hospital:
And you can also watch Rapture, choreographed by Noemie LaFrance, performed on Frank Gehry architecture at Bard College:
"Swarm intelligence (SI) is artificial intelligence based on the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems." (Wikipedia)
What is the source of swarm intelligence? How can decentralized systems with independent parts perform miraculous feats in unison? In this post, I start with videos of flying Starlings and waggle dancing bees, and then highlight some of the latest developments in swarm robotics. Also, I'm looking for dance videos that show how dancers have addressed these topics.
The following video shows swarms of Starlings near Oxford, England [via Eggshell Robotics]:
Honeybees perform the "waggle dance" to notify each other about the location of nearby nectar:
An introduction to swarm intelligence based on nature [via Onionesque Reality]:
These tiny autonomous robots, from James McLurkin at MIT, work in unison to explore caves, landmines and planets. They can play follow-the leader and join in other formations [via Spatial Robots].
Self-Assembling Swarm Robots
There are an increasing number of examples of swarms of small robots that can self-assemble and replicate themselves:
Learn about research from the UK in "Robots with a mind of their own":
Watch the last part of Hod Lipson's "Robots that are 'self-aware'" from Ted Talks (this is final section of video with sub-title "Self-Replicating Cub"):
As I mentioned in opening, I'm very curious to learn about dancers who have created dance works that address issues related to swarm intelligence and emergence. If you have recommendations of choreographers and dancers to interview, please let me know.
I never considered that gestures could be patented until reading about Apple's efforts last year to apply for patents that describe how users interact with its Macs, iPods and iPhones. Will body movements be patented next as more interfaces accept input from heads, arms and legs?
To ask a bit of an improbable question, will dancers be prohibited from certain movement sequences because they are protected by the US Patent and Trademark Office? This is not likely to happen. But what might happen is that the most natural of human gestures and movements may eventually become proprietary instruments of interface designers.
On another front, I would like to create a video contest where dancers were invited to create their own series of gestures and movements that were intended to control new PC and mobile interfaces. I think that dancers would come-up with some highly innovative approaches that had not previously been considered.
In news that I believe I'm the first to write about, Ohad Naharin is already working with Steve Jobs on a new interface that responds to full-body movements. Here's a clip from the research lab:
For the record, I'm just having fun with the idea that Ohad Naharin's Batsheva Dance Company is working with Apple. But I am serious about the premise that choreographers and dancers would have some very innovative and worthwhile approaches to controlling new interfaces. Choreographers are essentially rapid-prototoypers who can create the basics of new movement vocabularies in a few hours.
Apple Multi-Touch Patent Application
The following diagram shows a mockup of a Mac OS X gesture-control panel with multi-touch capabilities from a recent patent application [via MacRumors.com]:
"If Apple's patents are granted, the company could absolutely stop others from using similar technology," says Raj Abhyanker, a patent lawyer who used to write patent applications for Apple. "They'd also be in an especially good position to stop others from including certain features. Apple could stop [their use] not only on mobile devices but also desktops."
Samsung has recently patented a system of cell phone and mobile device control which responds to a users gestures. It doesn't do this on the display as how the iPhone currently does, but as recognized in the space around the handset courtesy of the handset's front-mounted camera. The pre-loaded software will recognize preset motions, translating them into on-screen control. Take for example, pointing at the display and moving the finger to control a mouse/cursor whilst rotating the wrist with the hand outstretched in order to flip an image or layer.
The number of art installations that rely upon the whole body for input and interaction continues to increase. Here are two examples that highlight this trend:
Advancements in Prosthetic Devices Are Transforming Our Perception of Dance and the Human Form
How do we perceive people with physical and mental disabilities? How does dance portray those with non-"normal" bodies? How are recent advancements in assistive devices and prosthetics changing how we think about the possibilities of the human form?
Below you'll find a video introduction to mixed-ability dance performances and competitions. Then, I focus on South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius who was barred from competing in this summer's Olympics because of the "unfair advantage" his two artificial legs would give him. And I close with highlights of a versatile prosthetic arm that has been commissioned by the US Defense Department.
As we enter a post-human era where different types of physical and mental enhancements become commonplace, it will be fascinating to see how mixed-ability and other dance companies explore these challenging and complicated issues.
Last Saturday night, I saw a performance of Heidi Latsky Dance at the Abrons Art Center on the Lower East Side. Heidi has recently been working with dancers with mixed abilities. At times I felt the dancers were sharing their anxiety about their bodies and at other times I felt that they were savoring the sexuality of their unique body types. I've always enjoyed seeing Heidi and her dancers' work since I saw her company perform at Dance Theater Workshop last year.
Here's a highlight video of "From the Limb." The duet with Jeffery Freeze and Lawrence Carter-Long that you'll see on the clip was performed on Saturday along with new pieces Heidi created with other dancers during her residency at Abrons. (The beginning of this video features double-leg amputee Lisa Bufano who is also briefly in the AXIS Dance video above, "The Art of Movement." Bufano did not perform Saturday night):
Breakdancing Competition
Below is a video that features two disabled dancers LazyLegs and Hourth competing in a breakdancing competition. Wheelchair Dancer writes that this competition appears to
be designed for the non-disabled world. In such a world, the measure of a dancer seems to be the degree to which s/he can approximate the physicality and "Normal" movement of non-disabled breakdance.
This approach misses what, to me, are some of the other more important criteria: artistic merit, individual expression, the creation of a vocabulary of movement that maximizes an individual dancer's body.
Sprinter Oscar Pistorius Barred From Olympics
South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who has two artificial legs created by high-tech orthopedic device-maker Ossur, has been denied an opportunity to participate in this summer's Olympics due to his having an "unfair advantage" over other athletes. Here's a video clip about this story from ABC News:
(Here's a video, in Italian, of Pistorius competing in a 400 meter race.)
In this Ted Talk, Dean Kamen: New prosthetic arm for veterans, you can learn about the development of a prosthetic arm commissioned by the US Defense Department. The last minute of the video shows a demonstration of this arm:
