Showing posts with label dance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dance. Show all posts

Oct 22, 2013

Kinetic Infovis: Dance vs Powerpoint - Dance Your (Science) Ph.D.

Why NOT use dance to convey information and data?

John Bohannon's TED Talk, "Dance vs. Powerpoint"  explains how dance can demonstrate scientific principles, and more.  John is a scientist and writer who runs the annual Dance Your Ph.D. contest.   In the following video he walks the talk as dancers dance the point.    




RELATED

Dance Your Ph.D. 2012 Videos

Dance Your Ph.D. 2011 Videos

Dance Your Ph.D. Tips and Tricks

Dance Your Ph.D. 2013 Website FAQs

The Science Dance Match-Up Challenge
John Bohannon, Science, 4/17/09

Thesis Twist:  Dancing Your Ph.D. 
Robert Lee Hotz, Wall Street Journal, 9/23/13

Folk Dance Your Algorithms!
Lynn Marentette, ITM blog, 4/14/11

Nov 13, 2011

Is the answer Voronoi? Looking for possible solutions to an art+dance+music+tech idea from a recurring dream....

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you probably know that I sometimes have some unusual dreams about technology.  I don't blog about my dreams very often, but last night, I had another technology dream, a continuation of a dream I had one night last week.  
Voronoi Diagram (Wikipedia)

I'm pretty sure that the last two dreams were sparked by playing an online interactive demonstration of a Voronoi application before going to sleep one night, and also reading an article about "extracting ordered patterns from a triangular mesh surface" in the Novemeber/December IEEE Potentials magazine before turning in last night. 

The dance probably was influenced by my recent viewing of the North Carolina Dance Theater's performance of Innovative Works with my mom, someone who encouraged my  study of music, art, and dance at an early age.

Some of my tech dreams are sort of...practical. For example, in one recurring dream, I find myself coding for a flexible mesh/grid application. Sometimes the mesh/grid has something to do with wireless sensor networks on curved terrain, perhaps related to something like the Smart Grid, and sometimes I find myself working on an application that analyzes streaming data from a variety of sources, for security prediction purposes.  At other times, I'm coding for something more artistic, my preference.

Last night, my dream focused on creating a flexible mesh fabric that used in a multimedia dance/graphic arts/music performance.  I was coding for this performance using a Voronoi-like algorithm.


This is the best I can do to explain this: The fabric is carried by the dancers, and is both reactive and generative. In essence, the fabric is intertwined/embedded in the dance, the music, and the graphics. In my dream, everything looked/sounded/felt awesome and otherworldly, and the music that merged and morphed during the dance was so beautiful, not only the melodies, but the sounds.  (In a previous dream, the mesh contained a "nanotechnology" component, but I'll save that quest for the future.)


I thought I'd look at some of my web book marks and search a bit more for information related to this topic.  For now, here is the "brain dump".  I have more to add to this post, and plan to port it to a reference page for this blog in the future.  I hope that this post will be useful to some of my art/music/dance/tech readers!

RELATED AND SOMEWHAT RELATED


Update:  Right after uploaded this post, I came across a link to a WebGL demo for a 3D music video of pop singer Ellie Goulding's song, 'Lights', by HelloJoy.   Visitors to the webpage can click to interact with the environment. If you keep the button pressed, you fly faster.  If you tweet the link, you'll see your name crop up as you fly around in the soundspace.  For more information about the making of 'Lights' - take a look at  Behind the scenes of 'Lights": the latest WebGL sensation!  (Carlos Ulloa, 11/9/11)


After I watched the 'Lights' video, I recalled Radiohead's 'House of Cards' video, which I wrote about back in 2008: 
 "We were rolling computers all day"...The Making of Radioheads House of Cards using imaging and info visualization software.   The process behind the making of the House of Cards video was described in detail in Chapter 10 of the book, Beautiful Data.

Bradley, E., Capps, D., Luftig, J, & Stuart, J.M. Toward Stylistic Consonance in Human Movement Synthesis.(pdf)  The Open Artificial Intelligence Journal, 2010, 4, 1-19
Bradley, E., Stuart, J.  Using Chaos to Generate Variations on Movement Sequences (pdf) Chaos, 8:800-807 (1998)
Bradley, E., Stuart, J.  Learning the Grammar of Dance.(pdf)  Proceedings Fifteenth International Conference on Machine Learning, Madicson, WI, 1998
E. Bradley, D. Capps, and A. Rubin, "Can computers learn to dance?," Proceedings International Dance & Technology (IDAT), Tempe AZ, Feb 1999.
Chaotic Dance: Using mathematics to generate choreographic variations
Schedl, M., Hoglinger, C., Knees, P. Large-Scale Music Exploration in Hierarchically Organized Landscapes Using Prototypicality Information (pdf)
Fournel, N. Procedural Audio for Video Games: Are we there yet? (pdf) GDC 2010


Voronoi Cells, created by Nathan Nifong.  A version of this interactive work was used in a DanceDraw performance















Patterns in the Noise (Nathan Nifong's site - FYI, Nathan worked with Celine Latulipe with the Dance.Draw project while completing his bachelor degree in computer science at UNC-Charlotte)
Voronoi Dance (Christian Gross, using OpenFramework)
Voronoi art: Slow Trip (Oktalist/Mat)


The above video, by Mat/Oktal, was inspired by his viewing of Thomas Ruff's Substrat images. 
Scott Snibbe Studio (Intearctive art, music, and animation for iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Mac)

Interactive Voronoi Diagram Generator with WebGL (Alex Beutel)
 
The above video was found in Alex Beutel's blog post, "Interactive Voronoi Diagrams with WebGL"

Posts about DanceDraw and related work at UNC-Charlotte:
News from the HCI lab at UNC-Charlotte- Creative Interactions (Videos)
Exploring the Design Space in Technology-Augmented Dance at CHI 2010:  Celine Latulipe's team from UNC-Charlotte
Interactive Surveillance:  Live digital art installation by Annabel Manning and Celine Latulipe

SIGCHI  Digital Arts and Interaction Community:  Building Bridges
The Interdisciplinary World of Dance and Interactive Technology

HTML5Voronoi  (HTML5Code website)

HTML5 Voronoi, Live Version
Update to code to compute Voronoi diagrams (Raymond Hill, 5/22/11)
William Forsythe's "Synchronous Objects-One Flat Thing, Reproduced" - Multidisciplinary online interactive project: Translating choreography into new forms.
BCS HCI 2011 Workshop: When Words Fail:  What can Music Interaction tell us about HCI?
Woven Sound (Alex McLean)
Real DJs Code Live (Robert Andrews, Wired, 7/3/06)
Visualization of Live Code (Alex McLean)
Voronoi diagrams of music (pdf)  (Alex McLean, 2006)
WebGL
Sylvester: Vector and Matrix Math for JavaScript
Generative Art Links (Mikael Hvidtfeldt Christensen)
Schacher, J.C. Motion to Gesture to Sound:  Mapping For Interactive Dance (pdf) Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2010), Sydney, Australia
Code & Form:  Computational Aesthetics (Marius Watz)
Werghi, N. Extracting ordered patterns from a triangular mesh surface.  IEEE Potentials, Nov/Dec 2011
Last night I dreamt about haptic touch-screen overlays
Hyun-Seok Kim's 'Voronoi' dragonfly wing inspired superyacht 2

Hyun-Seok Kim's Voronoi Yacht











Jul 28, 2011

OK Go's Interactive HTML5 Music/Dance/Message Video, Featuring Pilobolus - behind the scenes and more. Delight.

Not long after the earthquake and nuclear disaster in Japan, the creative team at Google Japan collaborated with the band OK Go and Pilobolus, a dance troupe,  to explore the capabilities of HTML5 and multimedia, while at the same time providing people from all over the world a means to send a message to others, including the people of Japan.  


I encourage you to visit the link to the interactive version of All Is Not Lost  For your convenience, here is the traditional version:



Before the video begins, viewers can enter a message in a text box.  At the end of the video, the message will appear, with a few options for sharing the message. At a loss for words, I quickly typed "I love summer", and was delighted to see how the dancers gathered to form my message, as pictured in the screen shot.


Quite a bit of creative thinking went into the making of All Is Not Lost, as described in following article and video clips:
Behind the Work: Trish Sie on OK Go's "All Is Not Lost"
Shareen Pathak, Creativity, 7/27/11
"The trifecta also partnered with Google to create an HTML5-powered interactive experience, which leverages the Chrome browser to showcase the clip through 12 separate windows of dances that shift along with the music. Users can also type in messages in Roman letter or Japanese and watch the band create the letters with their bodies. The result? A visually arresting intersection of dance, technology and direction." -Shareen Pathak

A LOVE LETTER TO JAPAN....


THE MAKING OF ALL IS NOT LOST


RELATED
All Is Not Lost lyrics
OK Go's Human Kaleidoscope, All Is Not Lost, And How It Translates Into Sales
Teressa Iezzi, Fast Company, 7/28/11
O.K. to Go Dance Crazy
Tony Gervino, NY Times Magazine 7/31/11



Jul 14, 2011

News from the HCI lab at UNC-Charlotte - Creative Interactions (Videos)

In the video below, Nathan Nifong, discusses and demonstrates his independent study work through the HCI LAB (Human-Computer Interaction) at UNC-Charlotte. He focused his work on creating a motion-responsive musical instrument that integrated movement, sounds, and graphics.


"We're trying to research anything and everything that will help to make computers easier to use." -Nathan Nifong


Thanks to Celine LaTulipe, for the link!


RELATED
To get a better idea about the HCI lab, a small, yet sparkling gem on the UNC-Charlotte campus, take a look at the following video:




"I get to create things, and to me, you just can't beat that!"- Celine Latulipe


Dr. Latulipe is known for her work with the Dance.Draw project, Interactive Surveillance, and tools that support things like bimanual interaction, collaboration, and creativity.

Mar 2, 2011

Video: Gesture Interactive Window Display at a Repetto Store in France, by the Marcel Agency

The video below features an interactive window created by the Marcel agency for a Repetto store in France.  The display allows passers-by the ability to interact with the content in the display through arm gestures via motion sensors.  


Repetto - Vitrine interactive. from Marcel on Vimeo.

Feb 21, 2011

Transit: Digital Video Dance Storytelling on Large Displays at the LAX Airport, by Scott Snibbe and Francesca Penzani

Scott Sona Snibbe, an interactive artist, created a large-scale video installation on twenty-nine connected HD displays that curved around at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the LAX airport in 2010.   The video tells a story of groups of people traveling through an airport who eventually begin dancing in interesting ways.  

Francesca Penzani was the choreographer for this project. Noah Cunningham was responsible for the cinematography, editing, and post-production.




RELATED
SNIBBE INTERACTIVE
The Snibbe Interactive website has lots of great photos and videos of the company's work.



Thanks to Daniel Chen for sharing this video!

Feb 18, 2011

New Radiohead video, Lotus Flower: Will we see Thom Yorke's moves on Kinect's Dance Central or Just Dance 2 anytime soon?

When I saw the new Radiohead video, Lotus Flower, featuring a dancing Thom Yorke, I wondered how his moves might play out in a dance application for the Kinect or Wii.

Wouldn't it be fun to figure out a way to represent the dance "steps" in this video?  Just a thought.  



RELATED
Radiohead Surprises With Early Release
Jon Pareles, New York Times 2/18/11
"Wii Just Dance 2 and Kinect Dance Central: UI and Usability Approaches"

Nov 15, 2010

Juggling and Music: JAM meets the ReacTable

Enjoy!
Juggling and Music Meets the ReacTable, With Carles Lopez


I could play around with a ReacTable all day long!

RELATED
Need an 8 and 1/2 minute dance/exercise break?  Get up out of your chair and dance to this  video of the Brainwater ReacTable Live Performance 1

Oct 12, 2010

Power to the Pixel Cross-Media Forum Streaming Live from London Today! #PttP

Watch it now at http://www.powertothepixel.com

Right now, I'm watching a presentation about emerging game play the mobile game, Pandemic, which uses augmented layers that release story elements that are location-based. If you are in the US, be mindful of the time zone difference!


This is the info about the presentation that just wrapped up:


13.30 – 14.00
BUILDING A STORYWORLD

LANCE WEILER MD Seize the Media (USA)
This is an amazing time to be a storyteller. The democratisation of the tools to create, combined with rapid changes in media consumption mean that there are more ways to tell stories than ever before.  The creative possibilities are endless but where do you start? How do you extend the stories you want to tell beyond a single screen?
Lance Weiler, one of the leading experts on transmedia, will share how he designs and builds storyworlds that engage audiences whilst at the same time tap new forms of funding and revenue streams."


CURRENTLY STREAMING (9:00 EST)  -  Dance Adventures!



14.00 – 14.30CASE STUDY: THE LEGION OF EXTRAORDINARY DANCERS 
KEITH QUINN
 SVP Creative Development & Production, Paramount Digital Entertainment (USA)
Jon M. Chu’s The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (The LXD) is the world’s first online dance adventure, released on Hulu in the US in July 2010, and currently available worldwide across multiple distribution platforms. This stunning project breaks boundaries in genre, format and platform and is a game-changer in the way that web series and the arts are presented online. Keith Quinn will present a case study of this huge online phenomenon, produced by Jon M. Chu and Hieu Ho in partnership with Agility Studios and distributed by Paramount.



CROSS MEDIA FORUM PROGRAM
http://www.powertothepixel.com/events-and-training/pttp-events/london-forum-2010/conference-12-oct


For your convenience, I've copied the program to this post:

Conference 12 October, NFT1 BFI Southbank

Power to the Pixel: The Cross-Media Forum
in association with the BFI London Film Festival
12 – 15 October 2010

How do the new ways that audiences are accessing and interacting with media change the way that stories are told, delivered and shared? How can powerful new tools and applications enable content creators – writers, directors, producers -  to reach far greater and diverse audiences? What are the new business and rights models that are emerging?  Who are the new stakeholders, financiers and partners of cross-media stories?
Power to the Pixel presents a day of keynotes, candid case studies and presentations from an array of world-class experts who are working at the vanguard of cross-media content creation, production and finance.
TICKETS CAN NO LONGER BE PURCHASED ONLINE. PLEASE ARRIVE IN PLENTY OF TIME IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PAY ON THE DAY. ONLY CHEQUES (WITH A VALID BANK GUARANTEE CARD) OR CASH WILL BE ACCEPTED.
Please note that tickets are non-refundable.
CONFERENCE at NFT1, BFI Southbank
09.00 – 09.20
REGISTRATION, TEA & COFFEE
09.30 – 09.45
WELCOME & INTRODUCTION
LIZ ROSENTHAL Founder and Managing Director, Power to the Pixel
09.45 – 10.15
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: THE GAME-IFICATION OF LIFE

MICHEL REILHAC Executive Director, ARTE France Cinéma (FR)
Reality is no longer perceived as stable, given and objective. Game dynamics are being applied to more and more dimensions of our daily lives. We want to be playful always, we want fun, we want constant changes and second and third and fourth chances… We want to start again when we die.
Now that social networks are part and parcel of our social system, geo-localisation is building itself as an added layer over everything as we speak. Riding on this new foundation, the next big wave may be the game-ification of the networks that the world has transformed itself into…
If so, the art of storytelling and experience design, as everything else, will be deeply and seriously re-shaped by this game layer. Michel Reilhac explores the possibilities.
10.15 – 10.45
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: BABIES, BUNS AND BUZZERS

MIKE MONELLO Co-Founder Campfire, Co-Creator The Blair Witch Project (USA)
What 100 years of experiential entertainment can teach us about cross-media storytelling.
Calling all storytellers! Technical jargon, academic complexity, and marketing double-speak cloud the discussion around transmedia narratives, creating layers of complexity and confusion that frighten off even the bravest storytellers. Platforms and technology are constantly evolving but the principles that make transmedia stories so compelling to audiences and so rich with creative opportunities are quite simple, and they provide a framework for thinking about stories not bound to any single platform or media. Michael Monello, one of the producers of The Blair Witch Project and a Founder of Campfire, will explore these principles by looking back at some inspiring and funny examples from the last century of experiential entertainment.
10.45 – 11.00
BREAK
11.00 – 11.30
A PEEK INTO THE FUTURE: THE ADVERTISER’S PERSPECTIVE ON THE OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES CREATED BY DIGITAL CONVERGENCE
 
JEAN-PAUL EDWARDS Executive Director Futures, Manning Gottlieb OMD (UK)
The advertising industry has also been grappling with the implications of the convergence of media in a ubiquitous digital world. Advertisers have been looking at the shifts in technology and consumer behaviour over the past decade through consumer insight and modeling, to understand what people want to hear and where. Here we share our view of the drivers affecting change and where the opportunity for new revenue-generating models might exist over the next three to five years.
11.30 – 12.00
NEW BEDFELLOWS: TIPS FOR DIGITAL SUCCESS VIA ALTERNATIVE DISTRIBUTION MODELS & PARTNERS
WENDY BERNFELD MD Rights Stuff (NETH)
Wendy Bernfeld canvasses various different ways rights holders can monetise their programmes and/or finance new ones via new media.
She will present an overview of recent launches and trends in international online, mobile, handheld device and other new media video platforms, as well as recent cross-platform (transmedia) production and distribution trends. The discussion also distinguishes various emerging consumer and business models (including rental, subscription, ad-supported and sell-through/download-to-own).
12.00 – 12.30
DIGITAL SHIFT:  WRITING FOR TRANSMEDIA
 
MAUREEN McHUGH Co-Founder & Writer, No Mimes Media (USA)
For the last decade ARGs, transmedia, digital media have been seen as ways of promoting and extending films.  What if they’re more?  Just as talkies changed the landscape of filmmaking, technology is changing audience expectations – they want immersion, they want interaction.  Does that mean audiences want to make the story?  Not exactly.  But they certainly expect to impact it.  How does one write a dynamic, immersive, interactive experience where the film is just one part (and a static one at that)?
12.30 – 13.30
LUNCH BREAK
13.30 – 14.00
BUILDING A STORYWORLD

LANCE WEILER MD Seize the Media (USA)
This is an amazing time to be a storyteller. The democratisation of the tools to create, combined with rapid changes in media consumption mean that there are more ways to tell stories than ever before.  The creative possibilities are endless but where do you start? How do you extend the stories you want to tell beyond a single screen?
Lance Weiler, one of the leading experts on transmedia, will share how he designs and builds storyworlds that engage audiences whilst at the same time tap new forms of funding and revenue streams.
14.00 – 14.30CASE STUDY: THE LEGION OF EXTRAORDINARY DANCERS 
KEITH QUINN
 SVP Creative Development & Production, Paramount Digital Entertainment (USA)
Jon M. Chu’s The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (The LXD) is the world’s first online dance adventure, released on Hulu in the US in July 2010, and currently available worldwide across multiple distribution platforms. This stunning project breaks boundaries in genre, format and platform and is a game-changer in the way that web series and the arts are presented online. Keith Quinn will present a case study of this huge online phenomenon, produced by Jon M. Chu and Hieu Ho in partnership with Agility Studios and distributed by Paramount.
14.30-15.00
CASE STUDYCOLLAPSUS 
TOMMY PALLOTTA Director & Producer (USA/NETH)
Markets fail, buildings collapse, empires end, but what about media? Is it also crumbling? Will a new form of media emerge which will break all boundaries of storytelling before it? Tommy Pallotta will walk you through his latest project Collapsus, which combines interactivity, animation, fiction and documentary.
Collapsus looks into the near future and shows you how the imminent energy transition affects a group of ten young people who appear to be caught up in an energy conspiracy. What will their world look like after the turbulent transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources? Interact and make decisions to avoid further blackouts; get a broader perspective by listening to the experts; or observe the consequences for everyday people through the fictional story.
15.00 – 15.15
BREAK
15.15 – 15.30
ADVENTURES IN INTERACTIVE VIDEO

STEVE CALLANAN, CEO wireWax (UK)
DAN GARRAWAY, wireWax (UK)
Steve and Dan present the potential of interactive video to create new types of storytelling experiences and find new ways to monetise video. Through the hyper linking, or “hot-spotting” of objects in video, consumers can access information relative to the people, places and products shown in their favourite tv shows, music videos or feature films simply by clicking on objects within the video frame itself.  With the ability to provide media owners, distributors and advertisers an unprecedented level of video viewership and consumer behaviour data, does this lead to a way of creating value around free delivery models?
15.30 – 15.45
ADVENTURES IN P2P

JAMIE KING, Co-Founder VO.DO (UK)
Jamie King has become a spokesperson for a growing movement promoting the possibilities of ‘free culture’ as a viable alternative for filmmakers and other cultural producers. Jamie updates us on the VO.DO project, launched in 2009, which works with creators to distribute free-to-share media via notable P2P sites and services including The Pirate Bay, Mininova and Vuze. Its aim is to develop an innovative P2P distribution platform whose reach can rival that of mainstream media.
15.45 – 16.15
CASE STUDIES: PRISON VALLEY AND WATERLIFE – ADVENTURES IN INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY
ROB MCLAUGHLIN Head of Digital & Interactive Content Production/Strategy, National Film Board of Canada (CAN)
JOEL RONEZ Head of Internet, ARTE France (FR)
Documentaries interpret and synthesize many sources of information to explain a situation or express a POV. How do interactive platforms enhance and transform the possibilities for documentary storytelling? What are the new financing models? The pioneering producer/financiers of two award-winning multi-platform interactive documentaries, Prison Valley from France and Waterlife from Canada, will demonstrate how these new formats are transforming the genre.
16.15 – 16.45
CASE STUDY: 
FINAL PUNISHMENT – WHEN YOUR AUDIENCE BECOME PLAYERS!
NUNO BERNARDO Producer & CEO, beActive (PORT)
Final Punishment is an Emmy nominated, multi-platform thriller series about eight women trapped in a mysterious prison compound. Convicted for murder, these women will be faced with the ultimate punishment: being killed in the same way they committed their crimes. Eight women, eight stories, eight crimes and only one way to find redemption: face their fears and avoid certain dead. Through several clues on the official website, associated blogs, text messages and e-mails, the audience is invited to enter the “Final Punishment” experience and help the inmates to escape by cracking the secret code that will open the prison door.
16.45 – 17.15
THE AUDIENCE TAKES CONTROL

An opportunity for the audience to ask questions to NUNO BERNARDO WENDY BERNFELDROB MCLAUGHLIN,MIKE MONELLOMICHEL REILHAC
17.15 – 17.20
CLOSING REMARKS
LIZ ROSENTHAL
17.30 – 20.00
POWER TO THE PIXEL DRINKS PARTY

12 OCTOBER 2010 – CONFERENCE, NFT1 BFI SOUTHBANKFollowed by an evening networking drinks reception
Freelance/Micro Companies (5 employees or less): £95 (excludes VAT and service fee)
Large company rate
 (more than 5 employees): £140 (excludes VAT and service fee)
12 & 13 OCTOBER 2010 – COMBINED TICKET (CONFERENCE + THE PIXEL PITCH)
Freelance/Micro Companies (5 employees or less): £120 (excludes VAT and service fee)
Large company rate
 (more than 5 employees): £180 (excludes VAT and service fee)