Detailed SESSION INFORMATION
JULY 15, 2020: 9:30-10:45 AM EDT (UTC -4)
How a Hyper-actor Directs Avatars in Virtual Shadow Theater
Georges Gagneré, Tom Mays, and Anastasiia Ternova
ABSTRACT
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This paper proposes a method and a set of tools for staging avatar movements that are controlled by a performer during a mixed reality theatrical performance. It refers to the field of Computer Theater as defined by Pinhanez and follows the model of the hyper-actor to control musical and visual expressive instruments in the performance The Shadow. The focus is on the construction of the visual instrument designed to direct the simultaneous stage movements of five avatars in a virtual shadow theater. The hypothesis of using only two groups of stage actions, salient and idle, is implemented with two methods in the performance The Shadow. We explain the theory and the programming of these methods in the Epic Game videogame engine Unreal Engine 4. The validation of the hypothesis is discussed through the artistic results of the performances. The tools for staging animations during theatrical rehearsals and performances contributes to advancing the expressivity of virtual movements in mixed reality performing arts.
VIDEO
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Processual and Experiential Design in Wearable Music Workshopping
Seth Thorn, Halley Willcox, and Sha Xin Wei
ABSTRACT
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This paper describes a series of workshops in which dancers participated in the design of collectively-playable, computational, wearable musical instruments, exploring ensemble experience in improvised events. We describe the progressive phases of layering and computationally creative learning that occurred during our workshops with epistemically and culturally diverse groups of participants. Our approach is motivated by processual and experiential design, as well as a relational approach using collective sonic mappings. The media instruments we constructed during our workshops are based on trial-and-error development of signal processing symmetrizing action and perception, designed without pre-schematizing, abstract models of user intention or semantics. Hence we outline a pre-reflective, pre-individual, sub-semantic approach to relational media synthesis.
VIDEO
Physical Time: A Model for Generating Rhythmic Gestures Based on Time Metaphors
Greg Corness and Kristin Carlson
ABSTRACT
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Possibilities for cross disciplinary interactive performance continue to grow as new tools are developed and adapted. Yet, the qualitative aspects of cross disciplinary interaction has not advanced at the same rate. We suggest that new models for understanding gesture in different media will support the development of nuanced interaction for interactive performance. We have explored this premise by considering models for generating musical rhythmic gestures that enable implicit interaction between the gestures of a dancer and the generated music. We create a model that focuses on understanding rhythms as dynamic gestures that flow in, around, or out of goal points. Goal points can be layered and quantized to a meter, providing the rhythmic structure expected in music, while the figurations enable the generated rhythms to flow with the performer responding to the more qualitative aspects of performer. We have made a simple implementation of this model to test the conceptual and technical viability. We discuss both the model and our implementations suggesting that the model, even with a simple implementation, affords a unique ability to reflect the dynamic flow of gestures in movement paradigms while still providing a sense of structured time indicative of a musical paradigm.
VIDEO
Additional Presentation Material
Performing Gesture and Time via an Emergent Database
Doug Van Nort, Ian Jarvis, and Kieran Maraj
ABSTRACT
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This paper presents distinct modes of engaging with and structuring time, temporality and gesture as explicit units of semantic information. The work presents the newest iteration of a long-standing approach to instrumental system design and performance in which input gesture, sonic gesture and intermediate layers of information are stored as richly-structured "temporal semantic units" in a performable database, which can be queried via embodied action in order to be used in improvised performance contexts. This includes the mapping of temporal envelopes and the on-line training of machine learning algorithms. The history and lineage of ideas leading up to this current work are presented, as well as the novel system architecture and distinct modes of interaction that are composed from the perspective of the composer/performer engaged in the practice of electroacoustic improvisation.
VIDEO
Additional Presentation Material
Movement Computing Education for Middle Grades
Yoav Bergner, Deborah Damast, Allegra Romita, Shiri Mund, and Anne Marie Robson Smock
ABSTRACT
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This paper takes a theoretical approach to movement computing education for young learners, with a focus on middle grades(grades 6-8,ages11-14).This age group is targeted as a lower bound because, while some elements of computational thinking maybe available to still younger learners, there are abstractions involved in movement computation that pre-require a certain amount of formal operation, in the Piagetian sense.We outline a parallel foundation of key ideas in movement (specifically dance) and key ideas in computing (specifically data representations) at this age-appropriate level. We describe how these foundations might be laid down together early on so that they can later be integrated via the introduction of sensing and feedback technology. Concepts in movement and choreography are studied using words and bodies, as in traditional dance education, and later using computer simulations and motion capture. Data concepts are introduced first by appeal to general questions and later by specification to the movement of individual and collective joints and bodies.
VIDEO
Additional Presentation Material
Pragmatic Circulations: John Dewey's Philosophy, Movement Practices and Embodied Cognition
Yves Candau and Thecla Schiphorst
ABSTRACT
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The past decade has seen a burgeoning of projects and publications to articulate interdisciplinary perspectives into dance and embodied cognition. Many of these works include experiential perspectives, for which they have generally turned to phenomenology. Pragmatism on the other hand, another philosophy of experience, has been mostly absent from these discussions. We provide a close reading of some of John Dewey's ideas, retrospectively informed by notions such as conceptual metaphors and image schemata, to consider a pragmatic framework for movement and embodied cognition, and some implications for embodied interaction.
VIDEO
Additional Presentation Material
Perceiving the Light: Exploring Embodied Cues in Interactive Agents for Dance
Kristin Carlson and Greg Corness
ABSTRACT
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Possibilities for cross disciplinary interactive performance continue to grow as new tools are developed and adapted. Yet, the qualitative aspects of cross disciplinary interaction has not advanced at the same rate. We suggest that new models for understanding gesture in different media will support the development of nuanced interaction for interactive performance. We have explored this premise by considering models for generating musical rhythmic gestures that enable implicit interaction between the gestures of a dancer and the generated music. We create a model that focuses on understanding rhythms as dynamic gestures that flow in, around, or out of goal points. Goal points can be layered and quantized to a meter, providing the rhythmic structure expected in music, while the figurations enable the generated rhythms to flow with the performer responding to the more qualitative aspects of performer. We have made a simple implementation of this model to test the conceptual and technical viability. We discuss both the model and our implementations suggesting that the model, even with a simple implementation, affords a unique ability to reflect the dynamic flow of gestures in movement paradigms while still providing a sense of structured time indicative of a musical paradigm.
VIDEO