Gestural Metaphor and Emergent Human/Machine Agency in Two Contrasting Interactive Dance/Music Pieces
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Machinic Sense & Sensibility: Interaction and Embodiment
Presentation Title:
- Gestural Metaphor and Emergent Human/Machine Agency in Two Contrasting Interactive Dance/Music Pieces
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
This paper presents composition and system design across two contrasting dance/media pieces, created contemporaneously, having very different affordances and constraints. In each case, the structure of the music and its sonic details were driven by the movements of the dancers through the use of electromyogram and motion sensing, machine learning and adaptive transitions between sections. The first piece was a collaboration with the National Ballet School of Canada in which twenty-one dancers from different countries arrived in time for a single rehearsal before public performances.
The second piece was developed over the course of multiple sessions with a team of media artists and dancers, using existing cultural metaphors related to the elements in order to create a shared focus on gestural language, providing a shared perspective on non-human agency that resided “above” the level of movement, sound or light. The first piece was much more top-down due to realworld constraints as well as affordances of the genre, while the second was designed as a bottom-up approach from its beginnings. In each case there were important elements of fixed structuring as well as emergent gestures across sound/movement/light that resulted from the interactions of the dancer collective and the emergent agencies of the interactive systems employed.
