Dance Vest 1.2

The implementation and design of this interactive wearable technology came through ideas surrounding the observance of a performer reacting to sound and music, this music determined the outcome of their movements and choices of bodily expression.

As awareness grew that this was perceived to be the norm in terms of dance and movement in a performance environment, the inversion of this came into question:

What if the movement and expression of the performer determined the sound or music that was played?

How does this challenge the current performance norms that are culturally ingrained and how does interaction with technology help shape this new perspective?

How does our interconnected relationship to technology impact how we perform or perceive performance?

With these questions in mind, other artists who have been involved in interactive sound and dance performance and technology were researched. There are many interesting and creative individuals developing in this field, some of which include:

StratoFyzika – Thaeta

Berlin based performance collective made up predominantly of three talented audio-visual artists, graphic designers and programmers: Akkamiau, Alessandra Leone and Hen Lovely bird.
They have had a number of performances utilizing interactive technology such as sensors and motion detection systems. Combining this with visual programming to create astounding and evocative dance performances that have major impact.

Klaus Obermaier

Interactive artist and choreographer, klaus Obermaier has been working for more that two decades in interactive installation. Amongst many other forms of artistic interactivity, he creates abstract real-time generated computer graphics and electronic soundscapes which use various techniques, like physics simulations, rigged 3D renderings, feedback loops, live cameras, to react to sounds or gestures.

http://www.exile.at/ko/klaus_bio.html

Giovanni Marco Zaccaria: M:A:D Interaction

An engineer interested in the interactive experiences that can be created in the world of the practical and the artistic. He merges biomedical engineering, interactive media and performance art to create pieces that leave interpretation of meaning to the individual or social perception.

http://madinteraction.com/about/

Ryoji Ikeda

An electronic composer creating audio-visual light performance using mathematical aesthetics. He has many immersive live performances and installations that bring awe to the world of audio-visual installation art.

http://www.ryojiikeda.com/biography/

This is only a few of the many artists contributing to the audio-visual interactive arts sector, but their works have inspired this piece and also the development of ideas surrounding interactive performance and bodily interaction with technology.

A VEST: a garment that allows the expression of dance to have impact on the performance environment, creating a closer connection of the body to technology and the ability of this technology to shape the performance.

 

Thoughts, conclusions and bibliography

This project has illustrated the design and refinement of a interactive technology inspired by performance art and its ability to weave stories around analogy and movement.

This wearable item allows user immersion in a malleable sound field reacting in real-time to the movements of the artist. The data being transferred via a wireless communications network.

Clothing is something that is intimate to humans, something we hardly go without.
By interfacing with this garment, a person can become aware of their profound and immense connection to the technology that surrounds them.

A performer can define their own expression to a greater extent by being released from the tendency to always create movements based inherently and traditionally on associations to sounds via a reactionary cue.

Their expressions inform the sound, a closer relationship is kindled between sound heard and action of movement seen.
A deeper understanding of how movement of the body and sound can relate becomes obvious via demonstration of the capabilities of this clothing item.

New ways of provoking experiences and narratives can be developed and combined with theatre and dance performance.
This is an analogy of the industrialization of ideas, the technocratic existence and the ability to use this in interesting and delightful ways to express the nature of the soul.

FULL Bibliography

 

 

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Technical Progress Report

This report closely follows the process of building this interactive wearable technology. It has been compiled in such a way to show the daily consideration of all aspects of the construction and development this piece. As the days proceed it can be seen that certain problematic troubleshooting is required. As issues arise throughout the process of implementing design decisions, programmatic considerations also reveal necessities of structural elements. These processes are laid bare in this report.

It is a designers personal journal and it has aided greatly, the ability to critically consider design choices.

Following is a pin allocation and layout diagram that shows how the hardware components are physically interfaced with the Arduino via a shield holding breakout pins, it shows provisions for the correct voltages and the names of the pins to be read.

Hardware Components
The following hardware components will be in use on the vest, some changing an analog signal into a digital format and one just a digital switch.

Accelerometer

Accelerometers are electro-mechanical devices that sense either static or dynamic forces of acceleration, which is the rate of change of the velocity of an object. Static forces include gravity, while dynamic forces can include vibrations and movement. They measure in meters per second squared (m/s2) or in G-forces (g). (Sparkfun, & Toni_K. 2017, para.1,2)

Flex Sensor

A flex sensor is a variable resistor whose resistance increases as the body of the component bends

Potentiometers

A three terminal variable resistor with a rotating contact on a carbon track that makes up an adjustable voltage divider. The term potentiometer is derived from an old established method of obtaining a precise division of a potential (voltage). The term variable resistor therefore refers to the use of one fixed and one moving connection in the component. (Sinclair, 2001, pp. 65-66)

Toggle Switch

This is simply a basis I/O toggle in the form of a heavy duty SPST switch

Arduino Uno

This is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple i/o board that does not require drivers, its development environment implements the processing/wiring language. It can be used to develop stand alone interactive objects or can be connected to software on your computer including: Flash, Processing, MaxMSP. (spark fun, 2017)

XBee Explorer

Translates data between the computer XBee, the LED blink rates help debug the Xbee.
It includes a voltage regulator and a reset button, the explorer can be used to set the communication protocols between XBees.

XBee Shield 

Proto-typing base shield specifically designed for Xbee with breakout pins

Zigbee XBees Series Two

Designed to let the user create complex mesh networks based on the ZB mesh firmware, these modules all allow reliable communication at a great distance with any device that holds a serial port.

Software
The following software will be used in conjunction with the hardware to manipulate the data made available by the analogue movements.

XCTU
A multi-platform application that enables interaction with RF modules via a graphical interface.

MaxMSP
A visual programming platform for music and multimedia.

Arduino Processing
A platform used to write sketches that can be loaded to the Arduino memory and utilized to control the processor.

 Journal

Interactive art as installation

Industrialization and modernism has allowed a new form of interaction with art to become available. Some suggest that all passive art in also interactive,  it becomes interactive when a human observes the art and the interaction is this observance where by they fill in the information around the supplied artistic display.
Painting, film, photography all requires a static observer, but the interaction is in the way in which this observer fills in the gaps of expression with their own construed reaction, Their experience of the art is the interaction.

Interactive installation art requires the observer to become active, determining their own path through the piece and there is no predetermined path. Sometimes they become part of the installation themselves, viewing themselves as the projected medium or as the vessel of interaction.

Technology has afforded artists a means to expand on all kinds of notions, whereby the referent becomes part of the art and the body no longer has a boundary between its parameter and the artifact being displayed. This “One-ness” created via the exchange of tactile, visual or audio-visual sensation is what sets firmly that which artists have striven to speak about for centuries. The inter-connectivity of human flesh, soul and the binding of the external and internal. (Hartman, 2011)
The artist, the art and the observer become one, creating and observing the art simultaneously, A holy communion.

 

The digital narrative

Part of the process of developing a wearable technology that allows a dancer the personal expression of controlling the output, is the importance of maintaining the awareness that there is a need for the development of a narrative. By creating wireless wearable technology, an artist has a great capacity to develop a narrative that more fully expresses the movement and flow of the artistic imagination.

Kahr-Hojland (2011, pp. 226-264) describes the qualities of the narrative and meta-narrative and how these help to form and shape flow and develop understanding of the relationships between environments and the people interacting with those environments.

She explains that the narrative calls attention to the fact that it is a narrative and supports meta-reflective processes within the audience or person interacting with the technology.

Also discussed are several intrinsic qualities of the narrative as a function of interactive installation. A summary of her findings will be given below.

Intrinsic qualities of the narrative:

It can organize information in a way that meaningful in the sense that it provides recognizable context and through this supports human comprehension.

It can hold several systems of meaning, making it possible to engage people on several levels operating in parallel.

It “scaffolds” reflection by encouraging different interpretations.

All of these qualities define the structure of narrative as a function of observation and user interaction with art, but in addition to operating from this structure, narrative also allows for the development of other experiences.

Kahr-Hojland describes an aspect of this as flow, flow is all about framing experiences that are flexible and user sensitive and in this way it is possible to adequately challenge the target audience and allow them to simultaneously engage with an exhibition pleasurably:

This large target audience is challenged through the narratives development of unknown content, therefore the narrative is characterized by representing something well known and yet something unknown, by creating suitable balance between the unknown and the known, the narrative has potential for supporting social learning processes by providing a framework that calls for social participation. it is known that knowledge can be developed out of constant ongoing negotiation – verbally and non-verbally- between individuals and their surroundings, the negotiation of meaning takes place in different kinds of communities of practice. (Kahr-Hojland, 2011, p. 234-238)

Kahr-Hojland  makes it clear how narrative supports this potential by imitating communities of practices that insight a curiosity to develop in an area previously unknown and to build knowledge through this process.

The meta-narrative creates a layer within the narrative that allows for critical reflection and insight into the underlying objectives involved in the installation or exhibition being experienced as a flow of interaction by its participants.

Technology as an agent of expression

In her essay: “Technological Interventions in Everyday Interaction”,  Judith Donath discusses several criteria that can be used to access how an artwork functions as an independent and social entity.

These include:
Physical Characteristics – How does the art work present its self to the viewer, what is the shape, scale and form, what is the nature of its complexity or simplicity?

Nature of the space as actual or alternative – does the art work interact with the viewer within the space they occupy or does it transport them to an alternative space.

Nature of technology as an agent or medium – Is the work a communicative system or is it acting as an autonomous being.

The sensing capability of the technology – What the system or work perceives about the humans that interact with it.

She states that there are many other criteria that could be used to categorize interactive works, but that these provide a useful frame work for considering the social interaction in which the participant engages with a technological “other” that is the autonomous entity

She goes on to discuss the autonomy of systems being perceived by humans to have intelligence. When they do something that is commanded or requested, they are seen as simply effective machines, but when the action is programmed to give the impression of autonomy, a choice made via a personal decision, then the system is seen as having a mind of its own and the human will willingly interact with it as if it is another living being.

However this interaction is a wholly subjective experience and it allows for the development of richly interactive spaces that allow the subjective body of the viewer to become immersed in cognitive expression. ( Fifield & Ketner, 2008)

A new language of expression

Technology and the value of artistic expression
This new language can be observed and represented, as with ions past, through the art of expression. The forms that this expression takes on can now be extended to robotics, wearable technology, video projection and multiple other interactive technologies that represent, the relationship being continuously developed, between technology and humans.
A great example of artistic expression that is dominated by technology is music. This co-habitual relationship is reliant on electricity and sustains itself through the assumption that to access recorded material, one must have access to electricity. In this unconscious modernist perception, a contract is defined, where to be at the forefront of the musical industry, one must accept that a vast majority of technology is required to ensure output.
Along side this contractual perception, there must be the means to sustain agreements with various companies in supply of this much needed resource. Now music becomes a gargantuan, whereby before it could be considered sound, now it is a giant winding of wiring and cables, scientific practice and infrastructure. The effort of this gargantuan is accompanied with the desire of soliciting a emotional response of the listener or referent to the art.
So great is the value of this response and the trade of bounty that will there-in follow for the service of offering the material that solicits such a response, that  an artist will spend many hours crafting away for a few minutes of material that will provide this response. This response is a valuable commodity indeed.
In taking this idea and observing that on an inversion, whereby the response creates the music as apposed to the music creating the response, I wish to explore the power of this response as a generating mechanism. By the theory and logic of the above perception, if the music created by artists creates a highly valuable reaction, then the music is deemed to also be of value. To invert this, if the highly valuable reaction creates the music then the art project as a whole must be deemed to be of equal if not proportionate value. In this way the need to rate musical output becomes obsolete as the sort after response is present and therefore the necessity to labor at conjuring the perfect sound only becomes a facet of a more complete helix based in fun.
This artistic helix is transferable via the technology and the technology sustains the relationship between the desires of human for expression and the mediums they use to represent that expression.

The body and technology

 

As further generations of humans are born into an era of industrialization, something they have no understanding of living without, the human body becomes more attuned to the use of technology and the expression or extension of self through this technology.
The ways in which technology starts to effect our experience is apparent, from the use of a microwave to make dinner to the fantasmological playing out of safe forms of drama in evening television, technology has become the operative employee of most of the roles humans, at one time had to combat by hand.
We now have more active social lives as a series of data streams than in terms of real human to human interaction. There is more drama and chaos imbued into many  conversations on social media sites than a person will literally see in months of their physical life.
This close knit reliance that has developed over the past 50 years, has meant that the very nature of human expression has changed and with this transmogrification, a new language using emoticon and device has developed.

 

 

Humans and technology; A symbiotic relationship

The concept of designing a technology that maps a performers movements to a variable output could be seen as an analogy of the relationship humans and technology share. This close knit relationship is becoming more substantial, where almost all of our actions involve it in some way.

It can be seen that humans have an enormous ability to adapt to new technologies. Recent employment saw the use of an EFTPOS device where people had to push a physical button, either 1, 2, or 3 in order to select their account. In an age group of mainly 40-60 year old, about 50% of people stabbed at the screen relentlessly, not realizing that it was not a touch response but simply an options menu detailing assigned physical buttons. In a short 10 years, many people have forgotten that buttons used to be the only method of inputting data into an electronic device such as a phone or EFTPOS. (Erickson. C, Nov 10, 2012, para. 12-18)

What was more surprising and interesting was that this was also an older generation, when one could hypothesize,  would have initially taken longer to move over to new technologies.

Humans adaption rate has become proportionately faster with time based against a ratio of the commercial market whilst flooded with new ideas and new items to try.

Electricity is an ever present medium upon which all of the conveniences of daily life rely. Digital electronics moderate our movements, advance our pleasure and log our activity.

To engage with technology is the acceptance of an industrial era, only ever confined by the limits of mere imagination, ready and eager to stretch forth into unfounded terrain.

To state an example, even our friendship groups have become predominantly digital, it is not uncommon to see a table of people in a public space, all on individual devices, engaging with various people outside of the present moment. There is much that could be said with regard to this phenomenon, but that is outside the scope of this investigation into the practical uses of technology in performance art.

Within the scope, is pushing the limits of this technocratic relationship and developing a perceptive cognitive response to the convenience of technology in expression and other mediums of digitally created art.