The Interactivity (part 5)

The combination of the above approaches to multimodal, human-computer interaction in the context of an engaging art-work can present the audience with a multi-level, immersive, interactive experience. However, the completion of the experience requires the performers to also be aware participants in this interaction. As the dancers interact with the system, they must achieve experiential knowledge of the computational elements of the system, i.e.: how does the computer understand what I am doing and how does that drive the generation of sound and image? They can then expose the computational structures to the audience through the relationships they develop between their movement and the computer generated sounds and visuals.

The greatest challenge here is that performers find it difficult to step outside the event and consider it as a whole. Furthermore, too much explicit attention to the interactivity, graphics or sound would influence their ability to concentrate and be immersed in their performing. Therefore, explicit cues to the performers were limited to important, signpost type information. At the same time, however, structural information and summaries of the computer driven analysis, graphics and sound processes were embedded in the music of the piece to allow performers to develop a more complete, implicit awareness of the evolution of the digital elements of the piece.

Dancers are used to extracting structure from music that accompanies their dance. The lighting and graphics were fully integrated and thus awareness of the evolution of the graphics could also sometimes be achieved through changes in the lighting conditions. Finally, each piece included sections where the dancers would explicitly look at the graphics while interacting with them or would explicitly interact with the music.

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