Dance is the most physical art. Bodies moving, yes, but physical also because of how bodies relate to the spaces they’re in. Much of the energy in tech innovation right now is directed to exploring the edges between physical and virtual worlds, and how we perceive spaces and interact with them. Much of the work is in new interfaces for our machines – voice control, facial recognition, biometrics, etc – but we also see it in virtual the overlays of augmented reality that graft information atop the physical world you’re looking at. How we interact with the space and things around us is going to change significantly over the next decade.
Which brings me back to dance.
Who better to help us think differently about space and how we move amidst those things around us than dancers? Last year there was a conference that brought together choreographers and technologists studying integration of the physical and virtual. And some choreographers are staging pieces integrated with technology:
This piece from Adrien M & Claire B uses projection mapping to create virtual objects on stage with which the dancers interact.
Computer generated animation has gotten to be so good that pop stars such as Beyonce are using it on tour (the video isn’t embeddable, so click on the image to see it).
And then there is a whole other genre – dancing with drones:
Artists look at ordinary things and show them to us in ways we hadn’t seen. But they can also look at extraordinary things we may never have seen and show us ways to relate to them. As our relationship with the things around us changes, dancers will have lots to say about how we interact with them.
Leave a Reply