Second Performance on September 15, 2012
Life Illuminated
by Joshua Brown, Daniel Tan, Nathaniel Makowski

What happens when biomedical engineers and dancers collaborate? After brainstorming together, our hypothesis was that we could illuminate unseen aspects of human movement and present medical technology in a new light. And so we’ve begun an experiment to determine if such a relationship is feasible and if we can say something about this relationship between art and technology that we couldn’t say before.

Bringing together those of us who specialize in movement and in medical systems, our aim was to enable a previously unseen aspect of movement to be integrated into the performance itself. Performers have sensors placed on their bodies that measure the muscle signals generated when they move. This muscle activity activates and controls lights that cover the body, allowing for a real time visual augmentation of the performer’s movements. What happens when biomedical engineers and dancers collaborate? The preliminary results are here on display. Our theory is that this is pretty cool. We hope you come to the same conclusion.

Posted in featured, News