Challenges

I'm coming into the home stretch of my project this quarter. I've run into a couple of obstacles that haven't been resolved, but I guess this is just part of the process. While my shirt worked well with the USB hookup, I began running into some problems once I switched to the wireless Blue Smirf. Even though my computer picked up its signal, it didn't seem to be communicating with Max. At first I thought that maybe my battery wasn't charged enough, but then I spoke to someone doing a similar project and she said that she tried several different charged batteries and the Blue Smirf still wasn't working with the LilyPad. =( oO I sent a descripition of this delemma to LilyPad Queen Leah Buechley, so I'm hoping to hear back from her. She might be the only one who can solve this problem. Since this project necessitates wireleless movement, I am at a bit of a standstill until I can resolve this.

Project Update and To-Do List

Well, it's getting to be crunch time. After a week of playing with electronics, I think I have a much better grasp on how to utilize them in my project. After a few attempts, I think I have chosen a good set-up for my interactive dance project. I am using the LilyPad Arduino Main Board with a LilyPad LiPower and Polymer Lithium Ion Batteries - 2000mAh as a power source. Also, I invested in a Bluetooth® Modem - BlueSMiRF Gold so that the set-up is wireless and can be worn easily by the dancers. Finally, I chose the Ultrasonic Range Finder - Maxbotix LV-EZ3 as my proximity sensor. Supposedly, the sensor provides very accurate readings of 0 to 255 inches (0 to 6.45m) in 1 inch increments with little or no dead zone. However, I am a little worried that the detection range in terms of width won't be great enough with this sensor. Apparently, Maxbotix is offering the EZ0, EZ1, EZ2, EZ3, and EZ4 with progressively narrower beam angles allowing the sensor to match the application. So, the sensor with the widest range with the EZo sensor. I might have to switch to this one. In addition to this challenge, I still have to figure out how to translate its readings in the Max patch so that the video/audio output will be artistically relevant. I mostly concerned with coordinating the sensor reading with the Max program. What will be easier and more enjoyable will be the creation of the corresponding videos. I am creating them in Flash with images created in Photoshop and sounds created with Garage Band (not the most sophisticated option, but I am a novice sound engineer and this seems to work well for now.) Wish me luck!!


To-Do:

1) Complete Flash videos and convert to QuickTime for Max output
2) Sew electronics onto a shirt with conductive thread (and puffy paint for insulation!)
3) Hook up electronics to my computer with BlueTooth and pray that my Max patch works

Project Update & To-Do List

I will be finalizing my interactive dance project within the next couple of weeks, and I am working to bring together all the disparate parts. While the actual creative concept is clear in my head, the challenging part now is making everything cohesive. The following is a working list of the different tasks I need to accomplish (hopefully this week):

1) Start working with LilyPad and sensors
I finally picked up my LilyPad kit (which was on back order) and will get my hands on it in class tomorrow. Yay! The Deluxe Kit from SparkFun Electronics includes:

* LilyPad Accelerometer
* LilyPad Mainboard
* LilyPad Bright White LED
* LilyPad Button Board
* LilyPad Buzzer
* LilyPad Light Sensor
* LilyPad Power Supply
* LilyPad Temperature Sensor
* LilyPad Tri-Color LED
* LilyPad Vibration Motor
* FTDI Basic Breakout
* Mini USB Cable
* 1 spool of 234/34 Conductive Thread


2) Finalize sound and video clips
I've been working on sound and video clips that communicate my creative message. I am exploring the (dis)embodied feminine and the machine with homage to Donna Haraway. I'd like to finalize these clips ASAP so that I have time to fully get my head around the tech element of my project, which leads me to.....

3) Configure Max patch
I need to work with Max to make sure it communicates with the sensors and the video output in the appropriate fashion. This will probably be the most challenging piece for me.

4) Secure dance space
My friend recently opened a space in Highlands, Eliot Street Collective, and I will be using the studio for my project. I think it will lend the appropriate environment for dancing and filming.

Project Visualization: LilyPad Wearable Sensors

Project Visualization: Sketches

Project Visualization: Sounds Samples

Harmony: OM - The Original Sound

OM, the sound of the Universe, the sound vibrating within each living thing. For the sound element of my project, I would like the dancers to come closer and closer to OM, the purest, most basic sound, as they approach each other. In their longing to connect, they are actually connecting to their own inner selves, their true essence, and they gain clarity through sound. As they move away from each other and their true essence, the noise becomes garbled, fuzzy, and chaotic. I have chosen to use industrial music to represent this quality of fragmentation.

Map Ten: Synchronicity in Nature & Dance

Synchronicity

The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as simultaneous occurences that are meaningfully related—the cause and the effect occur together.

Jung coined the word to describe what he called "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." Jung variously described synchronicity as an "acausal connecting principle", "meaningful coincidence" and "acausal parallelism". It was a principle that Jung felt gave conclusive evidence for his concepts of archeptypes and the collective unconscious, in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlies the whole of human experience and history—social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. Events that happen which appear at first to be coincidence but are later found to be causally related are termed as "incoincident".

One of Jung's favourite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll in which the White Queen says to Alice: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards".

In Nature

We see examples out synchronicity in nature so frequently that they seem ordinary. For example, look up into the sky and see how a flock of birds fly in formation. When they change direction, they all execute the same motions in sync. While they include hundreds of individuals, they move in harmony without an obvious leader. They never bump into each other. Physicists have been working for years to understand the properties that guide the movements of birds and so far they have been unsuccessful.

In Movement

Since I am basing my work this quarter on improvisational movement, I wanted to explore contact improv as a complex interactivity for the survey project. I am intrigued by the parallels between collective animal behavior/movement and contact improv dance, particularly as they both exhibit qualities of synchronicity. This is a concept that will inform my final project.

Not Until Now - "The film documents two dancers as they strive and sometimes struggle to create intimate connection both physically and emotionally. Using the form contact improvisation as their focus. The music, instrumental and skillfully composed, along with serene images of nature, set the stage for the dance to unfold."

What is Contact Improvisation?

This quote from Nancy Smith's Caught Falling: The Confluence of Contact Improvisation
explains well this complex interactivity:

"Contact Improvisation is a dance form, originated by American choreographer Steve Paxton in 1972, based on the communication between two or more moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia.

The body, in order to open to these sensations, must learn to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to experience the natural flow of movement. Practice includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner.

Contact improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges. Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting in one’s basic survival instincts. It is a free play with balance, self-correcting the wrong moves and reinforcing the right ones, bringing forth a physical/emotional truth about a shared moment of movement that leaves the participants informed, centered, and enlivened."