Posted: 13 August 2007
Technology and art collaborate at Kilkenny Arts festival
Visitors to the 2007 Kilkenny Arts festival saw technology and art come together in Lost and Found, a collaborative show combining location-sensing technology, specialist textiles and interactive dance performance.
In the show, dancer Megan Kennedy interacted with a dynamic dance floor that sensed her location and mapped her movements through projected visuals and sound. The audience were then invited to guide Megan on her journey through interactive colour and pattern. Children also had a chance to test out the interactivity for themselves, making the show unique.
The project combined the skills of computer scientists Professor Patrick Nixon and his team from the Adaptive Information Cluster (AIC) at UCD, textile artist Tara Carrigy, dancer Megan Kennedy and director Jo Timmons.
A joint UCD-DCU research centre, the AIC’s work focuses on adaptive technologies that automatically evolve to meet the diverse needs of users, devices, and content in changing contexts. Professor Nixon of the UCD School of Computer Science & Informatics leads the Systems Research Group at UCD, a key part of Adaptive Information Cluster.
Part of the AIC’s remit is stimulate interest in adaptive information technologies, and the physical, imaginative and playful experience of dance and theatre made this medium a strong partner for interaction technology. The sensing technology provided an intuitive interaction form that makes the computer disappear – allowing the dancer and the children to take control of the technology without any knowledge of how it works. This interactive dance experience uses the same fundamental technology developed within the AIC to monitor the environment or to provide home healthcare support.
This show is a follow up to the sell-out success of Jacare Jungle which was performed in Kilkenny Arts Festival and Belfast Children’s Festival in 2006. Jacare Jungle was produced by Tara Carrigy as part of the Adaptive Craft Award, the collaborative initiative of AIC and the Crafts Council of Ireland which was set-up to encourage dialogue between craft and science.
