Day 13: (Tue Oct 11, Week 7) Suitcase Realities

Notes for 2022-10-11.

New Assignments

  1. New assignment, due Thursday: Project Pitch

Agenda

  1. Review the collaborative suitcase results. (See Exercise: Suitcase Test)

  2. Discussion of resource limits and prototyping realities.

  3. Review of current themes and ideas.

Themes and Concepts

Please remember: the main inquiry for Fall 2022: exploring the practiced relationship between a human performer and an automated instrument. Ideally this creates a synthesis of human intent and machine capability, merging human intuition and cognition, machine behavior, and physical dynamics to create performances not possible by either human or machine.

Conceptual Catalog

  • ambient autonomy/machine intent

  • machines with personality

  • social robots

  • biomimicry/artificial life

  • reflections of ourselves

Inquiries

What can a machine performance show us about:

  • our relationship to other living things?

  • our willingness to engage with other people?

  • our visual perceptions?

  • the limits of our bodies?

  • our embodiment as a meat machine?

  • our mortality?

  • our destruction of the ecosphere?

  • our psychological blind spots?

  • the limits of our attention?

  • our needs for dominance or control?

  • our latent childishness?

  • our fears and anxieties?

  • our need for approval?

  • our understanding of collaboration?

  • our sense of struggle?

  • our need for each other?

  • our willingness to delude ourselves?

  • our suspension of disbelief?

  • our willingness to perceive intent?

  • our assumptions about machines?

Hybrid Performance

Hybrid performance is a form, it can be applied to any concept. A specific performance can emphasize or reflect:

  • the direct expression of the performer

  • the surprising variations of a complex process

  • direct audience interaction

  • narrative representation

  • communicating an experience

Performance Resources

This is largely a recap of the list from Day 10: (Thu Sep 29, Week 5) Phase Two: Physical.

  1. setting and dressing

    • laser-cut plywood

    • 3D-printed artifacts and mechanisms

    • found and purchased artifacts

    • feathers

    • fabric

    • multiples and ensembles

    • suitcases

  2. actuation and movement

    • stepper motors

    • hobby servos

    • DC motors

    • high-pressure pneumatics

    • low-pressure pneumatics

    • mechanical energy storage (springs and counterweights)

    • underactuated mechanisms

    • out-of-plane 3D motions

  3. sensing and interaction

    • switches and photointerrupters

    • IR range sensors

    • sonar proximity sensors

    • machine vision

  4. choreography and animation

    • real-time Python control system, scripting, motion generation

    • MIDI performer input

    • MIDI sequencing

    • traditional trapezoidal motion control

    • idiosyncratic physical interfaces, e.g. puppet controller

    • principles of composition, structure, phrasing, dynamics, and narrative

  5. light and shadow

    • Source Four lights

    • Soraa LED lights

    • Neopixel LED lights

    • DMX lighting fixtures

    • shadows: wall, scrim, ceiling, etc.

  6. sound and music

    • motor sound

    • actuated physical instruments

    • synthesized or prerecorded sound