News Story

e-Dance on the Grid

Michelle Bachler, Friday 16 Jan 2009

The e-Dance project is investigating the use of Access Grid and hypermedia annotation in the choreography of distributed dance. On Wednesday the KMi Podium area was transformed into an internetworked dance studio.

We used the Access Grid to connect with our colleagues at Manchester University. We had Helen Bailey from Bedford University dancing here at KMi and Sita Popat from Leeds University dancing at Manchester. At each location there was a camera on the dancer and then the camera stream of both dancers was projected up as two semi-transparent over-layed windows. In this way, the dancers could experiment with dancing together when they where actually not co-located.

It was very interesting to watch the way the dancers tried to interact and the way they played with their spacial positioning to each other. I look forward to the next session greatly!