Presenters: John Crawford & Lisa Naugle

Monday, February 22
3:45 - 4:30 pm
eMedia Studio

eDance Network is a public art project consisting of a series of live video “photo booth” exhibits where visitors dance with professionals to create dance videos that become a permanent part of the exhibit.

Currently in the early development stages, the eDance Network is envisioned to become a networked participatory media environment, a collection of dance/media kiosks installed in different community locations and connected by computer networks to a central server. Participants entering the kiosks can view and interact with a series of pre-recorded “demo dance” sequences, then record themselves dancing along. The newly recorded clips are stored by the system, and subsequently played back in a “dance montage” which automatically selects from all the clips recorded by the eDance Network over time, resulting in a continually growing and ever-changing visual representation of the movement contributions of eDance participants from different locations.

The motivation for the eDance Network is to create a welcoming environment for diverse participants to engage in a physical dialogue linking people between different places and across different times through embodied interaction, enabled by information technology. Participants will have the opportunity to influence and respond to the behaviors of pre-recorded digital media content through their actions. Their movement choices will become a permanent part of the exhibition, contributing to an evolving online presence.

The eDance Network is intended to provide a platform for research and creative activity to explore how a shared space based on digital media art practice can become a site for entering into "temporary physical interaction" across a distance, considering how performative acts become transformed by such interaction. Through artistic inquiry and technology innovation, the project will investigate how real-world environments augmented by computer and communications technology can support embodied interaction and the performative act.

The eDance Network aspires to reach a trans-national community as it engages new audiences, both for dance and for digital media art. All too often, people feel that media technology is something that is "happening to them," out of their control. The intention of this project is to create an approachable and enjoyable setting that allows participants to influence and interact with technical elements in a physically direct, immediate way.