Body Editing: Interactive Dance Experiments, With Sensors and Gesture-Based Technologies (2014-2021)
The series of research creation projects began with discoveries we made while experimenting with a series of interacting cameras and indoor sensors, as part of the Portage project, creating the ability to transform a person’s image into a perimeter or space made up of with any content developers chose. This became the I-spy/paint by body project, prototyped as a playful history game (allowing users to collage historic images at spaces in Toronto,) and the playful game “Chase Ken”, where users see Ken projected into a space, and try to locate him in Toronto.
However, I was particularly struck by the embodied experience made possible by witnessing one’s real image as it is projected into and embodied by a different image on screen. This curious embodied experience became a space for subsequent embodied dance experiments that we call Body Editing. In a series of Iterations (noted below), we added gesture and sensor-based data capture and various forms of data feedback- visuals projected on screens and audio projected into the performance space. In these experiments we were seeking to challenge common theoretical claims that human machine interactive could be immersive. Instead we found, like in the case of mediation, movers come in and out of an immersive experiment when engaging with biofeedback – regardless of whether it is in visual, sonic or hybrid form. The closest dancers came to feelings of apperception or unthought interactive, was in the Pas des Deux with algorithmic creature iteration, where computer learning algorithm is deployed to create responsive creature interactions to the dancer’s movements.
Subsequent experiments were derived from these, including the movement games for older adults, (see Ageing and Health Technology Research) and Satellite, Mandala and Pollinator games (see Games and Apps Development).
Writing
Gardner, P., Shea, G. & Davila, P. (2010). Locative urban mobile art interventions: Methods for facilitating politicized social interactions. Aether: The Journal of Media Geography (5B), (16 MS pages).
Gardner, P. & Jenkins, B. (2015). Bodily intra–actions with biometric devices. Body and Society, 22(1), 1–28. doi:10.1177/1357034X15604030.
(2008). Mobile publics: Methods for making virtual spaces public. In M. Ladly & P. Beesley (Eds.), Mobile nation: Canadian design research network (pp. 185–195). Tuns Press/Riverside Architectural Press.
(2010). Space, becoming, and dislocation: Politicizing mobile art. In L. Poissant & P. Tremblay (Eds.), Together, Elsewhere : Ensemble ailleurs (pp. 213–237). Presses de l’Université du Québec.
Gardner, P. & Kember, S. (Eds). (Forthcoming Oct. 2021.) Probing the System: Feminist Complications of Automated Technologies [Special issue]. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 7(2). With co-editor, proposed, solicited, organized peer-review for, selected, and co-edited this special issue. Significant editorial input on 4 of 10 articles (one of which I co-authored).
Gardner, P., Sturgeon, H., Jones, L. & Surlin, S. (2016). Body Editing: Dance biofeedback experiments in apperception. In M. Kurosu (Ed.), Human–Computer Interaction; Interaction Platforms and Techniques; 18th International Conference, HCI International 2016, Proceedings, Part II (pp. 49-60.) Springer.
Surlin, S. and Gardner, P. Mobile Experience Lab: Body Editing. (2014). MobileHCI ’14: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices & Services, Toronto, ON, Canada (pp. 439-442.) ACM 978-1-4503-3004-6/14/09. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2628363.2633575.
Verstappen, M., Poon D., Bettridge, T. & Gardner, P. (2014). Off the couch and out of the hospital: Mobile applications for acceptance and commitment therapy. MobileHCI ’14: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human–Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices & Services. CD–ROM Proceedings. Mobile HCI ’14, Toronto, ON, Canada (pp. 431-443.) ACM 978–1–4503–3004–6/14/09. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2628363.2633573.
(2012). Resisting the trans–human subject: Biometric tools, code and modular thinking. Technology and Emerging Media, the Canadian Communication Association Proceedings, Congress, Waterloo, ON. (12 MS pages).