Submerged

SUBMERGED

Submerged documentation video

Poster and talk presented at the NDEO National Conference in Chicago, November 2014.

Description
An interactive dance performance which focuses on creating an immersive environment for the dancer to influence and explore.

Responsible for interactive costume construction.

Presentations:
NDEO National Conference, Chicago, IL

Date
Spring 2014

Process
User research, wireframes, prototypes, usability tests, fabrication

Blog
http://janelleinteractive.blogspot.com/

INSPIRATION / PREVIOUS WORK

This interactive dance performance piece was a culmination of two prior pieces: an interactive dance costume and a projection mappings project.

The interactive dance costume piece incorporated the breath of the dancer by using a stretch sensor that wrapped around the rib cage. The EL lights would fade on and off in correlation to the dancer's inhale and exhale of breath.

Construction stage of interactive costume

Completed costume: EL lights, tubing, fabric, and stretch sensor

Our interactive projection mappings piece used a kinect camera to capture our dancer's movement. The movement of the dancer's body would control the movement of the wave like projection mappings on the large scrim located in front of the dancer.

Rendered waves of projection mappings

This final piece, Submerged, uses both projection mappings and in interactive costume.

CIRCUIT DESIGN

To construct the interactive dance costume, the following materials were used: a red unitard, a spool of conductive thread, non-conductive thread, red felt fabric, 2 accelerometers, 1 LilyPad Arduino, 1 LilyPad LiPower, 1 LilyPad XBee, and 1 battery pack.

I first started out with testing the circuits to help figure out the best circuit design for the costume.

Circuit testing

The accelerometers were designed to be placed on the dancer’s right wrist and left ankle. The purpose of the accelerometers was to collect data of our dancer’s movements such as rotation and acceleration of her limbs. The dancer then could control the projected visuals based on her movement of limbs.

Circuit design

The LilyPad LiPower was added to the costume implementation after the circuit design to help avoid soldering the battery pack to the LilyPad XBee. The LiPower acts as a switch to power on and off the circuit.

COSTUME CONSTRUCTION

Following the final circuit design, I implemented the costume construction. The accelerometers were sewn onto the strips of felt fabric and connected to the LilyPad Arduino, which further connected to the XBee and LilyPad LiPower. Lots of updates were made up until the final performance as further adjustments were necessary to correct any loose or overlapping connections that developed throughout the use of the costume. The costume was continuously tested on the dancer with both the visuals and stage environment.