Together with colleagues, we have developed a new hardware/software device for persons with disabilities called the MotionComposer and in the process, we have created a number of interactive dance pieces for non-disabled professional dancers. Our approach to human machine interface champions intuitiveness and transparency (clear causality) in the interactive relationship and differs in some important ways from the more common skeleton extraction and gesture recognition approaches, particularly as they concern kinesthesia, synaesthesia and the perception of sound and music.
About Robert Wechsler:
Inventor of the MotionComposer, Robert is a choreographer and dancer and was an early experimenter with interactive technology. Founder of the Palindrome Dance Company, he holds an MA in choreography from New York University and was a protégé of Merce Cunningham and John Cage. He was also a Fullbright fellow and, together with Palindrome, won first prize at the Berlin Transmediale for "best interactive art" in 2002. He has written numerous articles on dance and technology and is co-author of the book, "Assistive Technologies, Disability Informatics and Computer Access for Motion Limitations" and lives now in Weimar, Germany where he directs the MotionComposer project.
About Andreas Bergsland:
Andreas is a post doctoral researcher at Norwegian University of Science and Technology with a project entitled “Live-electronics in a performativity perspective”. Bergsland studied Musicology at NTNU with jazz bass as his instrument. After working as a school principal for 4 years, he developed an interest in electroacoustic music. Bergsland then received a 4-year research fellow position, culminating in a PhD entitled “Experiencing voices in Electroacoustic Music”. Bergsland has also been involved in compositions for exhibitions, installations, large scale multi-media events, in addition to doing live-electronics performances and working with computer instrument design for motion capture systems.