Miranda Rights: Six Second Dances [Dying on my Feet], interactive performing art

The research field is interactive performance arts. The research is a collaboration between the researcher and Paul Verity Smith (Director and programmer), Martin Dupras (electro-acoustic musician and programmer), Katsura Isobe (dancer and choreographer) and Jeremy Hattosh-Nemeth (artist and programmer). The role of the researcher was photography and production. The research question was what are the elements that create a theatrically effective combination of performance (in this case dance) and real time manipulation of live or recreated audio and moving image? Dancer Katsura Isobe wore a variety of concealed sensors including accelerometers, orientation sensors and photoelectric cells. These measure her movements and communicate this via a radio transmitters to the computers. The result is that the dance video projected behind her during the performance is in her control. Specifically the dancer used computer interaction so that stored audiovisual material became an instrument to perform to. By combining the material to perform to and integrating that into the performance itself, a performance experience was arrived at that could not be achieved any other way. The parallel that the collaborators recognised as a point of influence was that of making movements and sounds simultaneously as practised within traditional African dance. Miranda Rights was also performed at the Digital Cultures Festival in Nottingham in December 2005. The Performing Arts and IT departments of the Governments UK Trade and Investment awarded the financial means for performances at three venues in China: Zhong Gong Plaza Hotel, and the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (both March 2006) and the Shanghai Designers’ Club (March 2006). A further invitation to perform came from the second International Conference for Digital Media held at Doncaster (June 2006).