and other projects, Kit Monkman and Tom Wexler at KMA Creative Technology Ltd., York (http:// www.kma.co.uk). The authors would also like to thank Joy Cann, assistant archivist at the City of York Archives, for her kind assistance in researching the history of the square in which the installation was located.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Scott Palmer is lecturer in scenography in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds, UK. His research interests focus on lighting design and the interaction between technology and performance. Current projects include “Projecting Performance” ( AHRC-funded) in collaboration with Sita Popat and KMA Creative Technology Ltd (http://www. leeds.ac.uk/paci/projectingperformance/ home.html), and “Emergent Objects”(AHRC/EPSRC-funded) using performance perspectives to model design processes in a technological society (http:// www.emergentobjects.co.uk). Scott is the author of the Hodder and Stoughton Essential Guide to Stage Management, Lighting and Sound. He was editor of the Association of Lighting Designers’ journal Focus from 2002 to 2006, and is currently writing A Lighting Reader for the Palgrave Macmillan “Theatre Practices” series. Sita Popat, Ph.D. is a senior lecturer in dance at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds, UK. Her research interests center on relationships between dance choreography and new technologies. Current projects include “Projecting Performance” with Scott Palmer and KMA Creative Technology Ltd, “Emergent Objects,” and “e-Dance” (AHRC/EPSRC/JISC-funded) combining choreography and e-Science ( http://www.ahessc.ac.uk/e-dance). She is the author of Invisible Connections: Dance, Choreography and Internet Communities (Routledge, 2006) and associate editor of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media.

Designing Dancing in the Streets

“Dancing in the Streets” was designed to be experienced, so we developed it by using/ experiencing it. The installation was created via workshops in which we played within the developing artwork from the earliest possible point. Undergraduate students from the dance and performance design programs at the University of Leeds played with us, suggesting ideas for developments to both the visual imagery and the interface. Passing colleagues were encouraged to join in so that we could see how they reacted to the emerging installation and gain their feedback on what might make it more engaging for them.

The relatively simple programming environment enabled us to work quickly and improvise with the technology. Usually, only a few minutes were needed to alter the parameters of the sprites (e.g., colors, behavior). This approach focused on both our own “in the moment” responses and those of the colleagues and students whom we co-opted as testers.

Photo: Scott Palmer

Game rules arose naturally out of this playful environment, as we developed the installation in a large theater studio at the University of Leeds. A

football game arose directly out of people “messing around” with a set of circular images. Some of the circles were linked to the body heat of the users and followed The football game being developed in rehearsal in the theater studio. ^{them around the space.} Other circles were “free-

floating” and bounced away when in contact with a user-connected circle. A spontaneous movement where one person pretended to kick a free-floating circle evolved very quickly into a game of football, with users choosing a side of the square projection area and defending it like a goal. One user asked for the free-floating circles to be “colored in” to create a white circle. This made it easier to distinguish between the “ball” and the circles responding to the user’s body heat. Another user wanted to keep track of the score, so score-boards were added on either side of the projection area. If the ball was kicked to the side of the projection area, then it was a goal.

The design for “Dancing in the Streets” needed to be based upon a framework of possibilities so that users could interact and improvise within a responsive environment. We sought an interface that would feel transparent but would be sufficiently reflective to produce a meaningful response, an aesthetic effect regardless of how the user chose to interact with it. The digital images were selected and modified to establish key ways in which they would respond to human interaction. They were fixed in terms of their behavioral qualities, range of color, and the sequence in which they appeared to the users on a regular timed cycle, but each image had fluidity, as it was constantly responding to user input. Some images, such as ghostly footprints, echoed the history of the space in which the installation was set—once an old graveyard, now deconsecrated and paved. Others were unrelated, such as the butterflies and the abstract lines and ribbons.

The overall aesthetic of the artwork was carefully controlled to provide artistic cohesion and form. But crucially, the ways in which the audience could interact with these images were not fully prescribed; they existed within a framework that included potential for significant variability and even surprise within the rules of engagement. KMA describe how their work is “rooted in the modelling of the physics of nature, using the mathematics of swarm behaviours, springs and masses, cellular automata and chaos [ 2].” The chaotic elements existed within the clearly defined broad framework that enabled the existence of rules within which to play and which created a level of fluidity and spontaneity that made the piece interactive rather than automatically reactive.

May + June 2008

DOI 10.1145/1353782.1353797