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Computing and Creativity Cultural PerformanceThe cultural performance goal is to create a high-end laboratory for exploring, integrating, controlling, and developing new technology for performance. The performing arts have embraced technological advances in recent years, including new ways to generate and process audio and video, both offline and during live performances; new means of tracking human gestures that potentially create a whole new array of possible performance modalities and designs; new ways of organizing and controlling performance elements including lighting, scenography, sound, robotic performers, etc. Yet most of these new capabilities are hard to use, not widely available, and not usually reliable and durable for production and touring. Cultural informatics projects will provide challenging applied research opportunities in the context of creating performances. We anticipate improved reliability of underlying technology, development of easier-to-use and more powerful user interfaces, and control structures for the technology. We plan to develop and use software technology and data representations that will allow the diverse technologies to interoperate. We will develop new tools for real-time performance, presentations, and exhibitions, over both local and remote networks, including high-bandwidth, human-response-time network communications, multi-channel audio and video, and motion capture. We will create a technologically advanced performance space. This will provide a testbed for developing and exploring new interactive technologies for performance and will draw on NCSA expertise in visualization, high-performance computing, networking, and innovative technologies to collaborate, co-creatively, with campus expertise in performance and user interfaces. We will create start-to-end tools for documenting, developing, and controlling the processes of performance and will integrate them in a space that will be suitable for demonstration performances of the highest order. The semantic middleware approach being taken in NCSA Cyberenvironments and Tecnologies Directorate provides a rich platform for describing elements of a performance and the interactions between components and could provide a novel basis for integrating multimodal inputs and enabling new forms of multimedia interaction that reduce the focus on low-level details. Further, efforts related to new forms of collaborative visualization (i.e. for environmental observations) and to enable automated workflows may also find dual use. The Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research (SEASR) project will enable mobile, interactive, and community-enriching experiences. SEASR's visualization and user interface capabilities will also make an important contribution to cultural informatics. SEASR's informatics tools will advance creative research, production, and performance media through enabling users to connect data sources that are currently incompatible (whether due to different formats or protocols); modify and add to tools with open source components; write analytic engines in programming languages of choice; and create a repository for components that will support sharing and publishing. The SEASR system could also contribute to the development of a "smart space" for live performances and dynamic exhibitions. In this type of application, a SEASR system would synthesize data from a wide variety of sensors (lights, cameras, touch sensors, motion sensors, etc.) and—by incorporating software agents and independent software runtimes to adjust behaviors in associated mechanisms—dynamically enhance a multimodal performance, such as by automatically tracking lights on the most active dancers, changing color when the music's character or tempo changes, or projecting video or graphics to reflect the narrative of the performance. We will work closely with both local and external artists to identify the most appropriate and useful technologies and to extend them to meet the artistic imagination. This will result in a series of new and innovative performances. "The End of Cinematics", for example, is having international impact. This collaboration between visiting artist Mikel Rouse, Krannert Center, and NCSA can be seen as a first step toward fertile and successful collaboration with recognized visiting artists. The general outcome from these types of collaborations will be national and international performances and will engage the public worldwide. |