danceroom Spectroscopy
Interactive Scientific
An interactive visualisation fusing virtual reality, high-performance computing, and molecular physics. dS lets you see your energy avatar, and use it to interact with the atomic world.
Hidden Fields trailer 2014
Made by
David Glowacki
Royal Society Fellow and chief scientific consultant at Interactive Scientific (iSci). Hates disciplinary boundaries. Likes projects where artistic enquiry guides scientific enquiry into new territories, and vice versa.
Becky Sage
Becky Sage is a creative producer, driving projects that combine science and art to observe and discover the world around us.
Phill Tew
Philip Tew is a curious blend of programmer and digital artist, leveraging skills gathered from an early age and honed in industry to create artworks that play with generative processing, physical modelling, real-time interactivity, and creativity itself.
Tom Mitchell
Tom Mitchell is a computer scientist, researcher and electronic musician lecturing computer music at the University of the West of England, Bristol.
Lisa May Thomas
Lisa May Thomas is a contemporary dance artist who has worked extensively with body-technology relations in performance-making practices
Mike O'Connor
Mike O'Connor is a computer scientist and PhD candidate at the University of Bristol, specializing in the fields of high performance computing, human computer interaction and scientific computation. He is currently working as part of Interactive Scientific, on dancroom Spectroscopy and Nano Simbox.Multi-award winning danceroom Spectroscopy (dS) is part video game, part science visualization, part art installation, and part social experiment. Fusing virtual reality, high-performance computing, and rigorous molecular physics, dS uses a mathematical transformation to transform people into energy avatars, and lets them wander through the atomic world, where they trigger sounds and images.There’s no limit on the number of “players”, and the more they cooperate, the more engrossing it becomes.
The project has been supported by a wide range of partners, including Arts Council England, the Royal Society of Chemistry, NVIDIA, Bristol University, EPRSC, the Pervasive Media Studio, etc.. dS launched in spring 2011. Its development was facilitated by a series of workshops and a large scale public exhibition in the Summer of 2011 at the Arnolfini (Bristol, UK), and its 2012 appearances include SxSW, Bristol Harbourside Festival, and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. dS gently coaxes large groups to pay attention to one another and their own collective time scales, moods, feelings, and spirituality.
Workshops with professional dancers played a key role in the development of danceroom Spectroscopy. Collaboration between a talented team of collaborators led to the development of dS into a dance performance piece called Hidden Fields, which premiered at the Arnolfini July 2012 and then subsequentially toured around the world including the Barbican, London; Z Space, San Francisco and ZKM, Karlsruhe. Hidden Fields is a high impact and accessible dance performance. Combining stunning visuals and self-composing generative soundscapes, it offers a glimpse into the beauty of our everyday movements, showing how we interact with the hidden energy fields surrounding us. Using the dS technology, dancers within the performance are transformed into energy fields, and control the behaviour of the otherwise invisible world surrounding us all.
More information about Hidden Fields is available at this link.
Watch the most recent Hidden Fields trailer here: https://vimeo.com/84932560
