Northern Lights Ceilidh:playful digital interventions in a Scottish tradition

Northern Lights Ceilidh (NLC) was a one-off event which added a modern twist to traditional Scottish dancing, music and performance and added a digital infusion of technology mediated interactions to proceedings. The event marked the end of an international games competition hosted in Dundee each year, Dare to be Digital (DtbD) inviting the participants in the games competition and the general public to attend. In total 208 people attended NLC, 75 of whom were participants in DtbD.It is not possible to determine how many of the participants were external to Abertay University. However, 50% of respondents to a survey relating to NLC1 (the survey was completed by 12% of the total attendees) cited they found out about the event through sources external to Dare to be Digital which could suggest that there were attendees who had no link to Dare to be Digital and Abertay University.The Ceilidh was part funded by the year of Homecoming Scotland, and thus sought to weave historical Scottish traditions with new traditions in Scotland (i.e. weaving ceilidh, poetry and dance with new forms of design including 3D printed jewellery and interactive technology). NLC was held in a high-tech marquee in Dundee City Square on the 8th of August 2014. The marquee had been used for four days as the site of the DtbD games showcase and was transformed into a dance hall for the event.NLC aimed to, through digital mediation, provide participants with agency commonly associated with digital media. Participants were able to contribute to the creation of a digital aesthetic which was layered upon the physical ceilidh experience through projection and real-time manipulation of live video feeds. The participants could alter and manipulate their movement to change what happened on screen, co-creating not only the dance elements of the ceilidh but also the digital spectacle.The ceilidh was designed Lynn Parker, and Clare Brennan. Ryan Locke provided imagery which was used as the setting for digital animation production by Lynn Parker. A jeweller, Elizabeth Armour, was commissioned to create custom jewellery for the event, a 3D printed brooch and two digital artists, Stuart MacBean and Yana Hristova were commissioned to create an animated ‘peep’ board with which attendees were encouraged to take photographs. During the event itself, the band Whiskey Kiss called the dances and provided the music whilst a performer recited poetry to open the event. Quartic Llama, an interactive media company were commissioned to create a digital app to promote the event, titled Lightstream (Quartic Llama, 2014).Lynn Parker led the design of interactive media interventions into the event, the creation of animation sequences and live visuals during the event, developed branding for the event, carried out client facing work with Quartic Llama and collaborated with her colleagues in the facilitation and organisation of the event.Northern Lights Ceilidh as practice-led-research work offers insight into design approaches to support and facilitate social interaction. The social nature of the ceilidh event provides a template for community creation and the layering of digital intervention provides a basis from which the mediation of interaction through both human and technology mediated play can be evaluated.The addition of a digital layer to the ceilidh setting provides an extra level of participation in the event, where the participants can not only make the event come to life through participating in the dances but also in their manipulation of their movement to shape the digital visualisations on screen. The experience of the participants of both the ceilidh setting and of digital mediation provides valuable underpinning for the evaluation of these factors through practice-led-research

Exploring the Digital Music Instrument Trombosonic with Extreme Users and at a Participatory Performance

We introduce the “Trombosonic” as a new digital music instrument inspired by the slide trombone. An ultrasonic sensor combined with a red laser allows the performer to play the instrument using similar movements to playing a trombone to change the pitch, despite the absence of a physical slider, by moving one hand back and forth. Additional sensors enhance the potential for musical expression by movement of the whole interface and by using the breath. We identify and discuss a variety of design issues arising from the Trombosonic. Due to its compact size and the lack of a slider, the Trombosonic can be played in many different ways. In order to explore varied potential uses of the Trombosonic, we carried out a series of informal evaluations. These included experts in new musical instruments, an older user, a younger user, an interaction design expert, and the audience at an experimental concert with audience participation. Future work is also discussed. Further technical development might include a built-in microphone to use the human voice and an expansion of the synthesiser’s features

A Wireless Future: performance art, interaction and the brain-computer interfaces

Although the use of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) in the arts originates in the 1960s, there is a limited number of known applications in the context of real-time audio-visual and mixed-media performances and accordingly the knowledge base of this area has not been developed sufficiently. Among the reasons are the difficulties and the unknown parameters involved in the design and implementation of the BCIs. However today, with the dissemination of the new wireless devices, the field is rapidly growing and changing. In this frame, we examine a selection of representative works and artists, in comparison to the current scientific evidence. We identify important performative and neuroscientific aspects, issues and challenges. A model of possible interactions between the performers and the audience is discussed and future trends regarding liveness and interconnectivity are suggested

MINDtouch embodied ephemeral transference: Mobile media performance research

This is the post-print version of the final published article that is available from the link below. Copyright @ Intellect Ltd 2011.The aim of the author's media art research has been to uncover any new understandings of the sensations of liveness and presence that may emerge in participatory networked performance, using mobile phones and physiological wearable devices. To practically investigate these concepts, a mobile media performance series was created, called MINDtouch. The MINDtouch project proposed that the mobile videophone become a new way to communicate non-verbally, visually and sensually across space. It explored notions of ephemeral transference, distance collaboration and participant as performer to study presence and liveness emerging from the use of wireless mobile technologies within real-time, mobile performance contexts. Through participation by in-person and remote interactors, creating mobile video-streamed mixes, the project interweaves and embodies a daisy chain of technologies through the network space. As part of a practice-based Ph.D. research conducted at the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute at the University of East London, MINDtouch has been under the direction of Professor Lizbeth Goodman and sponsored by BBC R&D. The aim of this article is to discuss the project research, conducted and recently completed for submission, in terms of the technical and aesthetic developments from 2008 to present, as well as the final phase of staging the events from July 2009 to February 2010. This piece builds on the article (Baker 2008) which focused on the outcomes of phase 1 of the research project and initial developments in phase 2. The outcomes from phase 2 and 3 of the project are discussed in this article

Media events and cosmopolitan fandom:"Playful nationalism' in the Eurovision Song Contest

Academic literature on media events is increasingly concerned with their global dimensions and the applicability of Dayan and Katz's (1992) theoretical concept in a post-national context. This paper contributes to this debate by exploring the Eurovision Song Contest as a global media event. In particular, we employ a perspective from 'inside the media event', drawing upon empirical material collected during the 2014 Eurovision final in Copenhagen and focusing on the experiences of fans attending the contest. We argue that the ESC as a media event is experienced by its fans as a cosmopolitan space, open and diverse, whereas national belonging is expressed in a playful way tied to the overall visual aesthetics of the contest. However, the bounded and narrow character of participation render this cosmopolitan space rather limited

A three person poncho and a set of maracas:designing Ola De La Vida, a co-located social play computer game

Events that bring people together to play video games as a social experience are growing in popularity across the western world. Amongst these events are ‘play parties,’ temporary social play environments which create unique shared play experiences for attendees unlike anything they could experience elsewhere. This paper explores co-located play experience design and proposes that social play games can lead to the formation of temporary play communities. These communities may last for a single gameplay session, for a whole event, or beyond the event. The paper analyses games designed or enhanced by social play contexts and evaluates a social play game, Ola de la Vida. The research findings suggest that social play games can foster community through the design of game play within the game itself, through curation which enhances their social potential, and through design for ‘semi-spectatorship’, which blurs the boundaries between player and spectator thus widening the game’s magic circle