• Yacov Sharir
• Julio Bermudez

General Description.
This 2 hr long hands-on workshop will introduce two unique technologies produced through interdisciplinary research in the past few years: the cyberPRINT and the Wearable Computer Suit. These two devices, already used successfully in performance, may have important impacts in the way live art projects are conceived, deployed, and experienced in the future. In addition, experiences from the collaboration between art, science and technology necessary to develop and produce the work offer lessons to anybody interested in pursuing multidisciplinary and technology based work.


Objectives
In this computer mediated research and artwork we seek to span the spectrum from choreography, architectural design and technology to the transdisciplinary, where issues of corporality, being, spatiality, and temporality are examined through the use of electronic devices connected to the body. The objective is to inquire how wearable electronic and sensory devices affect the body, sensations, emotions, and waking consciousness while in performance, both as performers and audience. As we attempt as performers/creators to produce real time images/music and control all aspects of performance by digital prostheses, we also look at how the blurring boundaries between the virtual self (projected visual world, sound production, cyber-human) and the physical performer (human) affect each other in performance. Questions that arise include: what is selfhood and where is it located? How does representation affects identity —our very image of who we are? What are the worlds that open to us when we consider the use of interactive technologies, virtual environments, and wearable computers/devices in performance? What are the artistic, intellectual, visceral, and emotional issues which can be addressed using the opportunities of these technologies? What new understandings and ideas come out of the inter and trans-disciplinary collaborations between art, science and technology giving birth and supporting these new type of art performances?


About the cyberPRINT
The cyberPRINT is a real time Virtual Reality (VR) environment that totally surrounds a dancer during performance. This electronic architectural and musical bio-feedback system is driven by physiologic data drawn from the performer via special sensors attached to her body and transmitted wirelessly to computers which, in turn, generate and project a especially designed and programmed 3D/music world in real time. The resulting "architecture of being" offers multiple expressive choices as its multidimensional character undergoes continuous change. Although the use of the body to electronically drive media events is not new, most of the existing works have paid little or no attention to the potential of interactive 3D and aural virtual environments. Nor have they been so technologically advanced, interdisciplinary involved, or spatially focused as the cyberPRINT. The cyberPRINT has been nationally and internationally performed with success since May 2000. For more information, visit www.arch.utah.edu/cyberprint

About Wearable Computing
The wearable computer suit is more than just a wristwatch or regular eyeglasses: it has the full functionality of a computer system but in addition to being a fully featured digital engine, it is also inextricably intertwined with the performer as the wearer. This is what sets this particular wearable electronic suit apart from other wearable devices. Additionally, the system is reconfigurable and is formally defined in terms of its three basic modes of operation and its six fundamental attributes. It is a device that is subsumed into the performer's personal space as the user, and controlled by herself while she has both operational and interactive constancy. It is always on (if needed) and always accessible for performative events. This wearable computer device, also the product of an interdisciplinary engagement of art, science and technology, has been in performance during the past 3 years with good success.

For more information, visit www.futurephysical.org/pages/content/wearable/wearme/info_processdemo_071202_dl_yacov.htm

Workshop Plan
The workshop will be broken down as follows.

First Part:

(one hour long) presentation of the cyberPRINT and the Wearable Computer Suit providing theoretical, artistic, and technological explanations (30 minutes), followed up by a 10 minute live demonstration of each and a 10 minute Q&A at the end.

Intermission:

(15 minutes)

Second Part:

(one hour long) open try-out of the devices by the participants with assistance by workshop leaders. Final open discussion among the attendants closes the workshop.