The Dance.Draw project was an interdisciplinary research project which combined computer science and dance to investigate how dance movements could be augmented with real-time technology. The project was funding by a National Science Foundation CreativeIT grant. 

National Science Foundation CreativeIT Award: Dance.Draw: Embodiment as Input for Collaborative, Creative Expression, 2009-2012. PI: Celine Latulipe, Co-PIs: David Wilson and Sybil Huskey. $762,372.

The project had three main investigative/exploratory research goals:

1. Real-time Performer Sensing,
2. IT Collaboration Support for Performing Arts, and
3. Real-time Audience Engagement.

Project History

The Dance.Draw project was conceived by Celine Latulipe and Sybil Huskey at UNC Charlotte during an interdisciplinary ‘new media’ meeting hosting by Architecture Professor Eric Sauda. Latulipe demonstrated a multi-person, mult-handed drawing program in which each person used two USB mice to draw symmetric vector shapes on a canvas. Huskey, who was in attendance, asked if Latulipe could ‘strap the mice to my dancer’s legs’, and the project idea was born (with an obvious immediate move to wireless mice). Latulipe and Huskey experimented and developed a trial dance with interactive videos projected behind the dancers: abstract visuals mapped to dancer motion. They were invited to stage this dance at the UNC Charlotte United Way fundraising campaign kickoff event by Dr. Bill Ribarsky, who was Chair of the Computer Science Department and in charge of the campus giving campaign in Fall 2007.  After this first successful demo performance, Ribarsky invited Latulipe and Huskey to produce the dance again for the inaugural Visualization in the World Symposium, held in Charlotte in 2008. After that performance, David Wilson joined the project as a technology collaborator, and the trio of Latulipe, Huskey and Wilson applied for NSF funding through the CreativeIT program.

Performances

• •  “A Mischief of Mus musculus” Choreographed by Sybil Huskey, technology by Celine Latulipe. Restaging with minor modifications to interactive visualizations. Project direction by Dance.Draw PIs Celine Latulipe, David Wilson and Sybil Huskey. 2013.
  • “Bodies/Antibodies” Choreographed by Melissa Word, technology by David Wilson. Restaging with different sensing technology. Project direction by Dance.Draw PIs Celine Latulipe, David Wilson and Sybil Huskey. 2012.
  • “Giselle” Choreographed by David Ingram (guest choreographer from North Carolina Dance Theater), production assistance by Melissa Word, technology by Berto Gonzalez. Completely new production, with choreography and technology developed in parallel. Project direction by Dance.Draw PIs Celine Latulipe, David Wilson and Sybil Huskey. 2012.
  • Celine Latulipe, Sybil Huskey, Melissa Word, David Wilson, Nathan Nifong, Berto Gonzalez, Adam Harris. “SoundPainter.” Accepted for publication and performance, ACM Creativity & Cognition 2011. (2 pages, 39% acceptance rate for the art program)
  • Celine Latulipe, Sybil Huskey, Melissa Word, David Wilson, Nathan Nifong, Berto Gonzalez, Adam Harris. “SoundPainter” Workshop. Accepted for performance and lecture at the Congress on Research in Dance, CORD-SEM 2011: Moving Music / Sounding Dance: Intersections, Disconnections, and Alignments between Dance and Music, October 2011.
  • Celine Latulipe, David Wilson, Sybil Huskey, Melissa Word, Berto Gonzalez, Nathan Nifong. “The Angled Angels Assembly.” Dance Performance, UNC Charlotte Belk Theatre, April 2011.
  • Celine Latulipe, David Wilson, Sybil Huskey, Melissa Word, Berto Gonzalez, Nathan Nifong. “An Instance Of…” Dance Performance, UNC Charlotte Belk Theatre, October 2010.
  • Celine Latulipe, David Wilson, Sybil Huskey, Melissa Word. “Informal Works.” Dance Performance and Presentation, UNC Charlotte Informal Theatre, August 2009.
  • Celine Latulipe, David Wilson, Sybil Huskey, Melissa Word, Nathan Nifong and Berto Gonzalez. “Bodies/Antibodies.” Dance Performance, ACM CHI Conference Media Showcase, Altanta, April 2009 and UNC Charlotte Informal Theatre, April 2009.
  • Celine Latulipe, David Wilson, Sybil Huskey, Mike Wirth and Berto Gonzalez. “Whispering to Ophiucus.” Dance Performance, UNC Charlotte Belk Theatre, November 2009.
  • Celine Latulipe, David Wilson, Sybil Huskey and Mike Wirth. “A Mischief of Mus musculus.” Dance Performance, UNC Charlotte Belk Theatre, November 2008.
  • Celine Latulipe and Sybil Huskey. “Exquisite Interaction.” Dance Performance. Visualization in the World Symposium, April 2008, UNC Charlotte.

Publications

Publications directly stemming from the project:

• Sybil Huskey, Celine Latulipe, Danielle Lottridge and Erin Cherry. Post-Production Focus Groups in Dance: A Case Study and Protocol. In Journal of Dance Education,18:2, 47-54, 2018. DOI: 10.1080/15290824.2017.1326051.
• Celine Latulipe, Berto Gonzalez, Melissa Word, Sybil Huskey and David Wilson. Moderate Recursion: A Digital Artifact of Interactive Dance. In Interactivity, Game Creation, Design, Learning, and Innovation (pp. 48-57). Springer, Cham.
• Celine Latulipe. 2013. The value of research in creativity and the arts. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Creativity & Cognition (C&C ’13), Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Steven Dow, Jack Ox, Steve Smith, Kazushi Nishimoto, and Chek Tien Tan (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1-10.
• Berto Gonzalez, Erin Carroll, and Celine Latulipe. 2012. Dance-inspired technology, technology-inspired dance. In Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design (NordiCHI ’12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 398-407.
• Erin A. Carroll, Danielle Lottridge, Celine Latulipe, Vikash Singh, and Melissa Word. Bodies in critique: a technological intervention in the dance production process. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ’12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 705-714, 2012.
• Vikash Singh, Celine Latulipe, Erin Carroll and Danielle Lottridge. The Choreographers Notebook A video annotation system for dancers and choreographers. In ACM Creativity & Cognition 2011. ACM, 197-206, 2011. Nominated for an Emma Award for Best Contribution to Creative Communication.
• Celine Latulipe, David Wilson, Sybil Huskey, Berto Gonzalez and Melissa Word. Temporal Integration of Interactive Technology in Dance: Creative Process Impacts. In ACM Creativity & Cognition 2011. ACM, 107-116, 2011.
• Celine Latulipe, Erin Carroll, and Danielle Lottridge. Evaluating longitudinal projects combining technology with temporal arts. In ACM CHI 2011 Proceedings, pages 1835-­‐1844, 2011. (Acceptance Rate: 26%)
• Celine Latulipe, Erin Carroll, and Danielle Lottridge. Love, Hate, Arousal and Engagement: Exploring the measurement and use of audience engagement data in the performing arts. In ACM CHI 2011 Proceedings, pages 1845-­‐1854, 2011. (Acceptance Rate: 26%)

Publications not directly related to the project but stemming from technologies/ideas developed during the project:

• Erin Carroll and Celine Latulipe. Quantifying the Creativity Support of Digital Tools through the Creativity Support Index. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 21, 4, Article 21 (June 2014).
• Jinyue Xia, Vikash Singh, David Wilson and Celine Latulipe. 2014. Exploring the Design Space of Multiple Video Interaction. In Proceedings of NordiCHI 2014, 276-285.
• Vikash Singh, Sarah Abdellahi, Mary Lou Maher, and Celine Latulipe. The Video Collaboratory as a Learning Environment. In SIGCSE ’16 Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2016, pp. 352-357.

Follow-on Funding

National Science Foundation I-Corps Team: Commercialization of Video Collaboratory, 2014-2015. PI: Celine Latulipe, Co-PIs: David Wilson, Sybil Huskey, Devin Collins, Vikash Singh. $50,000.

National Science Foundation PFI: AIR-TT: Video Collaboratory: A Platform for Active Viewing and Collaboration with Video Data, 2015-2016. PI: David Wilson, CO-PIs: Celine Latulipe, Sybil Huskey, Devin Collins.  $199,917.

Patent

Patent Abstract: A video annotation interface includes a video pane configured to display a video, a video timeline bar including a video play-­head indicating a current point of the video which is being played, a segment timeline bar including initial and final handles configured to define a segment of the video for playing, and a plurality of color-coded comment markers displayed in connection with the video timeline bar. Each of the comment markers is associated with a frame or segment of the video and corresponds to one or more annotations for that frame or segment made by one of a plurality of users. Each of the users can make annotations and view annotations made by other users. The annotations can include annotations corresponding to a plurality of modalities, including text, drawing, video, and audio modalities.

Patent Title: Multi-­Modal Collaborative Web-­Based Video Annotation System

Patent Number: 13/627,899

Country: USA