Dancing in the Streets
In January 2005, KMA Creative Technology Ltd approached performance academics
at the University of Leeds with an idea to get the people of York dancing
in the streets. The idea consisted of a projected light installation
that would encourage passers-by to ‘dance’, through physical
interaction with digitised projections. The installation spanned both
art and game aesthetics, engaging shoppers, clubbers and partygoers in danced
activities in the city streets. Working as consultants on the project, Sita
Popat and Scott Palmer collaborated with technologists from KMA to develop
this idea into a performed outcome.
Dancing in the Streets was a kinetic light sculpture, a piece
of interactive urban scenography. Infrared cameras sensed heat from participant’s
bodies, triggering digital images projected from above onto the pavement.
Images included butterflies, footprints, abstract shapes, lines and ribbons,
and a game of ‘football’ using balls of light. The project
sought authentically interactive processes in both the design of the installation
and the participants’ experiences of it. Notions of play heavily
influenced the way in which we worked and the product that emerged. We
were asking city inhabitants to engage with the interactive artwork in
a location that was neither institutionally associated with art nor even
specifically identified as housing an artwork. The lure of the dark yard
with occasional circling lights brought the casual passer-by into the role
of participant in the game-related context of ‘learning’ what
it was and exploring how the ‘rules’ of engagement worked.
As the participant discovered the rules, the aesthetic dimension became
apparent through the interaction between physical movement and digital
projection response.
Dancing in the Streets was commissioned by York City Council as
part of the York Renaissance Project in 2005.
