Dr. Kessner
ASDC 2023
Students in Honors Computer Science Projects created a wide variety of engaging visual projections for the All School Dance Concert on Nov 30 / Dec 1.
The projections included a fully immersive experience in the Intimate Theatre called Dystopian Reflections: A World Unraveled in collaboration with dance teacher Holly Rothschild.
The installation was a collaboration between dancers, coders, and a sound designer. This immersive experience was inspired by the collaboration between dance pioneer Merce Cunningham, sound artist John Cage, and visual artist Robert Rauschenberg. The trio worked together in the late 1960s and early 70s in a collaborative process they called Chance Dance. Chance Dance was based around the concept that audience members could experience the performance as a whole or separate each individual element into its own experience. They also employed Chance as a construct out of a desire to explore the unexpected. A great deal of preparation and thought went into their process, however, elements of surprise and serendipity were included in their vocabulary. For our process in the Intimate Theatre, the coders and sound designer came up with a list of items they identified as dystopian. The coders fed the list into generative AI and asked for a poem. AI generated a poem and each group used it as their source material for their creative process.