Course info

Welcome to Biophysical Expression, Affect & Movement (BEAM)

Organizer: Dan Overholt

Lecturers: Dan Overholt (US/DK), Elizabeth Jochum (US/DK), Mark-David Hosale (US/CA),  Alan Macy (US), Grisha Coleman (US), and Marco Donnarumma (DE/IT).

ECTS: 3

Date/Time: 27, 28, 29 May 2024

Deadline: 06 May 2024

Max no. of participants: 20

Description: Biophysical Expression, Affect & Movement (BEAM) introduces students to cutting edge research trends and technology platforms that monitor and augment human performance across both the creative industries and health sectors.  The course offers hands-on workshop activities using advanced sensor technologies for physiological data, applied to real-time performance and augmented human capabilities with computation, including machine learning.

One platform to be explored is The Source by BioMECI with guest lecturers / developers Mark-David Hosale and Alan Macy. Design and integration with other platforms will also be explored, for example Bio-X sensors integrating machine-learning approaches to multimodal human-computer interaction. The course includes invited lectures & workshops with Grisha Coleman (Northeastern University, US) and Marco Donnarumma (IT/DE) addressing important topics on critical computing, AI, and ethics as they relate to movement motion capture data, prosthetics, and research. The course will have a strong focus on somatic practices (f.ex. Feldenkreis), and practical work on embodied interaction. This course has cross-over appeal for creative computing applications (audiovisual interaction, sound and music computing) and health/rehabilitation applications (tele-health, digital health solutions/monitoring). Programming experience, Design of HCI systems, interest in affective computing and real-time systems exploring the arts, such as music / dance & movement / visual forms of expression and/or interest in working with medical devices/sensing/health monitoring devices for training and rehabilitation.

The course will be hosted by the Sound & Music Computing research group and take place in both the Augmented Performance Lab  and the  Manufakturet labs. The course will be supported by researchers from the RELATE Research Laboratory for Art and Technology.

Prerequisites: Programming experience, Design of HCI systems, and/or Interest in affective computing and real-time systems exploring the arts, such as music / dance & movement / visual forms of expression and/or interest in working with medical devices/sensing/health monitoring devices for training and rehabilitation.

Important information concerning PhD courses: We have over some time experienced problems with no-show for both project and general courses. Therefore, the Doctoral School has decided to introduce a no-show fee of DKK 3.000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start. This can hopefully also provide new students a chance to register for courses during the year. We look forward to your registrations.

Required Reading

• Donnarumma, M. (2017). On Biophysical Music. In: Miranda, E. (eds) Guide to Unconventional Computing for Music. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49881-2_3 (pdf)
  
• Tanaka, A. (2019). Embodied Musical Interaction. In: Holland, S., Mudd, T., Wilkie-McKenna, K., McPherson, A., Wanderley, M. (eds) New Directions in Music and Human-Computer Interaction. Springer Series on Cultural Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92069-6_9 (pdf)
  

About the Instructors

Alan Macy (alanmacy.com) is the founder of the Santa Barbara Center of Art, Science and Technology (sbcast.org) and R&D Director, and cofounder of Biopac Systems (biopac.com).  His recent research explores ideas of sensory extension and autonomic regulation.  As an applied science artist, he specializes in the creation of cybernated art, interactive sculpture and environments.

Mark-David Hosale is a computational artist and composer. He is an Associate Professor and Chair of Computational Arts in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance, and Design, at York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has given lectures and taught internationally at institutions in Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, Canada, and the United States.  His work explores the boundaries between the virtual and the physical world. His practice is varied, spanning from performance (music and theatre) to public and gallery-based art. His interdisciplinary practice is often built on collaborations with architects, scientists, and other artists.

Grisha Coleman is a time-based artist working in areas of choreography and performance, experiential technology, and sound composition. Her practice and research explore relationships across physiological, technological, and ecological systems; human movement, our machines, and the places we inhabit. Her echo::system project is a springboard for re-imagining the environment and environmental justice through participatory installation, chorography and composition in live performance, media and computation. Her current project, The Movement Undercommons: Technology as Resistance | Future Archives, creates a repository of vernacular movement data, imagining a lexicon centered around identity and embodied cultural narrative. Her work has been generously supported through a Radcliffe Fellowship(21/22), The National Endowment for the Arts in Media grants, the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Project [MAP] Fund, Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, the Surdna Foundation Thriving Cultures Grant, the MacDowell Arts Colony, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Pioneer Works, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and Stanford University’s Mohr Visiting Artist Fellowship.She holds the position of Professor of Movement, Computation, and Digital Media in the in the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University, and an affiliation with the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and the Center for Race and Democracy at Arizona State University. Ms. Coleman is a New York City native.

Marco Donnarumma (DE) is an artist, performer, stage director and theorist weaving together contemporary performance, new media art and interactive computer music since the early 2000s. He manipulates bodies, creates choreographies, engineers machines and composes sounds, thus combining disciplines, media and technology into an oneiric, sensual, uncompromising aesthetics. He is internationally acknowledged for solo performances, stage productions and installations that defy genres, and where the body becomes a morphing language to speak critically of ritual, power and technology. The 7 Configurations cycle, his latest project, includes dancetheater productions, performances and robotic installations. By experimenting with the corporeal and psychological relationships of four human performers and six AI prostheses, the pieces attempt to dissect the conflicts between AI and body politics. In 2019, he co-founded the performance group Fronte Vacuowith Margherita Pevere and Andrea Familari. Their ongoing saga, Humane Methods, consists of hybrid live art events as social experiments, where human performers and audiences, non-human organisms and AI-driven machines expose the violence of today’s algorithmic societies. During the seasons 2022-24, they are artists in residence at Volkstheater Wien.

Dan Overholt is an Associate Professor at Aalborg University Copenhagen. His research interests include advanced technologies for interactive interfaces and novel audio signal processing algorithms, with a focus on new techniques for creating music and interactive sound. He is involved in the development of tangible interfaces and control strategies for processing human gestural inputs that allow interaction with a variety of audiovisual systems. Dan is also a composer, improviser, inventor and instrument builder who performs internationally with his new musical instruments and custom sound synthesis and processing algorithms. Dr. Overholt received a PhD in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a M.S. in Media Arts and Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has about 90+ peer reviewed publications and two patents (one provisional).

Elizabeth Jochum is an associate professor at 

the RELATE Research Laboratory for Art and Technology at Aalborg University. Her research uses the visual and performing arts as catalysts for re-thinking how we design and implement robots and other assistive technologies. From industrial robots to exoskeletons, Dr. Jochum’s work involves transdisciplinary collaboration in human-robot interaction, health, and engineering to develop creative, value-sensitive, and human-centered approaches to ensure the technologies we build address the real needs of people. She coordinated the European ABRA project on Artificial Biology, Robotics and Art, and the ImprovAIze project on machine learning, dance improvisation, and wearables for artistic practice and rehabilitation. She served on the steering committing of Aalborg University Robotics, the Arts, Health, and Humanities center at AAU. She was named one of the top 50 Women in Robotics by Robohub in 2021. 

Important information concerning PhD courses: We have over some time experienced problems with no-show for both project and general courses. It has now reached a point where we are forced to take action. Therefore, the Doctoral School has decided to introduce a no-show fee of DKK 3000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start. This can hopefully also provide new students a chance to register for courses during the year. We look forward to your registrations.