Origin8 (2017)

Origin8 was an interactive dance/media piece which utilized MYO sensing technology. This was a collaboration with Van Nort (music), Sinclair (visuals) and the National Ballet School of Canada. The work of the composer focused on creating interactive music composition that was driven by the 21 dancers (hailing from 21 different countries) in collaboration with machine learning – a kind of biosensing and machine co-creation. The piece was created for the quadrennial Assembleé Internationale festival which brings together top Ballet schools and their select students internationally. In this work, the interactive music applied machine learning to the task of learning mappings between MYO sensing and sonic output. As part of the interactive musical composition, the overall musical structure emerged from the actions and movements of the dancers, so that each of the performances had an overarching form but differed in their details. There are four sections, and the (choreographic and musical) content from sections 1-3 are combined and layered in section 4.

Credits: Shaun Amyot (choreography) Don Sinclair (interactive visuals) Doug Van Nort (interactive music composition).

The below documentation is from a test run with NBS dancers, leading up to the performance.

Further reading:  Van Nort, D. “Gestural Metaphor and Emergent Human/Machine Agency in Two Contrasting Interactive Dance/Music Pieces”. Proceedings of the 2020 International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA), 2020.