All posts by nchandol

The Other

ass

The Other

Felt presence, a sensation that ‘‘someone is there’’, is an integral part of our everyday experience. It can manifest itself in a variety of forms ranging from most subtle fleeting impressions to intense hallucinations of demonic assault or visions of the divine. Felt presence phenomenon outside of the context of neurological disorders is largely neglected and not well understood by con- temporary science. This project focuses on the experiential and expressive qualities of the phenomenon and attempts to bring forth the complexity and the richness of possibilities for inter- and intrasubjective awareness represented by these experiences. Are these simply misperceptions and hallucinations heightened and enforced by the mystical or superstitious mind? Or are these entities projections of our own ‘‘selves’’, elements of self-estrangement? How are such experiences shaping our understanding of ourselves and of others? And finally, what is the interplay between intersubjective, private experiences and private or public spaces of dwelling?

The Other experimental space symbolizes the dwelling place where virtual hosts are to be indirectly encountered (Fig. 1). In the corner of the laboratory, the two walls were made of semi-translucent fabric (see Fig. 2) which in the darkness gave it a particular glowing quality. When the participant passed through a small corridor in front of the laboratory space (see ‘Hallway’ on Fig. 1) and alone looked for the ‘‘orange armchair in the room’’ (according to the only instruction given) in the unlit and almost empty laboratory space, they would perceive the room as the lighthouse and the only possible shelter in the space. Inside, it had an appearance of the living room, carefully domesticated in contrast to the sterile and office-like space of the laboratory and the rest of the building (see Fig. 3). The armchair and softly dimmed light of the wood-covered statuesque table lamp formed the center of the space cho- sen for participants to sit down for the experiment. The interior of the room seemed ordinary at first glance: a TV set playing a ballet with muted sound, a cabinet, and shelves. Hidden was the allusion to the short spontaneous nap which commonly results in sleep paralysis incidents and sitting in the armchair in front of flashing TV with the sound muted is often what one remembers last before falling asleep.

The decorative abundance of the space was far from ordinary: statuettes, fantastic masks, and above all: several dozen framed portraits. Obsessively suggesting self and other in the Freudian and Lacanian sense (see Solomonova, this issue), the portraits by artists from different epochs and schools, stressed the grotesqueness of the space: its simultaneously horrifying and comic aspect. What first appears as exaggerated and comic may not look the same after a few minutes. The experience of being surrounded by gazes from everywhere, the flickering of the TV, hearing quiet sounds of wind chimes and beads drifting in the air, and not being able to apprehend the space in its wholeness, after a short while can become overwhelming to the extent of being almost paralyzing. In this effect, another hidden reference to sleep paralysis again shows through.

These are some descriptions of the space by participants: ‘‘I had a feeling that I was a child at home in front of a TV, alone, and I’m waiting for my parents to come home, and I’m afraid that someone is hiding in the room’’; ‘‘An old house, maybe a house with ghosts (like a grand-parents’ house). But very comfortable.’’; ‘‘Creepy old man’s room’’; ‘‘That was a very creepy experience. As soon as I sat down I wanted to leave. The desire to leave the room grew more and more intense throughout the experience. The ‘seg- ments’ felt extremely long. I had to do some breathing to remain calm. The painting on the top left of the television was really creepy and I found it hard not to look at it. That painting alone would give me nightmare’’; ‘‘I felt as if I was in a stranger’s living room, in a different era’’; ‘‘a weird dream’’.

As much as The Other is an experiment in both psychological research and new media technologies, it is equally unconventional for both. It seems that our experiment did not result in the expected collaboration with respect to both fields of research but rather established its own separate ground. In scientific experiments, one normally extracts a desired phenomenon, limits the scope and intensity of other possible influences and then observes it in an almost sterile, controlled manner. In contrast, media- rich installations develop a mix of various experiences simultaneously and perhaps even create new ones. In such environment, empiricism of the scientific experiment with volatile, vaguely defined phenomenon of felt presence is questionable. Even to the evolving field of new media, flourishing around fetishizing the new medium, our non- technocentric approach almost grotesque to the medium is somewhat peripheral. Such a method might not produce a definite scientific knowledge; however, it allows us to tackle the ethereal materiality of the phenomenon which, in the case of felt presence, might be the only way of approaching it.

TECHNIQUE / SOFTWARE

Publications:

AI & Soc (2011) 26:171–178 DOI 10.1007/s00146-010-0299-x
Felt presence: the uncanny encounters with the numinous Other
Elizaveta Solomonova • Elena Frantova • Tore Nielsen
AI & Soc (2011) 26:179–186 DOI 10.1007/s00146-010-0300-8
Extra-personal awareness through the media-rich environment
Elena Frantova • Elizaveta Solomonova • Timothy Sutton
Elena Frantova (&) Department of Computer Science, Topological Media Lab, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada e-mail: elena.frantova@gmail.com
Elizabeta Solomonova Psychology Department, Dream and Nightmare Laboratory, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada e-mail: liza.solomonova@gmail.com
Tim Sutton Topological Media Lab, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada e-mail: timsutton@fastmail.com

TGarden

t

TGarden

TGarden is an investigation of how people make sense of and navigate in rich and dynamically evolving media spaces. Given the rise of ubiquitous computing and realtime media synthesis, we’re anticipating the need for coherent yet supple ways for designers to create such complex interactive media spaces and for people to inhabit them.

In a TGarden space, visitors wearing instrumented clothing creates and modulate video and sound based on their gesture and movement. In effect, visitors write video and sound by their movement.

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For 2001-2002, we concentrated on using wireless sensors on the body to track gesture. We built a state evolution system that responds continuously to sensor statistics, synthesizes and marshalls media in realtime.

In TGarden spaces, we use a combination of costumes outfitted with sensors, video tracking, realtime sound and video processing, and gestural pattern tracking.

Links:Research concerns include the design of continuously varying narrative spaces, how people improvise meaningful gesture, and factors of tangibility and coherence such as latency, temporal (musical) texture and rhythm. Our goal is to come up principles of design that should be useful for creating and inhabiting responsive media spaces. This research thread parallels a series of international productions in Europe and the United States.

SIGGRAPH2000 – New Orleans

http://sponge.org

http://www.f0.am/tgarden

TGarden[TM1]

TGarden is a responsive environment, inspired by calligraphy and scrying. In TGarden, players’ gestures are transformed into generative computer graphics and digital soundscapes, leaving marks and traces in much the same way as a calligrapher would with brushes and ink. When visitors approach the TGarden, they choose from a range of costumes, designed to encourage particular kinds of movement. Light and voluminous for space-filling, fast movements; tight and restrictive for small, fine gestures; heavy and transparent for slow, meditative actions. In intimate dressing chambres, in addition to the costumes, the players are equipped with accelerometers, sensors able to detect changes in speed and tilt of the movement, an optical device for tracking the players’ position and direction in the space, as well as a small wearable transmitter that communicates with the software systems “back-stage.”

Once players enter the space, they are left alone to explore the connections between their bodies and the environment. A swiping motion could send an organic-looking, digital shadow smearing across the floor; walking across the room could sound like swimming with a swarm of invisible, but musical creatures. The sonic and visual media are layered in textures and meanings, allowing for various styles and interpretations. Even though simple interactions are easily learned, it takes time to get acquainted with the environment’s own nature. As an apprentice calligrapher must learn to find a balance between the flow of ink, the pressure of the brush and the speed of his gesture, a player in TGarden slowly learns to write, scratch and dig through the media space, to be able to play it as an instrument…

Together with Sponge, we designed and developed several installations over a two-year period between 2000 and 2001, testing them with audiences across Europe and North America.

[TM1]Information taken from: http://fo.am/tgarden/

Tabletap

gestural

Tabletap

A performance choreographed around a chef and sonified objects: fruit, vegetables, meat, knives, pots and pans, cutting board and table.

Cooking*, the most ancient art of transmutation, has become over a quarter of a million years an unremarkable, domestic practice. But in this everyday practice, things perish, transform, nourish other things. Enchanting the fibers, meats, wood and metal with sound and painterly light, we stage a performance made from the moves(gestures) of cooking, scripted from the recipes of cuisine both high and humble…

A performance choreographed around a chef and sonified objects: fruit, vegetables, meat, knives, pots and pans, cutting board and table.

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Cooking*, the most ancient art of transmutation, has become over a quarter of a million years an unremarkable, domestic practice. But in this everyday practice, things perish, transform, nourish other things. Enchanting the fibers, meats, wood and metal with sound and painterly light, we stage a performance made from the moves(gestures) of cooking, scripted from the recipes of cuisine both high and humble. Panning features virtuosic chefs who are also movement artists, such as Tony Chong.

Within our responsive scenography system, every cooking process is transformed into an immersive multimedia environment and performance; A multi-sensory experience composed of scent(smell), light, video, sound, movement, and objects. Every process is experienced across many senses at once. The sizzling sound of hot oil, and the mouthwatering aroma of onion and garlic hits the audience within an audio-visual thunderstorm. At the very end, the audience is invited to taste a sample of the dish within the accumulated sonic environment.

The acoustic state evolves via transmutations of sound, light and image in an amalgam of, not abstract data, but substances like wood, fire, water, earth, smoke, food, and movement. Panning allows the performers modulate these transmutations with their fingers and ears and bodies – the transmutation of movement into sound, chemical reaction into sound, and sound into light and image.

Panning is the first part in a series of performances exploring how everyday gestures/events could become charged with symbolic intensity.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/51474504[/vimeo]

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/42057497[/vimeo]

Materials:

Self contained responsive kitchen set embedded into our portable table8.1 speaker system, projectors, food

Sebald Puppet Theatre

Sebald Puppet Theatre

Performed by Mark Sussman , Roberto Rossi, Sarah Chênevert-Beaudoin, Gabe Levine, & Ayesha Hameed
original performances created by Mark Sussman , Roberto Rossi, Stephen Kaplin, & Jenny Romaine


Directed & designed by Mark Sussman & Roberto Rossi
text adapted from “After Nature,” by W.G. Sebald


. A tabletop show, with live and pre-recorded video. A production of Great Small Works, NYC, with the support of the Topological Media Lab, Concordia University; thanks for advice and suggestions to Sha Xin Wei, Michael Montanaro, and Robert Reid.

www.greatsmallworks.org

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REMEDIOS’ TERRARIUM

experimental_philo

REMEDIOS’ TERRARIUM

Fine Arts Gallery  – March 19 – April 4, 2008

Certainly in the course of making an event, we produce objects and media and, most importantly, some latent behavior, but all as elements conditioning an event. Its continuously evolving responsive environment changes weather and behavior according to the hour and the day, and according to what’s happening inside or outside its porous boundaries. We arrange our objects in a physical space to leverage the unbounded corporeal intuition that visitors bring with them, so the Remedios Terrarium is an architectural experiment as well as an event.

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The Remedios Terrarium is also a set of conversations, articulated in things and events. It’s a philosophical investigation carried out in the form of material experiments made of experimental modes of matter. We create things, media instruments, and kinetic plants, “spoken” from diverse perspectives. We can be noisy, divergent, and even contentious, but making and exhibiting Remedios Terrarium —the 100 day long event — requires us to create a common boundary object together.

As you walk about the Gallery, you’ll encounter individual and collective echoes of questions and speculations reaching ten years back: How can we make compelling events without convention? What makes some events dead and others live? What is a gesture when we do not assume bodies a priori? How do conventions and bodies come into being or dissolve in the continuously flowing world?

TECHNIQUES and CONSTRUCTION

Topological Media Lab’s media choreography system: camera-based tracking, state engines, realtime gestural sound, realtime calligraphic video. Sculpture using rapid-prototyped, laser cut plastic, water, plants. Set construction.

PEOPLE

Remedios’ Terrarium features works by affiliates of the Topological Media Lab from Special Individualized Programs, Humanities PhD Program, MFA Studio Arts program, Design Computation Arts, Computer Science, Contemporary Dance, Electroacoustics, Theatre, and the University of Manitoba / Department of Architecture, and Pneuma.

Artistic Direction : Sha Xin Wei
Black Box Sound : Timothy Sutton
Camera Tracking : Jean-Sébastien Rousseau
Cells Concept & Design: Pneuma: Patrick Harrop & Peter Hasdell
Cells Design & Production – Winnipeg : Gregory Rubin, Candace Fempel,Evan Marnoch, Dirk Blouw
Cells Design & Production– Montreal : JC Nesci, Jean-Sébastien Rousseau
Documentation (Photo) : Morgan Sutherland,David Jhave Johnston,Emmanuel Thivierge
Documentation (Video) : Desh Fernando, Ludwig Manahan
Dynamic Lighting : Harry Smoak
Glass Cones : Lenka Novak
Graphics Programming : Michael Fortin
Networking : Harry Smoak, Jean-Sébastien Rousseau,Michael Fortin
Plant Systems : Flower Lunn
Promotion : Lynn Beavis, Josée-Anne Drolet, JC Nesci
Print Design : JC Nesci, Valérie Lamontagne,Josée-Anne Drolet
Project & Event Coordination : Josée-Anne Drolet
Real-Time Calligraphic Video : Jean-Sébastien Rousseau
Roundtable Event Production: Josée-Anne Drolet
Roundtable Documentation : Harry Smoak, Tim Sutton, David Jhave Johnston
Sebald Puppet TheatreConcept & Design : Mark Sussman, Ayesha Hameed
Sensate Tapestry : Marguerite Bromley, XS Labs
Sensate Tapestry Electronics : Elliot Sinyor
Sensate Tapestry Sound: Doug van Nort, Elliot Sinyor
Sound Field : Timothy Sutton
State Composition : Sha Xin Wei
State Engine : Emmanuel Thivierge,Morgan Sutherland (Yon Visell)
Suitcase : Elena Frantova
Technical Design & Consultation: Harry Smoak
Touch2 Calligraphic Video : Jae Ok Lee, Jean-Sébastien Rousseau
Touch2 Choreography : Soo-Yeon Cho
Touch2 Dancers : Soo-Yeon Cho, Kiani del Valle
Touch2 Set Construction : Josée-Anne Drolet, Jae Ok Lee,Marine Antony, Jerome Delapierre
Touch2 Set & Costume Design : Josée-Anne Drolet, Jae Ok Lee
Touch2 Sound : Timothy Sutton
Touch Video : Desh Fernando, Touch Creators
Vernissage Sub-Event Design : David Jhave Johnston
Vitrine Display & Design : Flower Lunn, Elena Frantova, Nadia Frantova, Jean-Sébastien Rousseau,JC Nesci
Vitrine Design Technical Assistance : Ludwig Manahan
Web Design & Promotion : Elena Frantova, David Jhave Johnston

REFERENCES

http://topologicalmedialab.net/remediosterrarium/

Flickr Photo Set

Pneus Champ Libre

architecture

Pneus Champ Libre

Pneu, the air- or fluid-filled cell structures in the living tissue of plants, embody a plant’s symbiotic relationship to its milieu. Plant cells change their pressure to give stiffness or flexibility to a branch as the wind changes, and simultaneously conduct fluid nutrients from the plant’s roots to its leaves.

Our installation, Pneus, exists in a world of second nature, a world made by human hands but governed also by electricity and gravity. Its roots extend into the subterranean world of infrastructure, and its canopy drinks sunlight.

By suspending Pneus off the ground, overhead, we up-end the earth to expose its roots, and let those who walk underneath the installation experience the rhythms Pneus extracts from the street and the building as dappled light and shadow, much like dappled shade on the forest floor.

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Pneus also works on the membrane between a building and its street. In this age of « intelligent » technology, opening a window is no longer an innocent act, so we open a building symbolically and informatically. Like an air-plant, Pneus adheres lightly to its host, drawing rhythms from the heart of the building and releasing them into the exterior as a kind of music.

Pneuma’s capillaries contain eyes that see not identities like « intruder » or « employee » but only elementary things: light and dark, the chiaroscuro of sun and cloud, or a pedestrian’s body walking past the window. Other capillaries lightly touching the building or hanging freely in mid-air function as whiskers sensitive to the friction of traffic – human, vehicular, infrastructural – and passes them back and forth through the membrane of the building. Transmuting and radiating rhythms allows the building to breathe together with its exterior again.

More analytically, Pneus also serves as stethoscope or instrument. As it becomes attuned to its site, Pneus becomes more legible and playable to passersby – it will respond to the approach or departure of a human by modulating itself on the momentum of the person’s passage or gesture.

Installation

Installation description Pneus is a responsive pneumatic installation formed from bundles of semi transparent plastic inflated tubular cells interconnected through various low-pressure systems and simple electronic sensors. The bundles of cells in Pneus are able to branch, bend, take shape and weave into various configurations. Some cells will contain smaller cells with embedded sensors, electronics and pneumatic valves. The approximate size of Pneus will be about 4m x 6m x 4m high, but can be stretched or multiplied according to the site.

Interaction occurs in different ways: photocells in tubes act as simple proximity sensors of people passing by the structure. Optical flow will be processed to modulate a motion referencing sparks, waves, or steam depending on the hour of day and the evolving state of the system, a motion composed in turn from the transmutation of natural patterns of sunlight or infrastructure data, for example, the vibrational data from the wire whiskers touching the walls or ground. Light and shade condenses over people as they walk, depending again on the state of the system – like weather.

Constructed from semi-transparent plastic, the quality of light possible through the installation will make a continually varying shadow play, integral lights within the cells are being considered as a type of photosynthesis feedback system.

TECHNIQUE / SOFTWARE

Pneus will be suspended in two parts : the exterior part will be above head-height and directly above the sidewalk on rue St Antoine so that the participant can walk under the installation. The interior part of Pneus will consist of the following materials. Inflatable cells: heat welded PVC, PVC tubing, PVC connections. Sensors: IR and visible light photocells, printed circuit boards, low voltage Piezo electric induction micro- phones. External power sources, external speakers and a small computer (Mac Mini) will be incorporated into the interior part of the proposed structure. Exterior structure will consist of a scaffolding system, non-invasive clamping for the existing building. Sub structure will consist of a fine network of high stress monofilament connected to the PVC structural manifolds.

PEOPLE

Peter Hasdell is an architect, artist and academic.

Patrick H Harrop is an architect and associate professor of Architecture at the University of Manitoba; doctoral researcher, Topological Media Lab.

Sha Xin Wei, Ph.D., is Canada Research Chair in media arts and sciences, and Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Computer Science at Concordia University,Topological Media Lab.

PLSS / Vegetal Studies

critical

PLSS / Vegetal Studies

Plant Life Support Systems (PLSS) is a student research project (awarded funding by Concordia 2010) to build a set of boxes for plants, with a watering system whose behaviour intertwines the everyday activities of the people in the lab, weather, LEEDS building environment, and plant and soil state. Over time, the PLSS has serve as a discussion object and a technical platform for understanding the limits of anthropocentric notions of, for example, ensign, movement, interaction, legibility, and ethics which is part of the Topological Media Lab’s larger Vegetal Studies research stream.

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The goal of the Vegetal Studies research stream is to:

• experiment with human-plant ecologies from a Goethean approach to scientific study,

• design technical systems for sensing plant health and delivering sustenance (water, light, nutrients),

• critical inquiry into hard questions of environmental ethics,

work to create a living human/non-human community in the EV building,

• all the while trying to take a thoroughly Guattarian approach, building the system as a laboratory for the production of new subjectivites, as a machinic assemblage with ethico-aesthetic impact.

TECHNIQUE

PLSS calls together gardening science and watering techniques, carpentry, electronics (Arduino, humidity and photo sensors), sensor data processing (very slow rhythms)

PEOPLE

Katie Jung, Max (Zoe) Yuristy, Alex Gaskin, Jason Hendrik

Roots

Flower Lunn, Josée-Anne Drolet, Tim Sutton
PLSS – Plant Life Support System 2009-2011
Morgan Sutherland, electronics, plans; Laura Boyd-Clowes, plants, philosophy; Toby Glidden, physical construction.

Metamorphosis of Plants

See http://vegetal.posthaven.com

ozone

o4

O4

O4 – From 2008-2013,the research strand for shaping a responsive environment’s media response to inhabitant activity has evolved into a greatly refined and much more powerful software system: the OZONE media choreography framework.

This system allows:

(a) the reading of arbitrary configurations of sensors (including cameras and microphones, but also any array of physical sensors that can be interfaced to a computer through serial inputs);

(b) feature extraction in realtime;

(c) continuous evolution of behavior and orchestration;

(d) mappings to networks of video synthesis computers, realtime sound synthesis computers, theatrical lighting systems, or any electronically or digitally controllable system. (We have controlled for example, household fans and lamps, networks of small commercial toys and LED’s.) In brief the system uses pattern recognition on motion-capture data, to animate and mix the motions of virtual puppets, model-free learning using methods from partial differential equations, and computational physics of lattices and dynamical systems.

LIGHT

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/88192813[/vimeo]

IPAD CONTROL VIEW

ipad_light

SOUND

VIDEO

TECHNIQUE [SOFTWARE]

The Ozone media choreography system factors into the following set of software abstractions: (1) sensor input conditioning, (2) simple statistics, (3) continuous state engine for behavior of the media engines, (4) realtime video re-synthesis instruments, (5) realtime sound re-synthesis instruments, (6) animation interfaces to other protocols, such as DMX, custom LED networks, and actuators. The implementation framework is Max/MSP/Jitter, with substantial extensions to custom computational physics, computer vision, and other methods.

PEOPLE

Sha Xin Wei, system architecture, experiment design, media choreography
Navid Navab, realtime sound
Julian Stein, realtime lighting
Evan Montpellier, visual programming, state engine

Previous

Harry Smoak, media choreography, lighting, experiment design

Michael Fortin, computational fluid dynamics and video

Morgan Sutherland, state engine, sensor fusion, media choreography, project management

Tyr Umbach, realtime video, state engine

Tim Sutton, realtime sound

Jean-Sebastien Rousseau, realtime video

Delphine Nain, computational fluid dynamics and video
Yon Visell, Emmanuel Thivierge, state engine

Ouija

IMG_3201

Ouija

In 2007, based on a series of conversation with Sha Xin Wei about movement, agency, entrainment, and responsivity, Michael Montanaro (Chair of Contemporary Dance), created a set of structured improvisation exercises for dancers working in responsive media environment in the Hexagram Blackbox.

Assistant choreographer Soo-yeon Cho, 7 dancers, and realtime media creators from the Topological Media Lab, and collaborating researchers held a series of experiments in structured improvisation exploring the emergence of collective intention in a field of movement. The field of movement includes un-prepared everyday “un-conscious” movement, pre-conditioned but un-rehearsed movement, as well as fully phrased movement. The experiments included dancers and non-dancers, sometimes identified as such, sometimes not. Themes included entrainment, camouflage, calligraphy and exchanging initiative and momentum between dancers and media.

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TECHNIQUE [SOFTWARE]

All these experimental events lived in a set of responsive substrate media supplied with calligraphic video and gestural sound software instruments, the Oxygen media choreography software system, WYSIWYG’s sounding tapestries, and some proto-jewelry. The realtime media instruments were implemented in Max/MSP/Jitter, with substantial extensions in C.

PEOPLE

Soo-yeon Cho, Choreographer
Prof. Sha Xin Wei, Director

Dancers

Mike Croitoru
Kiani del Valle
Veronique Gaudreau
Rebecca Halls
Marie Laurier
Joannie Pharand
 Olivia Foulke
Oxygen
Jean-Sebastien Rousseau, Calligraphic video, videography, visual effects, production
Tim Sutton, Gestural sound design and programming, production
Emmannuel Thivierge, State engine, camera tracking, production
Filip Radonjik, Live ink painting
WYSIWYG
Marguerite Bromley (XS Labs), Tapestry design and weaving
Elliot Sinyor (IDMIL McGill), Tapestry mechatronics
David Gauthier, Tapestry mechatronics
Freida Abtan, Sound design & programming
David Birnbaum (IDMIL McGill), Sound design & programming
Doug van Nort (IDMIL McGill), Gestural motion feature analysis
Josee-Anne Drolet, TML Project Coordinator, production, videography, editing
Harry Smoak, TML Research Coordinator, production support, research advisor
Ma Zhiming, Production

SUPPORT

Special thanks to Faculty Colleagues
Prof. Michael Montanaro, Contemporary Dance, Ouija movement experiment design
Prof. Marcelo Wanderley, IDMIL, McGill University, WYSIWYG gestural control of sound synthesis
Prof. Joey Berzowksa, XS Labs, Interactive textiles

Thanks also to affiliates of the TML and the SenseLab for artistic and research support: Michael Fortin, Elena Frantova, Olfa Driss, Rene Sills, Raul Gomez, Paul Melançon, Antoine Blanchet,Younjeong Choi, and Shermine Sawalha.