This week, AMT Lab looks back on our Dance research to remember how dance and technology have fueled innovation for both.
Haptic Feedback: Feeling the Dance You Cannot See
Dance relies on the audience’s sense of sight to experience a performance. However, dancing itself is a very tactile experience. A dancer’s precise movements depend on a heightened internal awareness of the body – how joints are stacked and what muscles are activated. They must also maintain an awareness of external forces – how one limb moves in relation to the other, how their skin feels sliding against the floor, and where they sense other dancers moving with them in space.
The experience of the audience is vastly different from that of the dancer. Is there a way to bridge this divide and communicate a multi-sensory experience to the audience, and allow those who cannot see to feel? Tapping into this sense of touch might help audiences experience dance in a new way.