PhD course on Biophysical Expression, Affect and Movement (Denmark)
Elizabeth Jochum
** Apologies for cross-posting ***
We are excited to offer a 3-day PhD course on Biophysical Expression, Affect & Movement (BEAM) at Aalborg University (Copenhagen campus) May 27-28-29 hosted by the Sound & Music Computing research group at Aalborg University.
Lecturers: Mark-David Hosale (US/CA), Alan Macy (US), Grisha Coleman (US), Marco Donnarumma (DE/IT), Daniel Overholt (US/DK), Elizabeth Jochum (US/DK),
ECTS: 3
Dates: 27, 28, 29 May 2024
**Registration Deadline: 06 May 2024
Course Description: Biophysical Expression, Affect & Movement (BEAM) introduces students to cutting edge research trends and technology platforms that monitor and augment human performance with applications that span the performing arts, creative industries, and the 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. Design and integration with other platforms that integrate machine-learning approaches to multimodal human-computer interaction will also be explored. The course includes invited lectures & workshops with Grisha Coleman and Marco Donnarumma on critical computing and somatics, AI and ethics as they relate to movement motion capture data, prosthetics, and research. The course will have a strong focus on somatic practices 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). Topics covered include:
Somatic practices
- Movement theory
- Human computer interfaces
- Performance design
- Affective state reflection
Prerequisites: Some 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. The course is open to international students outside of DK.
**Please note: the course is limited to 20 students.
REGISTRATION: To register, please write to Elizabeth Jochum or Dan Overholt, or register directly on Moodle.
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 Vacuo with 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.