Dance and Choreography in HCI: A Two-Decade Retrospective

Title of the Paper

Dance and Choreography in HCI: A Two-Decade Retrospective

Bibliographic Information

• Domain: Integration of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Dance Technology
• Keywords: Dance, Choreography, Creativity Support, Movement Quality, Aesthetic Reflection

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  1. The complexity and abstraction of the dance creation process pose challenges for HCI researchers, such as how to analyze or foster creativity expressed through bodily movements using computational technologies.
  2. The multifaceted background and technical complexity involved in dance production increase the difficulty of designing universal tools.
  3. There exists a tension between technology and the embodied experience of human dancers: the quantitative nature of algorithms may conflict with the sensorial aspects of dance expression.

• Significance of the Issues: Dance, as an art form rooted in culture and sensory experience, is closely linked to multidisciplinary creativity research. Exploring how computational technologies can support dance creation and performance not only advances dance technology research but also broadens the overall understanding of creativity research and interaction design.

• Research Motivation and Related Work: Bodily expression and the creative process in dance are regarded as key areas of academic interest in HCI's third wave of transformation. Related studies include advancements in motion capture technology and quantitative characterization of dance movement quality. In recent years, beyond technical approaches, dance aesthetics have also been influenced by phenomenology and theories of embodied perception, such as Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology.

Proposed Solution

• Proposed Approach: This study systematically reviews dance-related HCI literature from 2000 to 2020, incorporating 77 articles, and summarizes trends in the use of technology for dance creation, performance, and analysis.

• Innovative Contributions:

  1. Provides a unique multi-perspective framework for analyzing the integration of dance and technology.
  2. Focuses on the role of multimodal perception and embodied cognition in dance creation, moving beyond traditional HCI's reliance on quantitative research.
  3. Proposes emerging research directions, such as tool design based on multimodal perception and diversified forms of embodied interaction.

• Implementation Steps and Techniques:

  1. Systematic Retrieval and Screening: Research was selected based on keywords from the ACM Digital Library and MOCO conferences, excluding irrelevant entries.
  2. Literature Coding and Classification: Selected studies were categorized using open coding and clustering paradigms.
  3. Refining Research Focus: Research contributions were summarized based on the dance project workflow (creation, performance, analysis) and types of technological applications (physical sensing, movement quality modeling, etc.).

Research Findings

• Specific Findings:

  1. Synthesized the main themes of dance-related HCI research over the past two decades, including the body in dance as a tool, movement as a medium of expression, and dance as a practice.
  2. Highlighted the necessity of considering the individual context and complexity of dance when designing interactive technologies.
  3. Identified and summarized four technology-related research themes: bodily sensing, movement quality analysis, multisensory enhancement, and agent collaboration.

• Relative Advantages: Compared to existing work, this review not only analyzes how technology supports the creation of dance movements but also emphasizes the interaction between technology and the individual "sensory experience."

• Experimental or Evaluation Results: The reviewed research papers reveal that the majority of contributions involve novel interactive tools (58%). Overall, the studies demonstrate the diversity of technological interventions in the dance creation process, while also uncovering some potential limitations and ethical concerns.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Limitations:
    1. Current sensor technologies are predominantly focused on surface-level data capture and are unable to fully reflect the emotional and subjective experience of movements.
    2. Differences in the context of performances and creations make designing universal tools challenging.
  • Future Directions:
    1. Strengthen research on the integration of multimodal perception and bodily signals to capture higher-level movement expressions.
    2. Explore new applications of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies in audience engagement and remote dance performances.
    3. Advance research on the relationship between novel non-humanoid robots and dancers to discover more potential forms of dance creation.