Introduction:
In the past few years, the dance community has begun to make extensive use of computer animation software in representation and rendering tasks. Computer hardware has also seen increasing use, primarily as a means to augment and/or amplify performances in various interesting ways --- e.g., a set of sensors on a performer's body, connected through a data-processing channel to a synthesizer or a lighting setup. In both of these applications, however, the computer is simply an external aid to human creativity; it is not an active participant in the work. We are interested in a wholly different type of computer tool: one that plays a truly active role in both the creation and the analysis of original dance sequences. In this paper, we describe several implemented programs that use cutting-edge computer-science techniques to do exactly that.
Full paper in postscript (658KB) and pdf (231KB).