Visualisation

Although the main focus of this article is on sonification, visualisation plays an essential role during all stages of the project: as animations for exploring the dance movements, for mapping sound to data in the sonification interface, and as material for the light design in the Dancing Dots performance.

All single-dot visualisations (excluding stick figures) represent the same subset of markers used in the sonifications. The visualisations are created using relatively straightforward methods of plotting marker positions into animations, which are synchronised with the sonifications and sound recordings. The animations either display markers connected with lines into stick figures, as two-dimensional monochrome dots, or as trails of movement resulting from attaching tails to markers. A characteristic of these plain animations is that they maintain a transparent connection to the data. Still, the viewer is invited to interpret and imagine the underlying movements actively. This is true particularly when markers are displayed without apparent connections to a body part, as single markers or without connecting lines.

The vertical movements of upper-back markers reveal repetitive, periodic bouncing in sync with the music, with continuous, subtly shifting pulsations. The same markers viewed horizontally, with motion trails, resemble worms meandering in looping paths.

Switching to a viewpoint from above unveiled figurations and geometrical figures — stars, circles, petals — drawn by the rotations, the turn-taking, and the alternating foot movements in the couple.

Dancer Andreas Berchtold described figures plotted from overhead as confirming and strengthening his inner images of rotation techniques — an example of how the emerging shapes connect to the embodied experiences of dance movements. Similarly, the plots of foot markers show how the dancers adjust their pacing speed according to their position in the couple and the rotational feet patterns illustrate shared balancing and turn-taking in the couple rotation. 

These patterns are valuable to make an embodied knowledge of dancing become more tangible. More so, the intrinsic qualities of the mediated movement gestures, with their distinct characteristics of speed, shape, and timing, lend themselves to musical interpretations. 

For the performance Dancing Dots, point-light animations were projected using pixel light tubes placed upright in a circle surrounding the space for the performance. In the video clip the light tubes are seen displaying vertically moving points, which have been rendered using data captured from performers’ feet. The point in the light tube to the left of the fiddler distinctly drops down on the polska beats one and three; this point-light was rendered from the player’s foot tapping. The point in the light tube to the right of the fiddler drops to beat one and reaches the highest point on beat three, resulting in only one oscillation per measure. This second light was recorded from the left foot of a dancer.  Both lighting patterns stay slightly on beat one before moving up again, again with slightly different characters: a distinct lift (the player’s foot tapping) or a more sweeping, continuous motion (the dancer’s foot). 

It is not far-fetched to relate such gestures to bow movements and articulations: patterns of speed, pressure, and hand movement trajectories. However, in the video passage, the fiddler is not copying the light movements but, instead, plays complementary notes on beats two and three, contrapuntal to the lights marking the first and third beats. Such dialogue between the visual and the sonic can be seen as mimicking relations present in the polska dance/music interplay, where a beat can be marked by the dancing but be silent in the melody.