Blending Art and Science in the Production Collapse (suddenly Falling Down)

Collapse (suddenly falling down) was a dance/theater/media production that brought together a diverse group of artists and scientists to explore the varied ways that social and natural systems collapse and the response of human societies. This paper focuses on the nature of the collaboration, the unique products it produced, and the lessons learned. Three art-science collaboration themes emerged: 1) implementation of a large-scale stereo display for 3D data; 2) exploration from a visual design perspective of digital scans of natural hazard sites normally used for scientific research; and 3) integration of optical tracking for interaction between performers and visualizations. Each theme is explored in detail and each member of the team reflects on lessons learned from the process. Art-science collaborations require blending the artistic, quantitative, and technical sensibilities of people from different professional and cultural contexts [1]. We explored different approaches to understanding the collapse of systems through a collaboration among performing artists and earth, physical, and computer scientists. The collaboration initiated with extended discussions among friends and colleagues about how artistic exploration could enhance scientific interpretations of data. It became focused on artistic performance when a piece was commissioned for Davidson, choreographer. The vision for the piece centered on exploring interactions among people and their environment when social and natural systems collapse. Here, we describe the components of the production, Collapse (suddenly falling down) [2], that emerged from artists and scientists working closely together, including 3D projection of scientific data with motion capturebased interaction [3]. Our focus in this paper is on the nature of the collaboration, the products it produced, and the lessons that emerged from that collaboration. Origin of Collapse (suddenly falling down) The Robert and Magrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts commissioned a piece for the Sideshow Physical Theatre, the resident professional company of the Mondavi Center and the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC Davis. For this commission, director and choreographer Davidson wanted to explore relationships among people, societies, and nature when systems collapse and recover. Many natural systems respond to human use in ways that feed back to society, often with dramatic and unanticipated consequences [4]. These instabilities can be explored scientifically in studies of natural hazards, as well as the physics of nonlinear systems [5]. Based on discussions with scientists Sumner, Kellogg, and Crutchfield, Davidson incorporated scientific data visualization techniques into the performance to deepen insights into how people interact with collapsing systems. 3D interactive visualization of scientific data has been a major research focus for computer scientist Kreylos, geoscientists Sumner and Kellogg, and physicist Crutchfield, all collaborators in the Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES) [6]. Collapse provided an opportunity to explore the potential and limits of these visualization techniques by presenting them to large audiences to achieve the nonscientific (artistic) goals of the performance. Real-time interaction with data is an important component of the work in the KeckCAVES, and the scientists wanted to extend this to the performance setting. This led to an invitation to Neff to join the collaboration to provide motion capture expertise for real-time interaction in a theatre space. The broad scope of research in the KeckCAVES meant that a wide range of data were available. Our first major decision, choosing what type of data to use, revealed potential pitfalls and provided a template for our collaborative process. The choice of data determined the artistic and technological parameters of the work, and at each stage we were at risk of providing too many options for too long. Digital media artist Bromberg joined the collaboration to provide a strong artistic vision on how to use 3D data effectively in a live theater-dance performance. After exploring different data types and visualization methods with the scientists, Davidson and Bromberg chose Tripod-Light Detection and Ranging (T-LiDAR) data (Figure 1). These scans were selected for their visual and metaphoric qualities. T-LiDAR is a ground-based laser ranging system that sends out millions of laser pulses and records their reflections, generating a threedimensional pointilist image of the scanned landscape [7]. The best datasets for Collapse were collected for scientific study of natural hazards such as landslides by geophysicist Bawden, who joined the collaboration and made data available for performance. Figure 1: A T-LiDAR scan looking up through the floorboards of a house after a landslide removed part of its foundation. The inset shows a close-up of the placard-based visualization, revealing gaps between reflections. The art-science collaboration thus self-assembled around a shared vision of exploring complex natural, engineered, and social systems and a shared interest in using technology to address both scientific and artistic questions. The contributors were dedicated to fully integrating the scientific visualizations into the performance, both thematically and aesthetically, and shared the desire to explore fundamental behaviors of complex systems in artistically meaningful ways. As director and choreographer, Davidson provided the overall vision for Collapse, guiding the thematic framework. She allowed choreographic, dramatic, set, music, and data visualization elements to develop independently, each with an individual or subgroup responsible for exploring the theme within a given medium (Table 1). This autonomy and responsibility promoted full involvement of diverse people in the collaboration, allowing individual contributions to substantially impact the final performance. Davidson trusted each subgroup to provide relevant material, including a pre-show piece that coupled visual representations of chaotic attractors and sound [8]. Integration of the separate components into a cohesive whole took place during 10 days of technical rehearsals leading up to performance. Several recent works incorporate geoscience data into dance performances [9]. In addition, a large body of work explores dance and technology, including Cunningham’s influential BIPED [10]. Collapse incorporated visualization of geoscience data, motion capture, and interactive technology, and explored the interactions between society and the natural world, both through choreography and acting, and by using data collected for scientific study and mitigation of natural hazards. As a result of its success, Collapse was honored with the 2009 Isadora Duncan Award for Visual Design. In preparing Collapse, three art-science collaboration themes emerged: 1) implementation of a large-scale display for 3D data; 2) exploration of natural hazard T-LiDAR data sets from a visual design perspective; and 3) integration of optical tracking for interaction between performers and visualizations [11]. Each theme is explored here by presenting technical details of the performance and reflections on the collaboration process.