A Midsummer Nights Drone Dream explores the control of 2 drone swarms, each including about 12 to 36 small drones hovering around a human body, thereby expanding its volume in space. The drones symbolize the fairy servants to Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the spiritual world that is evoked in Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Nights Dream”.
They hover around the 2 dancers in their centre.
Artistic use of drones
Drones have been used in many different ways in the arts. The most popular version to encounter drones are “drone fireworks” across the skies but more and more they are also seen on stage interacting with dancers and /or actors.
In both cases these movements will be preset and choreographed. Our project aims to give the dancers the possibility to improvise on many levels:
- they can improvise as soloist
- They can improvise in interaction with each other
The challenges for an AI in the background is to prevent the drones from colliding and disconnect the drones in case the movements of the dancers would prove impossible for the drones to follow and reconnect at the next possibility.
A Midsummer Nights Drone Dream explores the control of two drone swarms, each including about 12 to 36 small drones hovering around a human body, thereby expanding the volume of the dancers in space. The drones symbolize the fairy servants to Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the spiritual world evoked in Shakespeares “Midsummernights Dream”. The drones hover around the 2 dancers in their center, with distances between 50 cm to 2.00 m.
Drones have been used in many different ways in the arts. They provide “drone fireworks” across the skies and are also seen on stage interacting with dancers and /or actors. Normally these movements will be preset and choreographed. Our project aims to give the dancers the possibility to improvise on many levels:
- they can improvise as soloist
- they can improvise in interaction with each other
Technical challenges
There are many challenges involved:
- to prevent the drones from colliding
- to enable them to disconnect in case the movements of the dancers would prove impossible for the drones to follow
- to reconnect at the next possibility
- budget for the drones
- budget and time for dancers during the training phase
- making the system safe for unexperienced users
The rules an regulations the drones have to follow are actually derived from the rules of robotics by Isaac Asimov. We plan to implement rules of interaction
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If you are interested in a collaboration or discussion concerning the AI and drone projects please contact us at robotic-dance@kreissig.net :- )