Digitopia

The Digitopia project is in collaboration with the Tom Dale Dance Company to explore audience engagement with graphics and generative music.

The Tom Dale Dance Company developed Digitopia, a show – integrating contemporary dance, electronic music and digital technology – which is touring in 16 UK venues between February and April 2016.

The show is about Hex, a simple two-dimensional line who can make angles, but only up to six! His favourite shape is a hexagon. He’s happy with this, but one day he really wants to make a curve. With a lot of effort he learns to bend, then multiply, and suddenly he can create all kinds of shapes, eventually popping into three dimensions, discovering he can turn into anything he wants to.

This imaginative production for children and families is complemented by a pre- and post-event interactive experience designed by the Mixed Reality Lab and Horizon. The Digitopia App is an interface delivered on tablet computers. It allows children to explore structures of music and composition through interaction with graphics. Music and graphics are inspired by the Tom Dale stage choreography.

Collaboratively, children and their parents can create a fuller and elaborate soundscape through the interaction with the tablet, as well as through the interactions among tablets. The experience is going to be deployed in the foyer of each of the venues, ready to engage with before and after the show.

This project aims to advance the creative visiting research theme by addressing young audiences and new spaces for engagement.

Find out more about this project here and here.

The Digitopia team: Tony Glover, Adrian Hazzard, Holger Schnädelbach, Laura Carletti, Ben Bedwell