Somatic Strategies, Choreographic Technologies and Notational Abstractions through a Laban/Bartenieff Lens

Date and Time: May 3 (Friday), 2024

8:00AM – 9:30AM New York, 1:00PM – 2:30 PM London, 8:00PM – 9:30PM Beijing

Abstract:

A book launch webinar in which Amy LaViers and Catherine Maguire discuss their new book; Making Meaning with Machines: Somatic Strategies Choreographic Technologies and Notational Abstractions through a Laban/Bartenieff Lens (MIT Press 2023): and offer discussion and experiences regarding the content and applicability of the work in the book to the embodied design space of human robot interaction.

Description:

Making Meaning with Machines by Amy LaViers and Catherine Maguire is a rigorous primer in movement studies for designers, engineers, and scientists that draws on the fields of dance and robotics. This webinar will be a book launch in which LaViers and Maguire share and discuss content of book and it’s applications at the intersection of embodied design, robotics and dance.

This book is a rigorous primer in movement studies for designers, engineers, and scientists that draws on the fields of dance and robotics.

How should a gestural interface react to a “flick” versus a “dab”? Versus a “punch”? Should robots reach out to a human counterpart with a direct, telescoping action or through a circuitous arc in space? Just as different movements express the different internal states of human movers, so too can the engineered systems behind robots. ln Making Meaning with Machines, Amy LaViers and Catherine Maguire offer a refreshingly embodied approach to machine design that supports the growing need to make meaning with machines by using the field of movement studies, including choreography, somatics and notation, to engage in the process of designing expressive robots.

Drawing upon the Laban/Bartenieff tradition, LaViers and Maguire sharpen the movement analysis methodology, expanding the material through their work with machines and putting forward new conventions, such as capitalization, naming, and notation schemes, that make the embodied work more legible for academic contexts. The book includes an overview of movement studies, exercises that define the presented taxonomy and principles of movement, case studies in movement analvsis of both humans and robots, and state-of the-art research at the intersection of robotics and dance.

Making Meaning with Machines is a much-needed primer for observing, describing, and creating a wide array of movement patterns, which ultimately can help facilitate broader and better design choices for roboticists, technologists, and designers.

Speakers:

Amy LaViers: Amy LaViers works at the intersection of robotics and dance. Her work has been presented in arts engineering, and science venues. She is the assisant professor and director of the Robotics, Automation, and Dance (RAD) Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit for art-making, commercialization, education, outreach, and research. Amy present her outstanding work at international conferences. Her teaching has been recognized on her university’s list of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students with Outstanding distinction.

Catherine (Cat) Maguire: Cat Maguire has been teaching in the Laban/Bartenieff system for over forty years and works as a faculty member of WholeMovement, a coterie of movement analysts working together to promote movement studies globally. She is a Master Somatic Movement Educator and dance artist teaching at McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville,VA. She teaches LBMS certification training courses in China and Europe.

Curator:

Dr. Tony Yu Zhou

Agenda

• 8:00 am – 8:05 am – Opening/Introductions
• 8:05 am – 8: 15 am – Kinesthetic Attunement experiential (requires paper and pen for participants) of both robot and human videos
• 8:15 am – 8:45 am – Overview of book including sharing electronic resources and symbol booklet
• 8:45 am – 9:15 am – Introduce new staff for notation from book (CPMMPT Staff) and have participants attempt their own motif with Amy and Cat sharing their motifs for same robot/human example used above and discuss notation as a means for translation across bodies (requires paper and pen for participants)
• 9:15 am – 9:30 am – Q+A and closing

This event is free for IACAET Registered members.