Page 120 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014was formerly based on the lighting, furnishing, music, air quality, odour and temperature of spaces, something linked with what has been called the “narrative of design10”, is now carried out on a more technological plane in which members of the public, furthermore, also enjoy experiences that let them feel new things in a special, much more “inmersive” setting.Sensorial or sensitive technology, depending on the case, is not alien to the stage arts. Not just as regards the use that can be made of it for cases such as we have already seen with monitoring, or particularly the management of space and resources for performances, but also on the creative level, where some artists are using similar technologies both to dialogue with them and to create their own works. Whether it be sound, costume design using “wearable technology11”, multimedia resources, etc., performers are gradually adopting such elements with a high degree of creativity and interactivity with the audience. Such technological resources have the ability to create great surprise and astonishment. In a recent international conference on the stage arts held in Oxford (Performance. Visual Aspects of Performance Practice12 September 2013), there was a very interesting segment devoted to the most creative aspects of the use of these sensory technologies, able, furthermore, to transmit disparate emotions. Technologies such as mobile solutions and interfaces, analysis and monitoring of emotions, communication and semantic computing, technologies and solutions for live performance, new story‐telling modules, 3‐D and 4‐D technologies and tools, cerebral and interactive interfaces, augmented reality (AR) and speech‐processing and comprehension systems. In other words, many of the things we have been discussing in the course of this article.Creativity makes use of these technologies, and becomes integrated to form part of new artistic expressions. Some contemporary dance, performance art and contemporary artworks incorporate sensorial and multimedia elements that map the emotions through movement, the mindAC/Eand even the data themselves. The French artist Maurice Benayoun is the creator of Emotion Forecast, a work consisting of a multimedia system for displaying data that reflects on the concept of the Net understood as a “nervous system”. This creative mapping exercise sets up an emotional statistical prediction system for everyone, whose interface is reminiscent of stock‐market infographics or weather maps.Many artistic experiences and creations involve screens, particularly touch‐screens. A few years ago, a project called “Keep in Touch13”, by Nima Motamedi, drew attention to the possibilities of touch, together with body language or gestural language, to give emotional and sensorial responses, precisely in response to the massive appearance of smartphones and cameras everywhere and in all devices, and to the lack of privacy accompanying these platforms. It sought to evoke the sensations and the emotions in the fusion of the visual and the tactile on screens. To take interfaces to a new level of interaction where what is physical is not restricted to being a mechanical act and the users of this prototype may communicate with each other through touch, even caress one another, through the screen.Another multimedia and performance artist whoWHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 9: THE NEW AFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGIES COME TO THE CULTURAL SECTOR CURRENT PAGE...EMOTION FORECASThttp://www.benayoun.com/120