Dancing Beyond Boundaries was an unprecedented distance collaboration between artists, engineers, computer scientists, and video producers that premiered at the SuperComputing Global conference in Denver, Colorado on November 12-15, 2001. By using the Access Grid, a piece of technology that runs video and audio over the Internet 2 in realtime, artists and engineers around the world were able to collaborate in an entirely new way.
The choreographer, dancers, animation artists, musicians, computer scientists, engineers and producers were located in different cities in North and South America as the piece was created, rehearsed, and premiered over the 4 days of the conference. The project was spearheaded and coordinated by the University of Florida's Digital Worlds Institute, a joint initiative between the UF Colleges of Engineering and Fine Arts.
My personal contribution to the project consisted of two parts. First, I, along with one other DAS graduate student, created the animated introduction to the entire piece. This was a 40 second animated introduction that took approximately 2 weeks to create, from initial concept to final output.
click on image to view final piece
The second part of my contribution consisted of assisting with technical preparation and maintenance of the Access Grid node based at the University of Florida, as well as any other technologies needed for the performance.
The project not only won a High Bandwidth Challenge award at the Supercomputing Global conference, but was also discussed on CNN.
