The Barnard College Archive houses a stunning array of images of dancing on campus – in the gymnasium, on the lawn, in the canteen, Minor Latham Playhouse, and of course, the dance studios. Together they tell a story about the importance of dance to the College during defining moments in its history.
This fall, students in the Department of Dance’s Site-Specific Composition course will utilize Augmented Reality technology to explore this 125-year history and find new ways to contextualize and reveal it. Students will interpret a number of dance-related images from the Archives to create short site-specific dances, each filmed on the site specific to the image and each 125 seconds in length. Through the use of a free, custom-made Augmented Reality App - Barnard Augmented - the public will be able to view these dances throughout the year on their personal mobile devices. The app guides the user through a tour of the campus triggering image-recognition technology which automatically makes the dances associated with the site appear in the frame of her smartphone. Part time-capsule, part platform, part memorial, this immersive installation effectively transforms the Barnard Campus into a living archive while at the same time creating new spaces for creative expression.
These interactive dances will powerfully suture Barnard’s past with its future by linking the archival photograph with mobile technology, summoning the traces of dances past through new and innovative site-specific dances, and drawing upon the inspiration of dancers from yesterday to body forth Barnard’s digital future.
Concept and artistic direction: Adam H. Weinert
Digital Research and development: Marlon Barrios Solano