This is the second stage of Collective Improvisation I (CiI). The goal is never changed: using dancing behaviours to bring people closer, ease the gap between people with different cultural, racial, religous backgrounds.

Zihao combined his previous psychedelic research (‘Ecsperience’) with the CiI project together, to keep exploring the connection between people and dancing. The aim of the combination is to merge two experiences together and enhance the sense of connectedness to the audience. During his research, he found that both have similar network systems and both provide a sense of connectedness or a feeling of ‘self-other blurring.’ He used this point as a starter, developed an interactive dancing experience and a workshop series.

In the previous CiI stage, he prototyped the installation and tested it on audiences. After analysing the pros and cons, Zihao strengthened his original installation's shortcomings in encouraging multi-person interaction through his study of psychedelic networks, and explored in greater depth how to continue to bring dance floor connections into reality. 

The CiII project applied Machine Learning, Arduino, coding (HTML, Node.js, Python), TouchDesigner, Kinect, skeleton tracing, sound recroding, etc. techniques.

The installation is combined by two screens and two interactive procedures: 1. Dance floor with interactive effects and impacts, maximum participants are four people and the effects will change when different people join in, and there is no effect when only one person dancing for encouraging people connect and interacte with each other instead of dancing alone; 2. Application built by Node.js, for recording everyone’s dance move, creating a Asynchronous connection while audiences can refer their dance moves to others, even learning or copying their movements, providing a sense of connectedness in different time but at the same space.

Machine Learning updating development
Length: 1 mins 30 sec