Vietnam student Mr Tran Van Chinh, who worked tirelessly for a year to master the programming and ensure it worked perfectly in performance. “The dancers wore accelerometers measuring their gestures and movements,” he said. “They also wore photosensitive sensors reading the amount of light falling onto their bodies.”
that said, the dancers’ movements are not entirely impromptu. “It’s my job, with the choreographer and dancers, to design parameters to create something that has emotional impact,” he said. “There is a plan – but I have created something the dancers can use to improvise with, not a mechanical stage hand.”
This information was transmitted to the computer via a wireless radio in the dancers’ costumes, with floor pads enabling them to dance and control the projected images simultaneously.
Dance purists may question why this performance direction is necessary.
It sounds complicated but like all good facilitation, during the performance technology was behind the scenes, allowing the dancers to star.
“If we’re in a world where mobile phones allow people to Skype friends far away, this technology must be incorporated.
Mr Smith’s plan to engage the audience is guided by his inspiration, German composer and polemicist Richard Wagner. “His vision of a theatrical opera was as ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ – something that would completely immerse the audience in an environment, appealing simultaneously to all the senses,” he said. “It was a method of completely taking audiences out of themselves. “It also links with the idea of virtual reality; that term was credited to a US computer whiz of the 1980s who invented a computer generated environment giving you a sense of being completely immersed. “But the term was really invented in the 1920s by French playwright Antonin Artaud, meaning ‘reaching into the soul’.” Mr Smith sees his interactive technology as “an instrument for dancers to play as they dance”;
“People are looking for something new,” Mr Smith said.
“The fascination with video technology and interactivity is pervasive and of its time.” But some things are timeless – including the need to repair equipment damaged by vigorous dancers. That job has fallen to a young Vietnamese man in Ho Chi Minh City’s district five. Nguyen The Huy works from his home, designing and repairing electronic circuits and in his hands, the expensive Canadian sensors live again. “I met Huy by chance on the street where I live,” Mr Smith said. “At the back of an old store selling mostly fans a man was making loudspeakers by hand using an old analogue multimeter, which Vietnamese people seem to prefer to the digital ones. “My father could do this but since I was a boy I have never met anyone who could.” Mr Huy first built a floor pad connector for the computer; then he came to performances and found he could make the sensors better – in Ho Chi Minh City. No doubt he will be involved in Paul Verity Smith’s next venture: building a sensate space with 10 beam break detectors sensing the dancers’ locations and changing the performance environment.
figure 1 - location of survey villages
New analysis: fans show rural family wealth RMIT Vietnam researchers using a new analysis technique have found that the number of fans owned by farming families in rural areas is one of the main indicators of their wealth. The research will be submitted for publication in The Review of Income and Wealth journal and may be of interest to the World Bank. Assistant Professor Giovanni Merola and Associate Professor Bob Baulch, both from RMIT Vietnam’s Centre of Commerce and Management, said they were surprised to find in their interpretation of survey results from 530 households that consumer durables were the key wealth indicators. “The surveys were of households in Thanh Hoa in north-west Vietnam and Huaphanh in northeast Laos,” Assistant Professor Merola said. “The differences in wealth were not indicated by people owning productive assets such as farming equipment but by the ownership of a few household appliances such as fans and to a lesser extent, refrigerators. “Also, a home’s roof turned out to be an indicator of wealth. “These things tell us a lot about the living standard of families in these areas.” Assistant Professor Merola said it’s difficult to measure the wealth of families in areas such as these through more conventional measures.
“People there don’t always have money transactions, and expensive items such as cars are rare,” he said. “We were interested in comparing Vietnamese and Lao social and economic conditions in rural areas, and applying this new analysis technique to the data from the two surveys. “This type of survey can be useful because it doesn’t involve long questionnaires and uses specific assets to study people’s standard of living. “We think this analysis technique is more efficient for analysing this kind of data than others,” Assistant Professor Merola said The data included information on the materials used to build family homes, whether they had a roof and floor, and the number of other family possessions - motorbikes, cookers, water heaters, televisions and satellite dishes. Farming tool ownership was also surveyed. Analysis results confirmed that Vietnamese families were a little more affluent than those in Laos. The researchers presented their findings at the 7th Vietnam Economist General Meeting in Ho Chi Minh City in June this year. “We had some good feedback there and we want to get more from the academic community after publication,” Assistant Professor Merola said. “The World Bank is using this kind of analysis because it helps estimate the wealth of communities.”
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