Theater and ALife Art: Modeling Open and Closed Systems.

The live art of theater remains curiously missing from ALife art history, despite the fact that its very existence is poised on the cusp of the living and the artificial, and on the modeling of life as artefact-what can be called the containment-versus-continuity dilemma. How far one seeks to affirm autonomy of the creative artwork or, in contrast, how far one seeks to affirm its continuity with its supposed real-life contexts is a question that has forever haunted theater, and that has naturally come to haunt ALife and ALife arts. Investigation of the boundary separating observers from modeled systems is as core to research into the live art of theater as to ALife research. This brief article seeks to open up discussion on links between ALife, ALife art, and the live art of theater, through key thematic threads that traverse these domains: their modeling of universes, the open or closed nature of the resultant modeled systems, and their implications with respect to observers, definitions, and instantiations of life regarding non-life or death as well as attributions of liveness to emergent synthetic biology and metamaterials.

AMUC: Associated Motion capture User Categories.

The AMUC (Associated Motion capture User Categories) project consisted of building a prototype sketch retrieval client for exploring motion capture archives. High-dimensional datasets reflect the dynamic process of motion capture and comprise high-rate sampled data of a performer's joint angles; in response to multiple query criteria, these data can potentially yield different kinds of information. The AMUC prototype harnesses graphic input via an electronic tablet as a query mechanism, time and position signals obtained from the sketch being mapped to the properties of data streams stored in the motion capture repository. As well as proposing a pragmatic solution for exploring motion capture datasets, the project demonstrates the conceptual value of iterative prototyping in innovative interdisciplinary design. The AMUC team was composed of live performance practitioners and theorists conversant with a variety of movement techniques, bioengineers who recorded and processed motion data for integration into the retrieval tool, and computer scientists who designed and implemented the retrieval system and server architecture, scoped for Grid-based applications. Creative input on information system design and navigation, and digital image processing, underpinned implementation of the prototype, which has undergone preliminary trials with diverse users, allowing identification of rich potential development areas.