(Choreo)-haptic experiments for blind dance audiences: Digital Scholarship: Days of Ideas 2

This project explores how blind persons can use their sense of touch to experience movement qualities such as softness, during live dance performances. Users place their palms on a pad, while movement is tracked with Kinect technology to trigger small size vibrating motors which are embedded in the pad.

This is a haptic pad, which is however not understood as a device that ‘translates’ dance movements for blind audience members. Instead it aims to create an ‘experience’ for blind persons, which is equivalent to that received by sighted members of the dance audience. Kinaesthetic empathy is considered as a key aspect of the experience received by sighted members of dance audiences.

The current project, which is still in its infancy (just over a year old), explores to which extent it is possible for blind dance audience members to experience effects of kinaesthetic empathy despite their lack of vision. This project has been funded by an AHRC Digital Transformations Development Fund, as well as by the University’s IKT Fund (Developing Impact).