A marriage between classical ballet and computer science the
Source: Duncan Hall
The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, Sunday, September 13
CLASSICAL ballet and computer programming might not be the most obvious combination.
But Readysaltedcode founder and producer Genevieve Smith-Nunes became interested in the two disciplines simultaneously as a young girl.
“At the time I was brought up if you wanted to play a game like Ice Castles on [early home computer] Dragon 32 you had to load up 100 lines of code,” she says.
“It was normal for people to do a bit of coding at home �C more so if you had an older brother like me.
“At the same time I went to dancing school as lots of young girls do. I realised in the formal language of ballet there were set structures and routines �C which you can match to programming.”
Smith-Nunes’s first combination of the two disciplines formed last year’s Brighton Digital Festival premiere [arre]stre.
She teamed up with seven young dancers from Battle Abbey School, who explored computer science theory taken from the National Curriculum ranging from debugging to algorithms, through choreography created by former CERN physicist Dr Paul Golz and ballet dancer Camilla Neale.
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Projected alongside the movement was data visualisation created by Peter Cook, accompanied by light images created by the cutting edge wearable technology worn by the dancers on their ballet shoes, dresses and head-pieces.
“Each show took three hours to stitch and cut,” recalls Smith-Nunes. “We used pressure sensitive plastic called Velostat which we had to stitch into the point �Cit was like stitching into concrete!”
Part of a projected trilogy this year’s [Data] Storm aims to take a natural phenomenon audiences understand to make the computer theory more accessible.
“Everyone understands weather and how it moves across the globe,” says Smith-Nunes who has worked with the Met Office in researching the new piece.
“But people don’t really understand data. Weather is an abstract concept, because you can’t touch it, but you can understand how people feel happy when it’s sunny, and what it feels like when it’s rainy or stormy. We’re using those feelings to explore data transmissions, protocols and security aspects.
“When you type something into Google it can bounce off 17 different servers before it arrives to you. We’re using this method to look at computer science theory �C people think it’s scary, but it’s totally not!”
The ballet aspect is designed not only to be educational, but also beautiful to watch.
And Smith-Nunes hopes the ballet aspect will help bring girls into the computer science world she loves, stopping it from being solely a male preserve.
This performance will feature a selection from last year’s [arre]stre to get the audience used to the wearable technology, before the new work starts after the interval.
“We didn’t have a story last time �C the piece was pure theory,” says Smith-Nunes, who is working with the same seven dancers on this second part.
“There is a whole new storyline because we are a bit more confident this year.”
For the third part of the trilogy “because any good science fiction needs to be a trilogy” Smith-Nunes is hoping to explore either signal processing theory �C about how sound is compressed �C or the structure of a CPU.
Before then though she would like to create a piece looking at chronic pain and biomedical engineering, something she has had experience of with her own spinal implant, which uses electronic impulses to block pain.
“I would like to look at how the technology side impacts on people’s pain and people’s perception of what it is to be in chronic pain,” she says.
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“It’s like a silent disability, which is a very personal thing.”
Starts 6.30pm, tickets £8/£6.50. Call 01273 201801.
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