The Creating Participatory Learning Through Performance workshop was part of the MobilityShifts: Future of Learning Summit. It focused on improvisational performance as a framework for online collaboration and distributed learning. By leveraging the affordances of shared virtual world space and creative frameworks, we can build richer online rapport and an optimal environment for instant collaboration and participatory learning. Through dance-based avatar movement and task-based performance games inside a virtual world, participants weaved a theatrical performance together that encouraged active listening and interaction. The use of improvisational performance frameworks for online collaboration allowed participants to instantly connect and cooperate regardless of geographical location or previous experience with digital media or performance. Students from Josephine Dorado’s Collaboration in Networked Environments class at the New School participated as performers. The performance was followed by a Q&A in which the performative elements and their relation to online collaboration was explained along with feedback from student participants. After that, the audience at the New School had an opportunity to ‘embody’ an avatar and participate in an impromptu dance, thereby experiencing the immediacy and connection.
Think of it as “Instant Online Collab: Just Add Dance.”
Livestream and co-sponsorship provided by the Internet Society – New York Chapter (ISOC-NY)
Video archive: http://bit.ly/avdancearchive
Saturday, October 15, 2011 1-3pm EST
Locations: The New School, Bark Room/Orientation Room (2 W 13th St, NYC) and in Second Life
Credits:
SL dancers/Collaboration in Networked Environments class:
Josephine Dorado (NYC)
Cassidy Lerman (NYC)
Kelly Laudien (NYC)
Angelica Vergel (Florida)
Akidah Felder
Tim Neff (Albany, NY)
Jamie Travis (New Jersey)
Josephine Monaco
Gita Ram (Washington, DC)
Mary Trishman (Philadelphia, PA)
Dana DiMaggio (New Jersey)
Amy O’Brien (Portland, OR)
Amanda Boyce (NYC)
Suzanne Thweatt (Washington, DC)
Kristen Wlazelek (NYC)
Emma Willmann (NYC)
Live music by David Solomonoff, Internet Society- NY Chapter (ISOC-NY)
animations by
Josephine Dorado and ADaPT (Association for Dance and Performance Telematics), an interdisciplinary association of artists, technologists and scholars dedicated to research and critical dialogue on performance and media in telematic space.
Livestreaming by Joly MacFie, Internet Society- NY Chapter (ISOC-NY)
Machinima recording by Joshua Stortz, Joyce Bettencourt & Myroslaw Bytz
Teaching assistant / technical assistance: Cassidy Lerman
MobilityShifts conference info: http://mobilityshifts.org
Creating Participatory Learning Through Performance event info: http://avatardance.eventbrite.com
Special Thanks to the New School, Jennifer Conley Darling, Trebor Scholz and #MobilityShifts power team, the students in my Collaboration in Networked Environments class, ISOC-NY, the Vesuvius Group, Cassidy Lerman, Myroslaw Bytz, and the packetwranglers in ADaPT
