Aqua Borealis

About Kristin McArdle Dance

Kristin McArdle Dance is a dance studio. Kristin McArdle is an accomplished artist whose contemporary dance performances incorporate environmental and cultural themes. She received a Fulbright Scholarship to study environmental history and Aboriginal studies in Australia, earning a masters degree from the University of Sydney. Her movement is influenced by Modern, Brazilian, Afro-Caribbean, West African, and Indigenous Australian dance forms. Kristin recently performed Aqua Borealis as a solo at the Colorado Ocean Coalition's Making Waves in Boulder, Colorado: a weekend to raise awareness about ocean conservation in the mountain west.

Aqua Borealis is inspired by the extraordinary marine organisms that use bioluminescent light to communicate in the ocean. The lyrical voice of Dr. Sylvia Earle narrates the dance, which pairs LED lights with dancers’ movements, creating a world expressed in blue saturated structures, vibrant rainbows, and prismatic leaps. The audience descends into the world of liquid light, as if their seats were deep-sea submersibles.

Our team is the wearable team that designed and built the wearable LED lights costume for the live dance. Also, we helped to dress performers and maintain the costumes.

Year: 2018
Project Type: Team Project
My Role: Creative Technologist
Tech: Arduino, Xbee, 12mm Diffused Flat Digital RGB LED Pixels
My Deliverables: Costume maintenance, Built backup boards
Team Members: Xiaojie Yang, Chouchou Li, Fanyun Peng

Costume Aesthetics

The costume has two layers. The inner layer is the elastic materials mapped with elastic bands. Four sets of 12mm Diffused Flat Digital RGB LED Pixels equably attached on the bands to cover the whole body. The outer layer is a black compression that settles each LED lights. A black elastic bank with bags is to hold Arduino and batteries inside.

Technology

At present, there are three dancers for Aqua Borealis. Each dancer has its own light effects for the choreography. Each costume has an Arduino to control the light effects by the four sets of 12mm Diffused Flat Digital RGB LED Pixels. But all the costumes' lights need to be started at the same time. There is a host board to start each performer's board. We used Xbee to build the communication between the host board and the receiver board.

When I took over this project, Kristin already had a complete costume. It was two weeks before the performance day. My main job is to make the backup boards and check circuits on the costume. I organized all the electronics and boards and managed all the costumes for these two weeks.

Dance Rehearsal

While the dance rehearsal, one of the costumes had some problems. I quickly check the circuits of the lights and solved the circuits problems.

Performance Day

Next Step

Our next step is to refine the costume first. I want to reduce the size of the boards. I have found a new board for the wearable tech. I will try to combine Lilypad with Xbee. Also, to further reduce the weight of the costume, I will try the Lithium Ion Polymer to charge the board. Also, we will build extra costumes for new dancers for a new section of the performance.

AQUA BOREALIS-Content