WhoLoDancE: Project newsletter #2 "Striding towards the goal"
Creators: name: Rizzo, Anna
name: El Raheb, Katerina
name: Zanoni, Massimiliano
name: Markatzi, Amalia
name: Buccoli, Michele
name: Viro, Vladimir
name: Cisneros, Rosamaria
name: Even Zohar, Oshri
name: Piana, Stefano
name: Camurri, Antonio
name: Sarti, Augusto
name: Whatley, Sarah
name: Morley-Fletcher, Edwin
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2018

description: The second issue of the annual WhoLoDancE newsletter gives an account of the work carried out in the second year of the project, concluded in December 2017, and provides some insights on the new research directions and dissemination initiatives scheduled for this last year of activity. As a general view, the second year has seen the consolidation and further enrichment of the digital usage of the dance movements collected through the motion capture sessions held in the first year. All these outcomes can now be accessed on-line through the WhoLoDancE Movement Library (page 8). Here, a newly implemented synchronization technique (page 24) has allowed the automatic alignment of motion capture, video and audio tracks for all performances in the database. Additionally, the project has seen the fulfilment and release of the first prototypes of innovations, which were some of the key goals of WhoLoDancE: the blending engine (page 21), allowing to assemble movement segments from different genres in new diverse choreographies; the similarity search engine (page 12), enabling to search and retrieve movements similar to the one of interest, in regard to user-defined criteria; the Choreomorphy tool (page 17), offering users a virtual reality-based experience for visualising their body movements in real-time through a range of different avatars, by the use of motion capture devices; the movement sketching tool (page 19), which aims to provide the possibility to record, display and analyse users’ dance movements with basic low-budget devices, with special regard to dance students and practitioners. All applications are currently being integrated into a comprehensive system, namely the WhoLoDancE Framework (page 31), providing both a web-based access for basic tools as well as an integration based on the Unity gaming engine, for real-time interactive applications. Worthwhile mentioning, the newsletter reports also on the important work of elaboration of movement principles (page 27), i.e., a set of qualities recognising the dynamic and expressive properties of dance movements, together with the use-case scenarios identified for the WhoLoDancE tools. As final contribution, the newsletter provides an outline of the exploitation strategy envisaged for the further expansion of the project (page 33): the creation of a digital platform for learning as well as entertainment, creative and didactic purposes, namely WholoMove, where artists, teachers and students could share their work, learn, interact and receive credits for their contributions by having recourse to a special token as a new form of digital currency usable within the project. In the last pages, you can find an overview of the upcoming dissemination events organised within WhoLoDancE (page 36), where our partners will present and discuss the project achievements with the relevant reference scientific and practice communities, or set up interactive workshops and exhibitions for both professionals and non-experts, where spectators will have the opportunity to attend partners’ dance performances and have a preview experience of the prototype tools under development.
description: The WhoLoDancE newsletter constitutes a periodic publication aimed at dissemination of scientific results of the project to a broad audience of both technologists/researchers in the ICT and VR/AR/MR field and lay people.