Dance piece, for iPod shuffle

April 05th, 2008 | Category: iTunes

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPod Family, Multimedia, iTunes, Apple

Apparently this iPod-enabled dance performance has been around for quite a while (here’s an NYT piece on it from 2006), but it’s the first we’ve heard of it, and it’s pretty amazing. The 87-year-old choreographer, Merce Cunningham, who has collaborated with John Cage and Andy Warhol among others, has created a dance performance piece called eyeSpace.

Apparently, the music, which can be downloaded preperformance and is written by composer Mikel Rouse (no relation at all to TUAW’s own Mike Rose) plays in the audience’s iPods while the dancers dance (and other atmospheric sounds are added during the performance as well). Very interesting.

The NYT piece seems to tip that the tracks are meant to be played in random order on each iPod, which would mean that the timing wasn’t too fundamental, but it’s a cool notion (even more cool that it’s done by an artist of Cunningham’s age, but what else do you expect from a Mac fan?).

Definitely reminds me, too, of the MP3 Experiments done by Improv Everywhere in New York. Just goes to show you that we’re still in the middle of the digital music revolution — when we can listen to nearly anything anywhere at any instance, who knows what other creative folks will come up with?

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Orginal post by Mike Schramm

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