Ezgi Ucar
Eclipse
An interactive dancewear
Anezka Cecile Sebek
Katherine Moriwaki
Writing and ResearchBarbara B. Morris
Andrew Zornoza
Altai Shamans worshiped the mother sun and the father moon as their gods. Sun and Moon gods would fight with evil spirits and protect their people from danger. Yet sometimes, evil spirits would capture the gods, causing solar and lunar eclipses. To save their gods, Altai people would shout, drum and make incredible noises during the eclipse.
Eclipse is an interactive dance costume that creates its own visual and sonic environment based on the wearer’s movements. It tells the story of a Shaman Eclipse through its light play and dynamic soundscape.
Altai Shamans worshiped the mother sun and the father moon as their gods. Sun and Moon gods would fight with evil spirits and protect their people from danger. Yet sometimes, evil spirits would capture the gods, causing solar and lunar eclipses. To save their gods, Altai people would shout, drum and make incredible noises during the eclipse.
Eclipse dress is an interactive storytelling tool for a dance performance. The story of a Shaman Eclipse is told through the visual and auditory functions of the dress.
Altai Shamans used circular metal structures on their garments as symbols for Mother Sun and Father Moon.Inspired by the Shaman tradition, the Eclipse dress has two metal hoops making up it’s dynamic skeleton. The hoops move freely with the movements of the wearer. The upper, narrower hoop represents the moon and the lower, wider hoop represents the sun. Led strips embedded underneath the lower hoop illuminates the ground. Viewed from above, it creates a visual similar to a solar eclipse.
The interactivity is purely based on the movements of the dancer wearing the dress. Two proximity sensors embedded inside each hoop detects the instantaneous position of the wearer in relation to the skirt and creates different sounds for each position during the performance. Every performance is improvised, so that the dress creates a unique soundscape for each performance.
A camera records the performance from the top, which then is projected at the back wall for the audience to view two angles of the Eclipse story; the fight between gods and spirits and the eclipse viewed from the earth.
Ezgi Ucar
Ezgi Ucar is a multisensory interaction designer. She is currently studying at Parsons The New School for Design, in MFA Design and Technology program. She has an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering, which helps her combine the knowledge from different branches. She is interested in the human side of technology. Putting senses, emotions and fun into interactions is the main goal of her design. Musical/ sound experimentations, translation between different sensory data, physical computing, wearable technologies and search for new materials are the areas of focus in her design. As her future goal, she wants to create greater scale interaction designs for interesting user experience experiments.