BlackBox - Arts & Cognition
A collaborative platform to document performance composition:
from conceptual structures in the backstage to customizable visualizations in the front-end.
BlackBox was an interdisciplinary ERC-funded project hosted by FCSH-UNL from September 2014 until the end of 2019, under the direction of Prof. Carla Fernandes as its Principal Investigator. This has led to the creation of the BlackBox LAB Arts & Cognition, currently based at ICNOVA - FCSH.
With a wide-breadth duration of 5 years, the BlackBox project aimed at developing a cutting-edge model for a web-based collaborative platform, dedicated to the documentation of compositional processes by contemporary performing artists with a focus on dance and theatre. The platform enables a robust representation of the implicit knowledge in performing practices while applying novel visualization technologies to support it.
Choreographer João Fiadeiro (Re.Al) was our first year case study, Rui Lopes Graça the second, and Sylvia Rijmer the last one.
BlackBox aimed at the analysis of the invited artists’ unique conceptual structures, by crossing the empirical insights of contemporary creators with research theories from Multimodal Communication (Human Interaction, Gesture Studies, Cognitive Science) and Computer Vision.
The ERC Starting-Grant which supported this project has allowed the recruitment of 6 Post-Docs and 3 PhD students in the research domains of Cognitive Linguistics, Digital Media applied to the Performing Arts and Computer Science. The project also hosted several freelance collaborators and external service providers in the areas of graphic and web design, video, photography and software development, as well as international consultants in Digital Archiving and Intangible Cultural Heritage.
It had additional collaborators from: Nova LINCS at FCT-UNL; the Neuroscience Programme at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown; C-DaRE at Coventry University, UK; The Linguistics Centre of Universidade do Porto; and the Motion Bank Institute, Frankfurt.
General objectives:
- Perform theoretical and innovative interdisciplinary research on the intersection of multimodal communication and cognition, performance studies and digital media.
- Document, transmit and preserve the unexplored knowledge contained in performance composition processes.
- Assist artists with creative tools to facilitate their choreographic/dramaturgic practices on a collaborative basis.
The ERC Starting-Grant which supports this project has allowed the recruitment of 3 Post-Docs and 2 PhD students in the research domains of Cognitive Linguistics, Digital Media applied to the Performing Arts and Computer Science. The project also hosts several freelance collaborators and external service providers in the areas of graphic and web design, video, photography and software development, as well as international consultants in Digital Archiving and Intangible Cultural Heritage.
It has additional collaborators from: Interactive Multimedia Group at FCT-UNL; the Neuroscience Programme at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown; C-DaRE at Coventry University, UK; The Linguistics Centre of Universidade do Porto; and the Motion Bank Institute, Frankfurt.
Dance Data, Cognition, and Multimodal Communication (DDCMC19)
September 19-21, 2019
BlackBox Arts & Cognition final conference
Following the final conference of the BlackBox project, a new book has just been published with Routledge.
The volume is edited by Carla Fernandes, Vito Evola and Cláudia Ribeiro, and covers the best peer-reviewed papers of the conference, including the main results of BlackBox.
Upon invitation of Professor Carla Fernandes, coordinator of the Blackbox project, choreographer Thembi Rosa, from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, will direct next Friday, July 26, the workshop Parquear Bando, at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences - New University of Lisbon.
Professor Carla Fernandes, Principal Investigator of BlackBox project, was invited to participate at the Motion Bank Lab Brazil, taking place at Sesc Palladium in Belo Horizonte, from the 1st to the 5th of May.
