Research notes for project planning
What the project record tells us
Interactive dance work with documented museum installations in three U.S. cities.
Visitors dance with their delayed images
VJYourself! turns a visitor’s movement into material for an interactive dance installation. Playmodes’ real-time software, developed with OpenFrameworks, repeats and rearranges the participant’s earlier images so that people appear to dance with versions of themselves. The studio documents permanent installations at WNDR Museum in Chicago and Hopscotch in Portland and San Antonio. For a new venue, a planning brief should ask how the capture area, display position and waiting audience will be arranged so that each participant understands where the interaction begins and can move freely.
Playmodes — VJYourself! ↗ · Reviewed 2026-10-10
For your project briefHow will the capture area, display and waiting audience be arranged around active participants?
Big Art Partners planning prompt September 2018 Life is Beautiful festival premiere, Las Vegas.
A festival passage doubles as an instrument
Beams premiered at Las Vegas’s Life is Beautiful festival in September 2018 as a hundred-meter passage between music stages. The documented system used sixty-four moving lights, sixty-four illuminated columns and thirty-two speakers, with sound oscillators linked to the lights’ behavior. Operators could sequence the unified audiovisual instrument or play it live from a control booth. A festival planner should ask how the corridor’s through-traffic, nearby stages and performance schedule would share the space, including who operates the work when live control is part of the program.
Playmodes — Beams ↗ · Reviewed 2026-10-10
For your project briefHow will through-traffic, neighboring stages and live operation share the audiovisual corridor?
Big Art Partners planning prompt Published adaptable outdoor installation plan; requirements belong to this document’s configuration.
Nighttime adjustment is part of the production plan
HORIZON’s published technical document makes ambient conditions part of its installation requirements: the work needs a dark outdoor space, followed by at least a full day and night for sound and light adjustment once equipment is installed. Its example configuration combines an LED screen, distributed lighting and multichannel sound, while explicitly allowing dimensions and quantities to change with the site. A host should ask which items the venue supplies, when nighttime testing can occur and how nearby occupants will be informed about the planned sound environment.
Playmodes — HORIZON technical document ↗ · Reviewed 2026-10-10
For your project briefWho supplies each system, when can nighttime testing occur, and how will sound affect nearby occupants?
Big Art Partners planning prompt 
