Dancing in The Streets

Interactive Kinetic Light Installation. 2005

Dancing in the Streets was KMA’s first interactive kinetic light installation. It was a work that came to life through the actions and reactions of its audience. Abstract, organic patterns appeared on the pavement after dark, inviting passers-by to come closer. As they did, their own movements began to influence what they saw — the projected light followed them, linked them to others, and pulled them into a relationship with the artwork that invited playfulness and creativity.

The installation sensed the heat of participants’ bodies and then projected the light source back onto those bodies in space. The interface was dependent upon people moving and interacting with both the light projections and each other. Dancing in the Streets invited users to improvise together as unselfconscious performers within the urban landscape.

The work premiered in 2005 in York, UK, and ran for three months. In 2006 the installation was shown at the Esterni Festival in Italy. In both cases, for the duration of the installation, the spaces used became a new meeting point for participants, a place of gathering where the urban community was reaffirmed through engagement via embodied rather than verbal discourse.

2006 Esterni Festival, Terni, Umbria, Italy

2005 Illuminating York Festival, York, UK.