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Dean Rodney Singers

<29> The Dean Rodney Singers was an exhibition commissioned by the Paralympics Unlimited Festival, as part of Cultural Olympiad of London 2012. The exhibition was designed with, and about, an international group of singers with disabilities. In one of our impact case studies, we describe this work in terms of its impact on the singers and the audience. Here, we are interested in the designed artefacts as computational interactive artworks and the design process as participatory research. Grierson’s research process in participatory user-centered design stretches back much further than the commission. It begins with work with an SEN school, designing enabling systems in collaboration with children with disabilities. Grierson ran workshops in schools with children over a period of three years. Prototype interaction systems were iterated until users could perform tasks easily. Algorithms for pitch, event and gesture recognition were created and refined based on user interaction. One innovation was to use iOS device sensors to interpret movement data directly from participant’s existing wheelchair interfaces.

When Grierson came to the Paralympics installation, he continued the methods and adapted the technologies. The wheelchair controllers developed with the schools, for example, were adapted to make controllers for music-making devices. The design method again involved working collaboratively, this time with Dean Rodney, an autistic singer. Rodney created sounds that were then manipulated by 72 international artists with disabilities, leading to a final mix. Grierson, working directly with Rodney and with the Creative Arts Company Heart ‘n Soul, created a series of playful interactive systems that represented aspects of Rodney’s world view. Visitors entered the world of the Dean Rodney singers virtually, interacting with a series of installations from retro-style computer games to full-body interactions in which visitors’ dance movements were recorded and automatically uploaded to the Dean Rodney Singers YouTube channel.