Screen Shot 2023-06-01 at 6.04.45 pm.png

Body
Here

About

Body Here is an app designed with and for artists with intellectual disabilities and can be run with a computer or tablet.

It is for artists who work with movement and dance. It also helps artists connect and collaborate from different locations.

Playing with the tool can encourage creativity, healthy motion and connecting with friends and other artists.

Body Here uses a web camera to show artists in a session of art-making or performance.

Effects can help dancing be even more expressive and fun. Some effects allow the artist to create a digital painting by moving or dancing.

Design

How was Body Here made?

A design-research team from RMIT University worked in a collaborative design process with Fog Theatre, a group with a long history of art-making and performance.

Our first sessions together for this project were during the lockdowns. Fog Theatre were separated physically, but meeting and collaborating with each other using Zoom. The RMIT team joined in on the sessions, to understand what worked well about the process and how the artists at Fog (aka “Foggies”) best like to be creative.

From early on, Foggies showed a love for colour. Because of this, sometimes we would imagine that we were painting with our bodies, or having colour move around our bodies.

When we first started to meet in person, we were excited to dance together. Again, the RMIT design team wanted to understand how Foggies best like to express themselves.

We played games, imagining what our app could do or look like.

The RMIT team made some prototypes: which were early versions of the app to see what might be useful.

Foggies moved and danced. We talked about what was fun and what was less fun. We dreamed up new ideas for the app.

The RMIT design team worked more on the prototypes, taking in what we had learned from our sessions together. Newer versions were brought to the Foggies for more play and testing.