Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Visualization through Interpretive Dance
Visualizations of all kinds are becoming a new literacy for understanding data, from crocheted coral reefs to tag clouds to digital heat maps. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. A friend just sent me this amazing video directed by Robert Alan Weiss for Stanford's Department of Chemistry in 1971. It's an interpretive dance re-enactment of protein synthesis called "Protein Synthesis: An Epic on a Cellular Level," filmed on Stanford's campus. It falls somewhere between a Kesey Acid Test and "Jesus Christ Superstar," and while it is very much a blast from the past, the video is still shown to students today. In 2006, students at Kenyon College re-enacted the dance to dedicate their new athletic center.
In jest, I often suggest we use interpretive dance as a presentation format at our conferences, but after watching this, maybe we should. It's absurd but there is something to be said for entertainment as a way to make facts about systems and processes stick. It's like acid meets smart mob and science.
The narrator in the beginning is 1980 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry,
Paul Berg. And yes, the narration is a science-fied version of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky."