Who is CirqueIT?

Artistry through dynamic integration of technology, spectacle, and circus.

Examples of previous works using interactive and responsive technology within movement disciplines by CirqueIT. From left to right: HAND★CS (2024), a handstand-based interface for music and light; SALTO (2017), a MYO Armband-based input device for trapeze artists; The Box (2015-2020), a sensor-augmented wooden box created for general movement arts; Strings Attached (2015), a stretch-sensor-based input device for dance.

When we ask people what comes to mind when they think of "circus," we usually get answers like "clowns" or "animals" or "childhood fun." The average person is unfamiliar with the modern realities of circus, both in its traditional and contemporary forms, and they definitely do not think of technology of any kind. As artist-technologists ourselves, we believe there is significant untapped potential in the merging of circus with interactive and responsive technology, and so CirqueIT was born.

The CirqueIT elevator pitch

CirqueIT is a contemporary circus collective founded by Linnea Kirby and Christiana Rose with the aim of meaningfully merging technology with circus, keeping in mind circus's unique blend of both spectacle and artistry. We create full length productions and installations as well as lectures, demonstrations, and workshops. In our shows, we strive to explore the relationships between people and technology with a focus on using responsive apparatuses and environments to expose information that is normally hidden within performance. We are interested in making the ordinary extraordinary through clever, subtle, and deliberate attention to the integration of movement, music, interactive technology, and light.

Why circus arts?

We were both introduced to circus arts through OCircus!, Oberlin College's student-run circus, and it was love at first somersault. The circus umbrella is vast and nebulous: anything can be circus, from classic gymnastic acrobatics to trick bicycling to just being really good at balancing things. Circus arts also afford a range of possible storytelling: you can tell a narrative or explore a concept or a mixture of both. Circus arts are expansive and adaptable and often push boundaries by exploring the unexplored.

Why add interactive and responsive technology?

There is a lot of information hidden from audiences within performance; movement artists spend years training and honing their skills in attempts to make movements look effortless. While expanding the artists' skill sets and fluidity of artistic expression, this additional grace ends up masking from the audience the effort required of the performer as well as the difficulty differentiation from trick to trick. Even when a trick is missed on the first attempt, it was most likely done purposefully; there are hours of training, thought and choreography to make even the “failure” seamless.

Furthermore, circus shows are already imbued with significant technical elements, which are usually designed to hide their complexity from the audience. There is a lot of hidden engineering and innovation behind apparatuses, rigging, lighting, and sound systems, and even the traditional circus tent requires technical finesse to construct.

Circus offers so many opportunities to engage interactive and responsive technology. Beyond the stage, the entire space can become a playground for these technologies and many are already even embedded within larger-scale productions (consider Cirque du Soleil's repertoire). Circus is dynamic and such needs technology that can respond and interact dynamically.

What is the difference between interactive and responsive technologies?

While similar, there is a significant distinction between interactive and responsive technology. Interactive technology waits for (as the name suggests) an interaction, such as through pushing a button or flipping a switch or touching a specific area. Responsive technology will actively modulate events within a space through sensors, as a sort of dialogue with the performer. Both can be highly effective within a circus context.

Interactive technology can allow performers to cue themselves through the show by triggering effects to progress to the next section. Responsive technologies can provide playful environments or places to explore. A responsive element opens elements of improvisation and a different kind of risk and vulnerability.

So how exactly does CirqueIT combine the two?

CirqueIT strives to combine interactive and responsive technologies within their designs and performances. Some interfaces are interactive — where a certain action triggers lights or a specific sound — but due to the live nature of circus, elements of the expressive output become responsive. The mapping shifts or the same sensor data yields the same output but the movement could have been entirely different creating a different context to relate the mediums expressed.

CirqueIT crafts our interactions and responses to bring attention and focus to moments or elements hidden and disguised to audiences. We often use light and sound to show when there is more difficulty or effort in skill versus something simpler that somehow always garners applause. We’re interested in bringing the audience in.

In append we explored interactive technology through two sensor based interfaces. One used stretch sensors to adjust the playback speed of the audio and act as a calibration moment to visually and sonically demonstrate the interactive technology within the show. The second was a box with force resistive sensors that were mapped to granular synthesis and stereo panning. These elements created an interactive space to improvise with movement: when a performer's hands or feet applied pressure, the sound changed instantly. More specifically, when pressure was applied, the audio crackled and fuzzed, like tuning through radio stations; when pressure was released, the sound “landed” in different sonic spaces.

With SALTO, the IMU and muscle sensor data was mapped in several ways sonically to highlight effort during a dance trapeze performance. To remind the audience of the grip strength and constant effort even while setting up for a drop, the muscle sensors were almost always triggering percussive plinks. To highlight that visually impressive skills do not always require more effort, audience-pleasing splits generated almost no sound. Contrarily, large drops activate the accelerometer and gyroscope sensors and create significant input, generating an electronic whirlwind of sound that cascades around the performer.

In one experiment called Inverted Narratives, we explored color tracking and machine learning in a more responsive approach to allow for more improvisational performances. The idea was to expand the input beyond just movement; here, costume and props could also influence sonic output through color tracking.

These explorations exemplify CirqueIT's philosophy regarding interactive and responsive technology and how we incorporate them in our work. In future posts we will dive deeper into the details of past works, current experiments, and future directions. There is still much to explore within the realm of interactive and responsive performing arts technology; this journey is one we find fascinating and we hope you will follow along with us.