The Dancing Brain

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Part of Performing Place, The Dancing Brain combined hand gestures and rhythm with mind-controlled virtual robots to enable improved social interaction and coordination among young students and people with complex learning difficulties.

By transposing/translating /transcribing a message from the mind of one participant to the peers through movement, The Dancing Brain aimed to encourage young students that STEM is fun, and empower people with dementia to create a conversation and dialogue with their peers. This is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between Akademi and the Intelligent Mobility’s group/lab at UCL (IM @UCL).

Suba Subramaniam

Akademi are a dynamic and future-facing organisation, dedicated to redefining the parameters of south Asian dance as an art form. They create high impact arts programmes that promote physical and mental wellbeing for older adults, as well as creative learning and skills development for young people. Akademi’s artistic director Suba Subramaniam is a choreographer who has been navigating the confluence of science and dance for over 10 years creating national and international touring works in collaboration with scientists and health care professionals.

Dr Bani Anvari

Bani Anvari stands behind a young boy who is wearing a brain-monitoring headset and adjusts the wiring

Bani Anvari is a lecturer in Intelligent Mobility (IM) and director of IM Group/Lab at UCL’s Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE) department. Her interest is in investigating how intuitive, effective, and personalised feedback can be provided through intelligent and human-centric control systems and interfaces. Over the last 10 years, her research focus has been in Intelligent Mobility, with an emphasis on exploring driver and pedestrian interaction with future semi- and fully-autonomous vehicles, an area of application that can significantly benefit from Robotics and AI.

The Dancing Brain team stand together smiling in front of a concrete wall