Computers and Improvisation: Using the Visual Assistant for Teaching
Colin Beardon, Terry Enright · Digital Creativity · 1999
The Visual Assistant project is concerned with designing and implementing software that meets the needs of creative practice within theatre. As its name implies, it is concerned with visualisations and it aims to be easy to learn and easy to use, enabling theatre practitioners to produce sketches of visual ideas without the need for developed technical expertise. The paper describes four workshops that have been run as part of the software development process and which have served not only to improve the software but also clarify its relationship to practice. One important discovery has been the extent to which the medium can be used for exploration and improvisation. In this mode, the process of visual 'play' may be more important than the production of specific visual designs. The software may also be used in relation to specific set design, where it enables a large number of initial ideas to be explored without great cost. It was found that students adopted a number of distinct approaches to visualisation, even with this relatively simple tool. The next phase of the project will be to ensure that the output from this preliminary sketching tool can be input into a more sophisticated theatre modelling tool.