On Tracking / Dancing Piano II
Prof. Dr. Daniel D. Hromada · Christian Schmidts
d_ @udk.ai · chr_ @udk.ai
Seminar, English, 4 ECTS, 4 SWS
First session: Thu 15 Oct 2026, 15:00
Thu 15:00–16:15 · Room R310
Thu 16:30–18:00 · Gallery
UdK Medienhaus · Grunewaldstraße 2–5

If you are interested in participating, please contact chr_ @udk.ai und d_ @udk.ai or simply come to the first session.

A piano turns the movement of fingers into sound. What if whole bodies, a room or people moving together could become such an instrument? The seminar brings dance, sound and media into dialogue, exploring how tracking changes the way movement is heard, seen and experienced. Translating movement into data, sound and visual material involves choices about which aspects of the dance we attend to and how we interpret them. Such choices are never neutral. Systems built to monitor, measure and optimise bodies tend to privilege certain bodies and ways of moving while misreading or overlooking others. We treat these limits as artistic material, asking whose movement counts, who is reading whom, and what becomes possible beyond measurement. Working mainly in small groups, participants develop their own projects through practice-based artistic research, guided by their questions and artistic practices. Movement, literature or societal questions can provide starting points, with playful exploration, improvisation and critical reflection informing the process. Outcomes might be interactive instruments, choreographic studies, installations or performances, including works that question how bodies are tracked and represented. Motion sensors, cameras, mixed-reality headsets, real-time 3D and AI are introduced as projects need them, and input from dance studies, media theory and body politics supports the work. Work in progress is shared, tested and developed through mutual feedback. Dancers, choreographers and students from music, media, design and other fields are welcome, with different bodies, abilities and ways of moving. No technical background is needed, only curiosity and a willingness to experiment and share your practice.

The seminar is part of MIDAP – Multisensory in Dialogue and Artistic Practice, a collaboration between UdK Berlin and Folkwang University of the Arts exploring how embodied practices and digital technologies shape artistic learning across physical and virtual spaces. The seminar includes dialogue and artistic exchange with participants from Folkwang.

Daniel Devatman Hromada is since August 2018 UdK’s Juniorprofessor for Digital Education at the Einstein Center for Digital Future. Born in 1982 in Bratislava, he holds bachelor degrees in humanities from Charles University (Prague) and linguistics from University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis; a master degree in artificial and natural cognition from Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris). In 2016, a successful defense of his Thesis “Evolutionary models of ontogeny of linguistic categories”, entitled Daniel to carry a double doctorate from both Slovak Technical University (cybernetics) as well as University Paris 8 – Lumieres (psychology). Father of two children, he is a founder and first senator of oldest Slovak digital community kyberia.sk.

In the majority of his publications, Daniel Hromada addresses topics as diverse as natural language processing, developmental linguistics, computer vision, semantic vector spaces, machine learning, evolutionary computation, computational rhetoric, narrative enrichment, roboethics and machine morality. His main design project at UdK/ECDF is the construction of a ‘digital Fibel’, that is, a speech-based, book-like digital artifact for cognitive enhancement of 7-10 year old children.

Christian Schmidts is a Transylvania-born, Berlin-based designer, artist, and educator whose practice moves across architecture, media art, and research. He has worked across architectural practice, artistic production, and academic research, including many years as a research assistant in the Department of Digital and Experimental Design at the Berlin University of the Arts. His work engages with the conceptual and spatial potentials of computational design, focusing on how real-time environments, game engines, and machine learning influence performance and human–machine interaction. Christian has also contributed to research on integrating mycelium-based composite materials into computational fabrication processes, exploring sustainable approaches within architecture. He is involved in the interdisciplinary Master’s program Design & Computation, jointly run by the Berlin University of the Arts and the Technical University of Berlin, which investigates the changing relationship between technology and society.