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Emily Daub is fascinated by human interactions: How people change while in or out of relationships; how they value themselves in the context of their relationship status; how changes in relationships affect us; and how each relationship differs from another.聽

On May 4, Daub brings her fascination to life in an ambitious dance performance that features a wide spectrum of dance styles and handmade costumes equipped with embedded computational and wireless communications technologies.聽

Titled 鈥淭he Show,鈥� the performance is billed as a variety dance performance that 鈥渢ells the story of how we shape and mold others (and vice versa),鈥� writes Daub, who graduates in May with a bachelor鈥檚 degree from the ATLAS Institute鈥檚 Technology, Arts and Media (TAM) program, along with a minor in theatre and dance.聽

Masterminding both the art and engineering is a comfortable role for Daub, which strikes some as unusual. 鈥淚've almost always been an outlier,鈥� Daub says. 鈥淭AM fosters that spirit, allowing it to become an asset rather than a handicap.鈥�

Daub entered CU Boulder as a chemistry major with plans to attend medical school, but soon decided it wasn鈥檛 the right path for her. A member of the Fashion Design Student Association (FDSA), she found her way to the TAM program via the Makers Collective, another student group. 鈥淪omeone from the Makers Collective reached out with a project that involved inserting lights in clothing,鈥� says Daub. 鈥淭hat caught my interest.鈥澛�

She worked on a swing dance skirt, inserting an accelerometer and 70 LEDs in the hem and coding them so the LEDs would light when the wearer spun. Soon after, she became the president of the Makers Collective, and because club activities happened in the ATLAS Blow Things Up (BTU) Lab, she learned about the TAM program. Since then, she鈥檚 created more than 20 pieces of wearable technology of varying levels of complexity, 鈥淭he Show鈥� being her most ambitious project to date.聽

Daub says she couldn鈥檛 have reached this point without support, including funding from an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) grant which covered all the materials. And working under the mentorship of Ben Shapiro as a member of the ATLAS research group, The Laboratory for Playful Computation, meant she was surrounded by a group of supportive graduate students. 鈥淎nnie Kelly was so, so helpful,鈥� says Daub, referring to a PhD student in the lab.

鈥淭he Show鈥� has kept Daub busy since January, designing and sewing costumes, embedding microprocessors, sensors and NeoPixel LEDs, and programming each with unique light patterns that respond to movement and the wearer鈥檚 proximity to other dancers over time.聽

In addition, she鈥檚 encoded a matrix of affinities between dancers, so that when characters with mutual attraction dance together, light patterns in their costumes reflect the聽personal chemistry and gradually converge. At the same time, analogous changes take place in the pair's dance styles, Daub says.

While the technical side of her work tends to draw the most attention, Daub prefers to be known for her artistry in a more holistic sense. She鈥檚 choreographed 鈥淭he Show,鈥� and will perform alongside six other dancers, and she鈥檚 proud of her costumes and how the embedded technology looks and works. 鈥淗ow finished products look is very important to me,鈥� she says. 鈥淚've gotten to this point mostly because the things I make are beautiful and functional, not because they are technically complex,鈥� says Daub.聽

It鈥檚 the same way she鈥檚 always approached her projects, forming one coherent vision and then solving problems in order to realize it. 鈥淚鈥檓 motivated to achieve a specific outcome, not to just push my skills,鈥� she says.

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