Image credit: Scylla Systerm (v.1) 2024 Photo: Todd Collins Performers: Soph Cardinal, Grace Hurley Hayes-Christensen Theatre, Marriott Center for Dance, University of Utah
At SIGGRAPH 2025, “The Scylla System” emerged as a striking example of how performance, technology, and space can converge to create new forms of storytelling. Presented as part of the inaugural Spatial Storytelling program, the work brings dancers and drones into a shared performance environment. To learn more about the creative process behind the project, we sat down with the contributors to discuss their project and the future of Spatial Storytelling.
SIGGRAPH: How do you approach designing movement or interaction when both the human and the machine are shaping the moment?
Eric Handman (EH): Zach Duer, Scotty Hardwig (both from Virginia Tech), and I started with the drone choreography. We talked about creating situations for dancers to improvise within. The task was finding a way that dancers and drones could influence each other. We had to find the right physicality for what we were trying to do. And the physical “signature” of the dance had everything to do with the creative team. Scotty brings some very unique training in low-to-ground movement and evasive, adaptive action. Scylla System involves 10 drones that share a performance space with five dancers. At times, the drones were choreographed to move quickly and unpredictably. So, we knew we had to train dancers to avoid them in ways that were both functional and artful. If it struck a dancer, the drone would fall to the ground and couldn’t fly again until the next calibration period. So, we developed an improvisational movement palette for dancers based on fast reflexes, evasion, omnidirectional awareness — running, dodging, diving, rolling, and crawling.
We needed strong improvisers with lots of multidimensionality in their spatial awareness. The drone choreography that Zach made was designed to create pressurized situations for the dancers to adapt. We were creating a theatrical experience based on the dancers’ reactions to the drones. When we discovered that we could influence the drones by moving a hand under their infrared sensor, that taught us how the dancers could interact with them. That discovery changed everything.
We wanted improvisors because seeing changes and new choices in every performance is exciting, alive, and risky. And because the dancers made different choices every night, they became a bigger uncertainty for each other than the drones. From the audience’s point of view, the drones look like the biggest hazard to the dancers’ safety. From the dancers’ perspective, it’s the other cast members and the new choices they were making night after night that were the biggest uncertainty. The dancers’ training had to address the high degree of complexity and unpredictability onstage. The pressures of each section in the dance, coupled with a unique training regimen, informed the overall look and urgency of the dance.
Zach Duer (ZD): I did a lot of the software side of things for this piece, creating flight paths and managing the drones. When choreographing the drones, we were creating an energetic dynamic that the dancers would react to, and in turn something that would react to the dancers (even with the limited sensing capabilities of the drones in this piece). When we were creating the flight paths, we were thinking less about making pretty patterns and more about how the drones gave structure and energy to a space that would be shared with the human performers. Timing, speed, and proximity are incredibly important, and there’s only so much of that you can perceive from a preview on a computer screen.
We constantly went back and forth between building a drone system or drone flight path and then testing it out in the performance space with the dancers to see how it felt and how the dancers naturally reacted to it. Do they duck, confront, circle, or reach out? What affordances do the dancers and drones give each other? Then we would take that back to the software, make adjustments to what we had, and try something new to see how it pushes the dancers in new directions.
SIGGRAPH: What has working with drones revealed about space, improvisation, or storytelling that surprised you?
Scotty Hardwig (SH): I think we found that creating a concert dance with a fleet of autonomous flying objects is a new kind of choreographic experience. It really made us think about the different aesthetic options in a dance piece, for sure, but also about how our studio training prepares us for highly unpredictable environments. How does a room full of flying objects change the ways we are moving, and how do we coordinate or adapt our bodies and sensory systems to accommodate a space that is constantly shifting or flexing in multiple directions at once? We have to be pluripotent and omnidirectional, a bit like the way birds or fish orient themselves in relationship to a flock in the sphericality of air or water.
EH: Working with drones allowed us to choreograph the open air above the dancers. Usually, dancers have great 360-degree situational awareness, but typically all dancing happens on the floor. Now the dancers had to be aware of drones above them as well as around them. One of our rules was “mind the drones you don’t see.” Omnidirectional awareness was crucial.
My sense of storytelling here is totally dependent on the illusion of machine life, and human responses to it. Creating a cycle of responses between dancers and drones was key to sparking moving action-images of mutual interest. We were just setting up situations between the dancers and the drones, and trying to organize them in a logical, developmental, theatrical arc. Some situations showcase curiosity as the dominant state. Other situations look like a competition over space. When we see people coping with risk and escalating pressure, I think it makes us project meaning, character, and stakes into the scene.
SIGGRAPH: How do you hope audiences will experience or interpret the relationship between technology and performance in this piece?
EH: I try to create the kind of work I want to see. And I’m a stand-in for the audience. I need to try to see each situation with fresh eyes and be my own harshest critic. And if I can sustain a sense of wonder for myself, then we may be close to providing something intriguing for the audience. It’s about sustaining states of tension, risk, uncanniness, and wonder that build over time. Choreography and storytelling both rely on change for the experience of development. Agents that move, and the quality of their action, are what I have to work with as a choreographer. When a dancer can produce a change in a drone that’s unprogrammed, it seems like the dancer is acting and the drone is reacting — or choosing. When both appear to show interest and make choices, that suggests they both have minds. These situations are mysterious because we never tell the audience if the drones are programmed or piloted by someone they never see. That’s an uncanny state, and may be enough to start asking, “What’s going on here?”
ZD: I’m really interested in how narratives emerge from systems. How do we interpret complex interactions between agents (human and robotic)? If we as artists give those interactions a little nudge by creating a structure that changes the system over time, a story emerges. I think the story for this piece became about the human and robot (which is the “other” here) discovering each other, confronting each other, and finally finding room for mutual habitation.
SH: In the drone work we’ve done together, now spanning multiple years and two separate full works, the human-machine relationship seems to oscillate between several modes. Sometimes, the movement of the drones is unidirectionally influencing or downright dictating the human response — let’s call this the “dystopian” relationship, where human behavior is dominated by the medium. At other moments, we figured out ways of having a sort of conversation or a “reciprocal feedback loop,” where the human performer makes a decision that influences the machine, which then creates its own response that in turn influences the performer. The last kind, on the other end of the spectrum, is where the human is directly manipulating, juggling, pushing, or otherwise controlling the machine — a bit like robotic puppetry. So we have the whole spectrum to work with, and the interplay between these relationships is where we enter the storytelling space — what is this relationship, and how is it emerging?
SIGGRAPH: What advice would you share with artists or technologists interested in exploring autonomous systems in live performance?
EH: Get dancers, performers, or athletes who are practiced with fast-changing and unpredictable situations. Degrees of reflexive speed can be a safety issue. I think some kind of background that involves physical improvisation is very helpful. Create real interactions. Listen to what the performers need so they can do their best work. Be open to the creative potential of accidents, actions, images, and ideas that you didn’t anticipate. Stress the systems to see their limitations and possibilities. Limitations are a great source of creativity. Limitations force you to solve problems, and they will be essential to the identity of the art. Use your drone situations to create problems for the performers to solve. Balance creativity and ethics. Risk is necessary. Harm is not.
SH: Imagination is key. There’s a material system you’re working with, whether that’s a physical drone or a robot of some kind, and it was built for a particular purpose. But what’s invisible about it? What relationships or energetic connections could it make that have a sense of magic, mystery, or wonder? If it was a ritual object, what sort of ritual would it be a part of? If it was a mythical entity, how would it communicate with us humans, and what does it think of us? If art is a simulation of reality, what or who are the actors, and what are they simulating?
ZD: Two things. First, build on the idiosyncrasies of whatever technology you’re working with. Let the technology work idiomatically to its nature, rather than pushing it into a preconceived concept. Experiment and play with it and let the artwork arise from that play. The systems of the technology are full of narrative potential if you tease it out.
Second, figuring out a creative workflow is a challenge when you’re going back and forth between dance and computer software. They’re both creative, but the energy is so different. At minimum, be prepared for an odd cadence because it’s hard for the dancers to stay warm, energized, and focused when every other hour is spent hunched over a computer. As much as possible, when it’s time to practice with the drones, get away from the computer and be in the space in the moment and react to what’s going on physically, taking notes about the ideas and emotions that arise. Then the bulk of that software development can happen when other folks aren’t sitting around waiting. And if you are developing live in the rehearsal space, project it onto a big screen so everyone can react to and participate in what’s going on in the software more easily. That’s something we didn’t do that I think would have helped our process a lot.
SIGGRAPH: What excited you most about contributing to SIGGRAPH’s first Spatial Storytelling program?
EH: Thinking about our work as storytelling was really interesting. We didn’t set out to tell a story. We set out to see if we could create situations that had a certain mood and intensity to them. We tend to come at “story” obliquely. We find clues along the way. The work may arouse narrative cognition because we create relational situations. We were exploring the theatrical potential of physics in these situations — timing, spacing, acceleration. And then our choreographic thinking kicks in: repetition, change, and mutual attention. Space and time are basic resources in time-based arts like dance. Compressing or restricting time and space creates pressure. How are the dancers going to deal with those pressures? What’s going to happen next? This is all happening to music (created by Scotty Hardwig), which changes the audience’s state and informs them of the perspective. Out of this gestalt of variables, a theatrical kind of experience emerges that hopefully seems both coherent and inevitable.
ZD: It was so fun to see the other work presented. Lots of people are asking similar questions, and I enjoyed learning about their creative processes.
SIGGRAPH: What conversations do you hope this piece sparks within the SIGGRAPH community?
EH: To create art by bringing together drone flight paths and human physical responses is still extremely compelling to me, and I feel like there’s a lot of work we could still do. There is a conversation about ethics, safety, and preparation to be had about robotic devices and human bodies moving together in proximity. What does dance bring to this conversation? Knowledge about embodiment, movement, interdisciplinary collaboration, communication, teamwork, agency, and the power of aesthetic wonder to get people into a curious and receptive state.
Inspired by The Scylla System? Spatial Storytelling is just getting started. Submit your work to the Spatial Storytelling program and join artists, technologists, and researchers shaping new forms of narrative and performance. We’ll see you 19-23 July in Los Angeles for SIGGRAPH 2026, where stories move beyond the screen.
Eric Handman is a choreographer and an Associate Professor at the University of Utah’s School of Dance. He earned a BA in English from Skidmore College in 1991, danced professionally in New York City during the 90s and graduated with his MFA from the University of Utah in 2003. He served on the editorial board for the Alliance for the Arts in Research Institutions (a2ru) and on the board of directors for SALT Contemporary Dance. Handman is a Fulbright Specialist and a former member of the University of Utah’s Entrepreneurial Faculty Scholars. He is a winner of the New Visions Choreography Competition for Idaho Dance Theater and the Northwest Dance Project’s International Choreographic Competition. His ongoing research focuses on Choreographic Thinking as applied to live dance, virtual reality, games, and drones. His practice-based research on dancer-drone interactivity in performance had received support from the Office of the Vice President for Research, The Marriott Library Office for Digital Matters, and the Council of Dee Fellows. He has been a Celebrate U honoree for his research in choreography and virtual reality and a recipient of the College of Fine Arts Faculty Excellence Award for research.
Zach Duer is an educator and artist. He is an Associate Professor teaching in the Creative Technologies Program in the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. His work lies at a series of intersections: sound and visualization; careful composition and improvised performance; intuitive musical spontaneity and structured digital systems. Spanning media including fixed-media sound and video collage, improvised multimedia performance, immersive environments, and projection mapped and 3D-printed sculpture, his works have been shown internationally. He holds an MFA in Kinetic Imaging from Virginia Commonwealth University (2014), an MA in Music Composition from Mills College (2009) and a BM in Music Composition from Minnesota State University Moorhead (2007).
Scotty Hardwig is a somatic artist and teacher born and currently based in the Appalachian mountains of southwest Virginia whose work blends artistic, scientific and humanistic approaches to the body. His training as a professional dancer and performer has spanned a wide breadth of physical studies and movement philosophies, including kunga and ashtanga yoga, Gyrotonic/Gyrokinesis, capoeira, somatics, contact improvisation, movement meditation, anatomy, and kinesiology. His creative research projects emerge from the confluence of choreographic art and sensorial media, placing the body between the environment and human technology. His award-winning dance works have been called “dance science fiction” (National Public Radio/NPR) and “beautiful and eerie” (New York Times), and his projects blend multiple forms of performance from stage to screen. His past artistic and scientific projects span a diverse range of interdisciplinary methodologies and technologies, including motion capture and projection mapping for live performance, dances in virtual reality, multi-continent telematic performances, teleoperated robots and unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), and live electroencephalography to visualize the brain activity of dancers during varied embodied states. In addition to being a choreographer and somatic researcher, he is also an internationally award-winning dance filmmaker, and his screendances have been shown at film festivals in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
As the co-director of the Science & Art of Motion Lab within the Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology (ICAT) at Virginia Tech, he works collaboratively with neuroscientists and biomedical engineers to investigate the effects of movement on the human brain and to invent and experiment with innovative training and intervention systems for injury prevention and sustainable practices for dancers and athletes. As an educator, he teaches classes and open workshops in dance, choreography, and media arts in the United States and internationally. He has formerly served on the dance faculty at the University of Utah and Middlebury College, and has given guest workshops at institutions such as the University of Panamá, the Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlán (EPDM), Smith College, Amherst College, and the School of Contemporary Dance and Thought. He received his MFA in contemporary dance from the University of Utah, and currently serves as an Associate Professor at the Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts.
