Improgineering: improvisation and engineering come together on stage
EPFL students on stage at the Arsenic © Simon Henein, EPFL
24 students from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have presented an improvisation performance at the Arsenic Theater, Lausanne, Switzerland, as part of their final project for the course “Collective creation: improv-arts & engineering.”
“Collective creation: improv-arts & engineering” was developed by Professor Simon Henein from the School of Engineering, in cooperation with the Arsenic Theater (Centre d’art scénique contemporain) in Lausanne, Switzerland. The year-long course, which was launched in September 2017, is part of EPFL’s Social and Human Sciences (SHS) program. It introduces Master’s students from all sections to improvisation techniques used in the performing arts (theater, music and dance) and explores how these techniques can be applied to engineering design. The 24 students taking the class have staged their final project on 23 May before a board of examiners.
Each improvisation performance has featured technical artifacts made by the students. “This requirement creates tension between the creative processes involved in engineering and those inherent in improv,” says Professor Henein. “The aim is to highlight where they overlap and how they differ.” One example is the “stage machine” that one group of students came up with. Drawing on artificial intelligence and deep learning, the machine picks up sounds produced during the performance and turns them into images, and vice versa. The resulting layers of real-time visual and sound effects are part of the improvisation performance and evolve in step with it.
Teaming up with the Arsenic
Professor Henein worked with the Arsenic Theater in Lausanne to develop this course. Around a dozen scheduled artists and artists in residence supervised the students and provided them with creative support. The Arsenic also gave Henein and his class access to its studios throughout the course, which meant that the students could truly immerse themselves in the theater.
Engineering and improvisation
“Beyond engineering, I get the sense that people have a pressing need to understand their place in the world,” says Patrick de Rham, director of the Arsenic. “And with the emergence of artificial intelligence – machines that perform as well as or better than humans – I think we have to reconnect with our typically human trait of intuition, that part of ourselves that is subjective and sensitive rather than mechanical. It’s what makes two people come up with two different ideas and lets them think outside the box, and this is what drives society forward.”
Professor Henein adds: “Collectively, our creative potential is huge – much greater than that of each one of us individually – but to fully tap into it, we have to be able to create together. That's why this class delves so deeply into this skill, which will be crucial in the students’ future careers. We look at intuition, expression, listening, trust and self-reflection. The students are exposed to a wide range of approaches to the creative process, from the hard sciences to engineering and stage performance. All these influences will play a part in their professional work.”
Course description
“Collective creation: improv-arts & engineering” combines workshops, which explore improvisation through the theater, music, dance and performance art, and lectures, which address the history of creativity in the sciences, approaches to collective engineering design, dramaturgy and the sociology of improvisation. The course is the brainchild of Professor Henein, who runs the Instant-Lab at Microcity, EPFL’s Microengineering Institute, and has practiced improv for the past 15 years. It is open to all first-year Master’s students at EPFL.
