dancing

A dancer takes the stage, melts to the ground, and then rises as a silhouette bathed in a downpour of digital light. This isn't a hallucination, but rather Apparition, an interactive light show by Austrian media artist Klaus Obermaier.

Built in collaboration with the Ars Electronica Futurelab, the Apparition project turns a dancer and his or her stage into a kinetic dance experience that overloads the senses. As the dancer flourishes, a camera-based motion tracking system monitors the subject's speed, direction, and intensity of movement.… Read more

Psy's smash hit got everyone doing the signature horsey dance. The Gangnam Style Dance Booth Hits app claims to let you paste your face on the South Korean singer, but never works. It won't let you create video thanks to dozens of pop-up ads that take over your screen.

Before you even finish looking at the app's privacy policy, it starts hitting you with ads for games. Any time you try to do anything else with the app, more pop-ups come flying at you. Once you finally make it to the app's welcome screen, it asks … Read more

Pick one: "Evolution of nanostructural architecture in 7000 series aluminum alloys during strengthening by age-hardening and severe plastic deformation," or "A super-alloy is born: The romantic revolution of Lightness & Strength." I'm betting you're going for the romantic revolution.

"A super-alloy is born" is the interpretive dance version of a Ph.D. thesis by Peter Liddicoat, a materials scientist at the University of Sydney in Australia. It's also the grand prize winner of Science magazine's Dance Your Ph.D. contest. The contest challenges Ph.D. students in the sciences to create interpretive dance videos to explain their theses.… Read more

LOS ANGELES--If you thought Microsoft's motion-sensing controllerless technology Kinect was going to take a back seat this year, you were wrong. In the minutes leading up to the press conference's start, I first noticed a trio of Kinect sensors slyly facing the stage. It would be a telling premonition of what was in store for the world's fastest-selling electronic gadget.

But while Kinect has garnered more groans than praise in recent months, Microsoft's press conference demonstrated somewhat of a maturation for the motion-control initiative. Whereas Kinect functionality initially seemed forced upon software that didn't necessarily need it, a few interesting implementations may have skeptics turning into believers.… Read more

We're believers: WINTER IS COMING. Technically I guess it arrived a year ago, but Jeff and I are finally catching up to the "Game of Thrones" hype and spend the first few minutes of today's episode discussing the George R. R. Martin books and the anachronisms of the show.

The reviews are in for Microsoft Kinect Star Wars and nobody is impressed with the glitchy gameplay and a story that seems to appeal more to kids than fans of the original movies. With years of anticipation in the making, Jeff echoes the fans in the galaxy … Read more

If it's hard to imagine how a film with just three lines of dialogue (and in subtitles, no less) could leave you smiling so much your jaw hurts, then you haven't seen "Girl Walk // All Day."

The brainchild of filmmaker Jacob Krupnick, the movie is a 71-minute music video that showcases the joyous dancing of actress Anne Marsen and a few others to the frenetic (and admittedly often profane) mashups of the Girl Talk album "All Day."

It's a concept that doesn't readily lend itself to a feature-length movie, but in Krupnick'… Read more

The Xbox 360 is still scoring big amidst a slump in overall gaming sales.

Microsoft's hot gaming console was the best-selling platform in the U.S. in January, its 13th month in a row at the top of the charts, NPD Group said yesterday.

For January, Microsoft sold 270,000 Xbox 360s,  grabbing 49 percent of the console market last month. The Xbox accounted for $310 million in total sales (hardware, software, and accessories), the highest number for any console in the U.S. January also marked the 11th month in a row in which the Xbox grabbed … Read more

LAS VEGAS--It's a big day for The 404 as we welcome two big Hollywood names to the CES stage--Eliza Dushku and Wayne Brady drop by for a chat about video games, robots, gadgets, and more!

It's not every day that The 404 is lucky enough to have one big name celebrity guest on the show, much less two in one episode! We've been waiting all week to chat with Eliza Dushku about her official duties as the official Entertainment Matters Ambassador for CES 2012, which sounds like a fun job!

She's been here hosting parties and covering the show all week, so we'll talk to her about the next wave of 3D televisions and her voice acting work in games like Fight Night Champion and WET, but we'd be doing our listeners and nerds everywhere a disservice if we didn't ask her about her involvement in role in Ghostbusters 3!… Read more

LAS VEGAS--She isn't wearing much. What she is wearing is shiny and silvery. She's dancing in front of you, though her heart doesn't seem to be in it.

It's 10.30 a.m. And yes, it is Vegas. And yes, it is CES 2012.

Every year, one imagines that there will be fewer dancing girls. Every year, one is entirely mistaken.

My first--but surely not my only--dancing girl sighting Monday morning was at the booth occupied by Vietnamese robotics company TOSY.

This is the company that tomorrow will bring attendees the rapturous glee of witnessing Justin … Read more