Wave Rope: Expanded Digital Film Performance

A digital expanded film performance at the Cube Cinema, Bristol, UK. The performance consists of a film of a wave form created by children using a spinning rope machine. This was projected onto a specially fabricated 'peppers ghost' screen at the front of the stage. Behind the screen two performers manipulated a rope that is visible through the translucent projection screen. Sound was produced using the amplified sound of a spinning rope. The piece explored how playful use of asynchronous rope spinning by the children with the machine, and by the professional adult performers produced continuously changing complex wave forms. Research in early years science education has highlighted the value of inquiry-based and experiential learning approaches that allow children to investigate physical phenomena through play and exploration (Marian & Jackson, 2017; Gatt, 2023). This performance extends that educational inquiry into an artistic context, revealing how playful encounters with physics can produce both scientific insight and creative expression through experimentation in the physics potentials of the materials they engage with. Part of a research portfolio in early years children experimental learning in physics and slow motion video.