Another Language Performing Arts Company and the University of Utah Center for High Performance Computing presented the fourth InterPlay performance Dancing on the Banks of Packet Creek, conceived by Elizabeth and Jimmy Miklavcic and directed by Jimmy Miklavcic, on March 31 - April 2, 2006. InterPlay is a multimedia, multi-artist, telematic, and collaborative art form that is performed and transmitted over Internet 2 utilizing Access Grid technology. Invited national and international institutions, artists, scientists and technologists collaborate and participate with Another Language in the InterPlay form.

Dancing on the Banks of Packet Creek is an exploration into the tenuous devotion that we have towards the inundating wave of digital information and non-experiential knowledge. Packet Creek depicts the Internet with its flow of disassembled pieces of data that course throughout the world like schools of spawning salmon. Dancing on the Banks is our ritualistic gyrations that we express as we create, disseminate, search, and acquire this electronic epistemological knowledge.

Using the metaphor of fluid motion and dynamics we portrayed the immense amount of this non-experiential knowledge and the influence that it has on us. The expansive range between truth and fiction or frivolity and importance are just some creative investigations and artistic expressions that were explored through music, dance, video, computer graphics and remote motion capture MIDI control.

Dancing on the Banks of Packet Creek was an exciting blend of images and sounds using the Access Grid Video Conferencing Technology into a real-time collaborative surrealistic cinematic performance. Local live performers were joined in this performance with ArtGrid participants from the University of Utah, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Boston University, University of Maryland, and Purdue University. As an Internet2 member connected to the Abilene Network, the University of Utah provides the network infrastructure and computing facilities that make the InterPlay process possible.

The performance was viewed by our remote audience through the Access Grid in the Theater Venue of the ArtGrid Venue Server. Others were able to view the performance through QuickTime.