Landing Place (video installation version)
Watch here
A visual summary of the motion capture based passages developed for the 2005 dance performance project with the Bebe Miller Company. Exploring the theme of arriving and finding connection or perspective in an unfamiliar place, this three-year long exploration of motion capture technology at ACCAD's new mocap studio seeked to understand what mocap has to offer to the contemporary dance practice, what opportunities are there for revealing the invisible, what is granted by abstracting movement, stripping away elements of weight and identity.
In Bebe's words: Landing/Place concerns the impact of the unfamiliar alongside the everyday (picture any collision of images that tells you you’re not at home). One’s presence in a known landscape is a kind of self-portrait, and the lively exchange of competing ideas of “place” is at the heart of our social interaction. With dance for the camera, interactive digital media and live performance, Landing/Place explores sensory, spatial and cultural dislocation (is there an emotional experience that can be quantified? Is there a technology in how I see what I see?); the yearning towards order in the apprehension of difference.
This project allowed me to begin approaching mocap data as a found object of sorts rather than a driver of virtual characters, that can be manifested in multiple types of virtual embodiment and creative visualizations.
Watch a short and extended standalone versions. Other variations have been exhibited in Dance Theater Workshop gallery (NYC), OSU Thompson Library ( Columbus OH), and Urban Arts Space (Columbus, OH) between 2005-2010.
Tech Notes: mocap, Maya, Filmbox (Ha!) turning into Motionbuilder, strange birds like Vicon IQ and Diva.