THE HISTORY OF MOTION RECORDING AND CAPTURE
CHOREO GRAPHICS
Master Thesis
NOÉMI ANNA ÖRDÖG
WS 2015
University of Applied Arts Vienna
Institute of Design
Graphic-Design Prof. Oliver Kartak
Supervision:
Univ.-Prof. Oliver Kartak
Mag.a. Katharina Uschan
Sabine Dreher
CONTENT
ABSTRACT
3
INTRODUCTION
4
THE HISTORY OF MOTION RECORDING AND CAPTURE
5-12
MOTION CAPTURE AND EXPERIMENTAL ART
13-15
THE PROJECT
16-20
BIBLIOGRAPHY
21
ABSTRACT
The greatest challenge in artistic research is to liberate different art forms of their natural or
traditional limitations and to attain a maximum of freedom for the creative mind. Dance is not
only limited in time and space but also closely related to the capabilities and physical boundaries
of the human body. The aim of the present thesis is to explore the ways how the relatively new
motion capture technology can liberate dance and free it from the prison of the human body.
Captured Motion is a project to explore the terrain of 3D animated choreography and its use in
theater.
Image 1: Xsens Motion Capture Suit (c. Xsens)
3
INTRODUCTION
Liberating art form its traditional limitations.
The greatest challenge in artistic research is to liberate different art forms of their natural or
traditional limitations and to attain a maximum of freedom for the creative mind. Technological
development makes it possible to push these limits ever further.
The visual arts are generally very limited in space but works using cinematic techniques, video
experiments or works using far-reaching light effects go beyond their traditional spatial limits.
The music piece having a beginning and an end, the limited time it takes music to unfold places
music in a situation different from that of traditional visual works. Being limited both in space and
time, we can consider music to be more handicapped in its freedom of expansion and conception
than the visual arts. However, contemporary technology enlarges its spatial field of action. Music
has been freed from the traditional spatial limits by sound recording and transmitting technology. The limitation in time can be eliminated by looping technology.
Dance is not only limited in time and space but also closely related to the capabilities and physical
boundaries of the human body. It is possible, within certain limits, to extend the limbs by ribbons,
veils or other dance accessories that enhance the visual effects of the movement but, in spite of
every effort, there will always remain strict limitations. The choreographer cannot stretch the resilience of the body. There are space segments that the dancer cannot enter. Bodies may collide
but cannot occupy the same space segment.
The aim of the thesis
The aim of my research is to explore the ways how the relatively new motion capture technology
can liberate dance and free it from the prison of the human body. Captured Motion is a project to
explore the terrain of 3D animated choreography and its use in theater. In the focus of my attention are those body movements and effects that would not be possible without this technology.
The recorded dance of a real dancer will be used to create projections in the dancing theater that
are coordinated with the choreography of the theater performance. Regarding that the framework of the master thesis does not allow for the realization of a theater play, the theater will be
built using the 3DS Max visualization software and the play is going to be simulated. The final
presentation would consist of a video projection and large printed images of stage design.
My intention is to explore the beauty of the rhythmic traces in space and time of a dancing human
body and to visualize the dance from a new perspective. The video created with the aid of a Motion Capture device and 3DS Max Software for visualization uses all those features that enable
the transformation of human movement into an abstract graphic representation.
Before writing in detail of the project I would like to give a brief summary about the history of
recording human motion. I am going to highlight some important moments of the long development process without trying to exhaust the topic. My aim is only to give a taste of the different
development stages.
4
THE HISTORY OF MOTION RECORDING AND CAPTURE
Basic issues
The need of recording human and animal motion arises from the huge contrast between the
insufficient capabilities of the human eye and the amazing capacities of the human brain. Thirty-thousandth of a second elapses between the moments when an image strikes our eye and
when it is consciously perceived. It seems to be a very short time but when this speed is compared to the swift and agile movement of animals, and when we are considering the need of a
continuous image processing than this performance proves to be poorer than expected. When a
mouse crosses nimbly our way we can sometimes not even say whether it was really a mouse
or something else. We may already have difficulty in recognizing the figure, not to mention our
incapability to discern small gestures or facial expressions of the mouse. Still there are situations when the lacking information about exact body positions during the movement causes
serious dilemmas. These are problems that artists had always to face when depicting for example hunting or fleeing animals. Before the invention of photographic techniques they could only
use the force of their imagination to decide, how the limbs are positioned at a certain moment
in time. The crux of the matter is that the human brain, in spite of the insufficient capacities of
the human eye, is very oft capable of recognizing whether the artist has mistakenly invented a
bodily position that never occurs in real life. The picture seems then to be unnatural and may
easily be categorized as mediocre.
Another field, where an exact analysis of the movement is needed, is related to accidents. The
designer of new vehicles has to know exactly what happens to the human body in the course of
an accident. This knowledge helps to improve the construction and to introduce the appropriate
safety measures.
The military is highly interested in motion capture technology as well. The analysis of body positions in time helps to assess the impact of weapons.
The precise analysis of motion sequences is very important in sport on the level of Olympic
Games. It helps to improve the performance of sportsmen and to judge the execution of an exercise as well.
Another vast filed that uses recorded motion is cinematography. Animated characters appeared
already in the 30’s, long before the actual 3D tools and motion capture devices were developed.
In order to achieve a more or less natural effect the film makers had to invent solutions to come
as near to the real movement of a human or an animal as it was possible on the level of the
technology of those days.
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THE HISTORY OF MOTION RECORDING AND CAPTURE
Eadweard Muybridge
The beginning of capturing human motion with photographic techniques goes back into the 19th
century. Eadweard Muybridge, known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion
and early work in motion-picture projection, was born in Kingston upon Thames and was leading
an adventurous life. He moved to America when he was 20 and for a while worked in New York
as a bookseller. After living in San Francisco in subsequent years, he returned to England in 1861
and took up professional photography. He learned the wet-plate collodion process, and held
a couple of British patents for his inventions. He returned to San Francisco again and his large
photographs of Yosemite Valley made him world famous in 1868, well before his famous motion
photographs. Muybridge took enormous physical risks to make these photographs.
Since the human eye unaided cannot resolve the details of fast motion, in the 1880s details of
how objects move were unknown. The railroad tycoon and Californian governor, Leland Stanford
hired Muybridge to photograph horses because he had made a bet that for a moment, all four
of a racehorse’s hooves are off the ground simultaneously, and he wanted to prove scientifically
his supposition. Muybridge began work in 1872. He set up a row of cameras with tripwires, each
of which would trigger a picture with a time difference of a split second as the horse ran by and
this way he managed to settle the debate. He proved that artists who depicted the horse all for
legs in the air but with the front legs extended forward and the hind legs extended to the rear
were wrong. There are really moments when all four hooves are off the ground but not when the
horse’s legs are extended to the front and back, as imagined by contemporary illustrators, but
when its legs are collected beneath its body.
Image 2: Eadweard Muybridge, The horse in motion (Wikimedia)
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THE HISTORY OF MOTION RECORDING AND CAPTURE
Later Muybridge worked with 12, 24 or 36 consecutive cameras to record human and animal motion. In 1879 he invented his Zoopraxiscope, a device that allowed for the presentation of the picture sequences as a motion movie. In the 1880s the University of Pennsylvania sponsored Muybridge’s research to photograph people in a studio and animals from the
Philadelphia Zoo to study their movement. The results were published in a groundbreaking
collection titled Animal Locomotion: an Electro-Photographic Investigation of Connective
Phases of Animal Movements.
Image 3: Eadweard Muybridge, Nude descending staircase (Wikimedia)
Étienne-Jules Marey
Muybridge’s contemporary, the French Étienne-Jules Marey had a completely different approach to photography. After studies at the École Polytechnique in Paris he studied medicine and became a physiologist. He had both scientific and technical talents and these
interests helped him to become a pioneer in establishing a variety of graphical techniques
for the display and interpretation of quantitative data from physiological measurement.
Marey’s interest was turned to blood circulation in the human body. To aid his studies he
developed an instrument for precise measurements and graphic representation of heart
beats and respiration. The Sphygmograph to measure the pulse was developed in 1859 in
collaboration with the physiologist Auguste Chauveau and the watch manufacturer Breguet.
He was fascinated both by movements of the air and the movement of the muscles and the
body. He began his activity in the field of animated photography by studying flying birds.
Marey’s revolutionary idea was to record several phases of movement on one photographic plate. His chronophotographic gun was invented in 1882.
7
THE HISTORY OF MOTION RECORDING AND CAPTURE
The device was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames every second and recording them on
the same surface. Using the photographic gun he studied the movement of birds, horses, donkeys, sheep, elephants, but also of fish, molluscs and microscopic creature. Marey also studied
human locomotion. He published his book Le Mouvement in 1894.
Towards the end of his life he dedicated himself to the observation and photography of smoke
trails. His smoke machine that was built in 1901 can be regarded as the precursor of wind tunnels to the purpose of studying the movement of air.
Image 4: Étienne-Jules Marey, running man (Wikimedia)
Thomas Eakins
The research into animal and human movement using a photographic method that was carried out by Muybridge and Marey influenced their contemporaries and artists of subsequent
generations as well. The American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator, Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins took interest in the new technologies of motion photography
and he came across Muybridge’s work in 1878. He was particularly impressed by the equine
studies. He introduced the camera to the art studio and began to study sequential movement.
He worked together with Muybridge for a brief period and developed his own technique for
capturing movement on film. Muybridge’s system consisted of a series of cameras triggered to
produce a sequence of individual photographs. Eakins on the contrary preferred to use a single
camera to produce a series of exposures superimposed on one negative. Eakins aim was to carry out precision measurements on a single image. These measurements served to translate a
motion into a painting.
In June 1879 Eakins began working on A May Morning in the Park (also The Fairman Rogers
Four-in-Hand). In this painting he applied for the first time the results of Muybridge’s equine
studies and depicted the gait of the horses correctly, which interestingly enough provoked serious criticism. It was perceived as a misrepresentation.
Even his attempt was criticised, to represent a passage which could not be seen with the human
eye.
8
THE HISTORY OF MOTION RECORDING AND CAPTURE
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp’s painting titled Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 from 1912 can be seen as
the next real leap in depicting motion. The work is widely acknowledged as a Modernist classic
and after initial rejection has become one of the most famous paintings of its time. It combines
elements of both the Cubist and Futurist movements. Duchamp himself admitted to have been
influenced by the stop-motion photography of Étienne-Jules Marey and Muybridge. Particularly Muybridge’s Woman Walking Downstairs from his 1887 picture series that was published in
the collection The Human Figure in Motion can be seen as his starting point.
Duchamp’s painting represents a figure composed of conical and cylindrical abstract elements
superimposed several times in different phases of the movement. The geometrical elements
are assembled together in such a way as to suggest rhythm and convey the sense of movement. The colouring of the subsequent phases suggests the passing of time. Traces of earlier
phases fade away.
After a rejection from the Salon des Independent in Paris Duchamp submitted the painting to
the 1913 Armory Show in New York City. It was mocked by art critics and caused quite a scandal
but became at the same time one of the best known paintings of his time.
Image 5: Eakins, A May Morning in the Park
(Wikimedia)
Image 6: Duchamp, Nude Descending a
Staircase, No. 2 (Wikimedia)
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THE HISTORY OF MOTION RECORDING AND CAPTURE
Giacomo Balla
A further interesting example of visualizing movement in a before unseen way can be found in
the Futurism movement. The futurists glorified movement, speed, technology, youth and violence in general.
One of Giacomo Balla’s best-known works, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912), shows an
overlayed frame-by-frame view, similar to stroboscopic motion photography, of a woman walking a dog on a boulevard. Balla takes the kind of subject that Impressionism had specialised in, a
street scene with bourgeois on the promenade, but he deals with the subject from a totally new
perspective. Even without the multiplication of limbs to create motion effects, there is something that’s novel. There aren’t many previous paintings that present us with such an abrupt
close-up. We get a ground-level perspective, the human world cut off at the knee.
The idea of breaking down a movement into separate positions wasn’t unknown to our ancestors but between medieval and modern art, the trick was kept out of painting. The figure
in Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing “Vitruvian Man” has four arms and four legs to demonstrate
how the human frame can be made to fit within both a circle and a square.. Since Muybidge’s
and Marey’s studies of locomotion, to show bodies multiplied and superimposed has become a
normal visual language to imply the sense of motion. However, Balla’s interpretation is special
and different from Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. The portrayal is similar to a
chronophotograph but, anticipating the characteristic movement of later cartoon figures, it suggests rather a frantic running on the spot. Limbs of the lady and the dog are multiplied to show
subsequent positions and indicating brisk walking but their bodies take one single position.
Image 7: Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (Wikimedia)
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THE HISTORY OF MOTION RECORDING AND CAPTURE
Character animation in animated motion pictures
Animated cartoon characters appeared already in the 30’s. To get convincing motion for the
characters the filmmakers had to come close to human motion. Walt Disney Productions’ first
animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs appeared in 1937. Hamilton Luske,
the supervising animator for Snow White’s character and co-animator Les Clark were tasked
with the challenge of making Snow White more believably human and realistic than any of the
Disney studio’s previous animated characters.
They used a method called rotoscoping. The technique was invented by cartoonist and illustrator Max Fleischer in 1915 and patented in 1917. Originally, recorded live-action film images
were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. Fleischer used this
technic in his technologically pioneering Out of the Inkwell animated series.
The technique of using live-action footage as a reference for character movements was used
extensively to bring Snow White’s character to life. Actors and actresses acted out scenes and
were filmed. The animators then used the individual frames as a guide to their drawings. The
shooting of the live-action footage was planned carefully, always with the idea in mind of how
it would be used in animation.
Image 8: Rotoscoping Snow White ( c. Walt Disney)
The use of motion capture for computer character animation began in the late 1970’s. Since
then it has been developed through a series of innovations and became widespread. Cartoon
characters are widely replaced by 3D animated characters but the main challenge is the same:
the characters have to move convincingly. In the late 1970’s, when it began to be feasible to
animate characters by computer, animators still adapted traditional techniques like rotoscoping. For example, Rebecca Allen used a half-silvered mirror to superimpose videotapes of real
dancers onto the computer screen to pose a computer generated dancer for Twyla Tharp’s “The
Catherine Wheel.” She generated keys for a smooth animation using these poses. This is not
an automatic but a painstaking manual process. It can be regarded as the precursor of motion
capture where the motion is ‘captured’ by hand.
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THE HISTORY OF MOTION RECORDING AND CAPTURE
In the 80s an innovation came from the biomechanics laboratory of the Simon Fraser University.
Professor of kinesiology and computer science Tom Calvert attached potentiometers to a body
and, after converting the analog output to a digital form, he used it to drive computer animated
figures for clinical assessment of movement abnormalities.
In the early 1980’s, both the MIT Architecture Machine Group and the New York Institute of
Technology Computer Graphics Lab experimented with optical tracking of the human body. Soon
commercial optical tracking systems such as the Op-Eye and SelSpot systems appeared.
Optical trackers use small markers attached to the body that can be either flashing LEDs or small
reflecting dots. Two or more cameras are focused on the performance space and pick out the
markers in each camera’s visual field. A combination of special hardware and software is used
to compare the images and calculate the position of each marker in space and time. The method
has some limitations. The number of trackers, the speed of the information processing and the
resolution of the cameras influence the quality of the resulting captured motion but neither of
them can be increased beyond certain level. Another problem is the eventual occlusion of the
markers by the body that can be partly overcome by the use of more cameras. Optical systems
require manual post-processing to recover trajectories when a marker is lost from view.
The control of facial expressions for animated characters was first developed in 1988 by the
deGraf/Wahrman Production Company for Silicon Graphics. They were hired to create a demonstration piece to highlight the performance of their new 4D model. “Mike the Talking Head” was
driven by a specially built controller that allowed a single puppeteer to control many parameters
of the character’s face, including mouth, eyes, expression, and head position.
Further developments made the creation of computer generated characters for games and
movies possible. Dozo, a non-real-time computer animation of a woman, was created by Jeff
Kleiser and Diana Walczak in 1989. Dozo was dancing in front of a microphone while singing a
song for a music video. Videosystem, a French video and computer graphics producer, created the first real-time character animation system. A character called Mat the Ghost was their
first success. Mat was a friendly green ghost that interacted with live actors and puppets on a
daily childrens’ show called Canaille Peluche. Today movies use extensively completely computer-generated creatures, such as Gollum, a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium
or many of the orcs and goblins in the 2012 film The Hobbit.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was the first widely released movie to be made primarily with
motion capture technology.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was the first feature film to utilize a real-time motion capture system. Nowadays motion capture is being used extensively to produce films with
nearly photorealistic digital character models.
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MOTION CAPTURE AND EXPERIMENTAL ART
The artist avant-garde is always on the look for something novel and is generally fascinated
by advanced technologies that may open untrodden fields of artistic research and bring brandnew topics in the discourse. The state-of-the-art Motion Capture Technology has already been
discovered by numerous artists, who began to explore the possibilities of its use in video installations. On the other hand it may be a challenge as well to discover old technology from a new
perspective. Its use may give a special touch to the artwork in times when the eye is already
used to the results of an existing advanced technology. The approaches are all astonishingly
different, which proves that the technology offers endless variations to be discovered. Without
trying to give a comprehensive picture I would like to mention some interesting examples.
Shinichi Maruyama is one of the artists who still experiments with motion capture through
photography. With his series titled Nude he tries to capture the beauty of both the human
body’s figure and its motion. By combining 10,000 individual photographs of a dancer the figure in the image is formed into something similar to a sculpture. The resulting image as a whole
will appear to be something different from what actually exists.
[http://www.shinichimaruyama.com/]
Image 10: Nude (c. Sinichi Maruyama)
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MOTION CAPTURE AND EXPERIMENTAL ART
Forms by Quayola & Memo Akten
The project titled Forms was commissioned by the National Media Museum that is situated
in the heart of Bradford UNESCO City of Film, for the In the Blink of an Eye Exhibition 2012, as
part of the Cultural Olympiad program. It was created in collaboration between visuals artists
Memo Akten and Quayola. The interactive multi-screen artwork presents a series of studies on
human motion, and its reverberations through space and time. It was awarded the prestigious
Golden Nica Prize in the Prix Ars Electronica 2013 Animation category. The project investigates
athletes pushing their bodies to their extreme capabilities during the Commonwealth Games.
The movements are extrapolated by graphic elements to sculpt abstract forms and to visualize
hidden relationships between the body and its surroundings.
The process of transformation, a kind of camera tracking and subsequent digital manipulation,
from live footage to abstract forms was exposed as part of the interactive multi-screen artwork,
to provide insight into evolution of the project.
[http://www.memo.tv/forms]
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MOTION CAPTURE AND EXPERIMENTAL ART
Walking City by Universal Everything
Another winner of the PRIX Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Computer Animation is the project
Walking City by Universal Everything that was awarded in 2014. Universal Everything is a digital art practice and design studio based in Sheffield, England. The studio was founded in 2004
by Matt Pyke. The work references the Archigram project of the 1960s, a concept by British
architect Ron Herron that presents nomadic robot buildings that can walk freely to wherever
their resources or manufacturing capabilities are needed.
This project doesn’t present walking buildings but a striding human shaped figure morphing in
a selection of architectural elements as it advances from left to right on the screen. The gait of
a human has been captured by a motion capture device and the recorded movement serves as
the basis of the figures animation. The figure becomes abstracted as it moves on transforming
into different shapes based on cubes, lattices, bubbles and other architectural basic elements.
[http://www.dezeen.com/2014/02/10/walking-architecture-animation-universal-everything/]
[http://www.universaleverything.com/projects/walking-city-citizens/]
Image 11 on page 14: Forms (c. Quayola and Memo Akten)
Image 12 on page 14: Forms (c. Quayola and Memo Akten)
Image 13: Walking City (c. Universal Everything)
15
THE PROJECT
The previous examples show astonishingly different approaches to discover the endless variations that the state-of-the-art motion-capture technology offers. These are mostly l’art pour
l’art experiments and not applications in a more ample field. The present project takes a further
step. The created video animations are not autotelic artworks but serve a further goal. They are
applied in a dancing theater to enhance the artistic effects of the performance.
I had access to an Xsens motion-capture device in Budapest at the Hungarian software developer company ViVeTech. To continue the exploration of this new technology I decided to capture
and visualize a dance. The basic idea of the project is built upon the consideration of creating a
moving sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person and to apply it in scenography.
The aim of my research is to step with dance out of the human body by using the relatively new
motion capture technology and give this art media a greater freedom than it had traditionally.
Captured Motion is a project to explore ways how 3D animated choreography can be used in
theater. The recorded dance of a real dancer serves as a basis to create projections in the dancing theater that are coordinated with the choreography of the theater performance. In the focus of my attention are those body movements and effects that would not be possible without
the motion capture technology.
I am using particle systems combined with motion-capture data to visually represent spins, pirouette and dance moves in a new way. The impetus and speed of movement will be visualized
by the size and velocity of trails and particles, these are all settings that can be customized. In
this case only the body movements create a reference to the otherwise invisible virtual space.
16
THE PROJECT
Inspiration Sources
The enhanced visualization of human gestures is a common practice in oriental dance. The
semitransparent veils and other accessories intensify the visual effect. On the other hand there
is a more complex transformation as well. Little chiming beads and coins fly in the air as the
dancer moves and transform the visual delight in an acoustic experience as well. The aim of the
thesis Captured Motion is to continue this practice and to find new ways of intensifying the artistic effect of human dance. My attention is turned to those effects that are possible using virtual technology but impossible in real life. The recorded movement is going to be manipulated
and used in multiple forms. There may be phase shifts, dancers’ bodies multiplied and overlapping in space while the same recorded movement controls the visuals of the video projection.
Image 14 on page 16: Lili Jaklics dancing at the Vivetech company ( c. Noémi Ördög)
Image 15: Serpentine dance by Loie Fuller (Wikimedia)
17
THE PROJECT
For this reason, I have chosen an oriental dance for the virtual theater play I intend to realize.
Honoring her pioneering work in the fields of modern dance and theatrical lighting, the choreography of the dance is inspired by Loïe Fuller`s Serpentine Dance from 1891. Born 1862 in a
Chicago suburb, Fuller began her theatrical career as a professional child actress and later choreographed and performed dances in burlesque, vaudeville, and circus shows. After a successful
tour in Europe she decided to live in Paris and was a regular performer at the Folies Bergère. She
developed her own free dance practice and improvisation techniques and became the embodiment of the Art Nouveau movement and a pioneer of modern dance.
Visual performance artists have manipulated their skirts and shawls to a degree for centuries
but in the late 1800s Loie Fuller took it to a whole new level. Fuller combined her choreography
with silk costumes illuminated by multi-colored lighting of her own design. She created her own
special skirt with pockets that she strategically placed rods into. She could then manipulate the
fabric in a very unique way effectively creating the forerunner of modern Isis Wings. She held
many patents related to stage lighting, such as the use of chemical salts for luminescent lighting. Her costume design was also patented.
She was respected by many famous artists, like Auguste Rodin or Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
She became immortalized in their works. There is a film showing a performance of the Serpentine Dance which was shot 1896 by the pioneering film-makers Auguste and Louis Lumière. The
unknown dancer in the film is often mistakenly identified as Fuller herself. The Serpentine Dance
was a frequent subject of early motion pictures, as it highlighted the new medium’s ability to
portray movement and light.
The modern serpentine dance of the present project that was inspired by Loïe Fuller’s work was
performed by a Hungarian professional dancer, Lili Jaklics at the venues of the ViVeTech Company in Budapest. The name of the company is an acronym and was formed from the initial letters
of ‘Virtual Verification Technology’. The motion capture device that recorded Lili Jaklics’s dance
is normally used to record the movement of test persons for industrial purposes, especially for
ergonomic analysis.
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THE PROJECT
Choice of the musical background
The choice of the musical background was guided by several aspects. It was partly influenced
by my available professional musician contacts and the need to avoid any copyright issues. On
the other hand I was looking for a soundtrack that is a perfect fit to a reinterpreted contemporary Serpentine Dance with an oriental touch. Fortunately, I found the oriental-electro music
titled „Elektro KaraWahn“, composed by Germany based sound designer and film-music composer Nnoiz Papp (born Tobias Becker). He creates music in the genre of world beat / oriental
dubstep / dark ambient. He is a member of the CARP (Cybernetic Art Research Project) artists’
group and a founding member of the Avatar Orchestra in the role playing game Second Life.
The aesthetic of the visuals is completely influenced by the mood and theme of the music. The
visual dramaturgy of the scene, such as the emitters, light effects, colors, camera movement
etc. is inspired by oriental art and oriental geography, especially that of the Sahara desert. A
detailed description of the dramaturgy can be found in the additional storyboard.
Image 16: Avatar of Nnoiz Papp in Second Life ( c. Nnoiz Papp)
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THE PROJECT
Final presentation of the project
The result of the creative process manifests itself in four successive and interdependent levels.
On the first level are still images of the dance in an enhanced form, intensified by virtual effects
that are based on the recorded movement. On the second level these images evolve in time and
are recorded as a video clip. The third level is a theater play.
Although there are projections in dance theaters, so far motion capture has not been used to
intensify the artistic quality. I would like to show the advantages of this technology. Based on
the captured movement a virtual dance partner can appear on the stage or even several virtual
dancers at the same time. On the other hand the captured movement can not only control the
gestures of a virtual body but purely visual effects as well. There are several projection surfaces
behind the dancers on the stage. The projections show different transformations of the recorded movement and they may use time shift as well. My aim is to open the doors for collaboration
between stage designers and software companies that generally use motion capture for industrial purposes. I hope that on the long run exactly the from the art world distant perspective may
bring totally new ideas in stage design.
Finally, on the fourth level are photos of the stage design. Within the framework of the present
thesis the theater performance can only be realized as a virtual computer simulation of a real
theater.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
The historical part of this thesis was written with the help of online articles.
No text has been copy pasted.
1. Wikipedia articles:
Eadweard Muybridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge
Etienne Jules Marey: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne-Jules_Marey
Thomas Eakins: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Eakins
Marcel Duchamp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp
Giacomo Balla: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Balla
Loie Fuller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loie_Fuller
2. A Brief History of Motion Capture for Computer Character Animation by David J. Sturman
https://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/
motion_capture/history1.htm
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