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Dancer/collaborator Elizabeth Johnson strikes a "bind pose" to recalibrate the infrared motion capture camera system. |
Synopsis of the Project
e-Motion: Our Reality was an inter-disciplinary collaboration presented at the Krannert Art Museum (http://www.art.uiuc.edu/galleries/kam/), on the campus of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It took place from June 17th-28th, 2003 in conjunction with the “Here&Now” exhibition which featured regional artists and their work. The collaborators on this project included Bradford Blackburn (music composer and creator of this Web page), Elizabeth Johnson (dancer), Hank Kaczmarski (engineer), Ya-Ju Lin (dancer), Jessica Ray (dancer), Benjamin Schaeffer (programmer), Cho-Ying Tsai (dancer), and Luc Vanier (choreographer). Hank Kaczmarski is the Director of the Integrated Systems Laboratory (http://www.isl.uiuc.edu/) at the Beckman Institute of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and coordinated the visual virtual reality portions of the project including the ten camera motion capture system, and the inclusion of 3-D images of artworks being displayed in the museum. Ben Schaeffer, a research programmer for ISL, wrote the software that allowed the dancers to manipulate 3-D visual imagery in real-time. Luc Vanier, a professor of dance at the University of Illinois, and a choreographer with a deep interest in motion capture technology, worked with the dancers to develop movement that tested and utilized the capabilities of both the graphic and musical virtual reality systems.
The developing choreography inspired new approaches for interfacing with the dancer’s movement and thus a circle of feedback was quickly established between dancers, visual programmers, and the interactive music design. As a result, the project was continuously growing in sophistication, nuance, and organicism with each day’s work. The museum visitors were able to watch this process happen up close, and view the work in progress at daily showings where they were given demonstrations of the technology and were invited to ask questions. For the collaborators this was a great opportunity to get feedback from audience members about their reactions to the technology, and to gain a greater understanding of how people interpret the various relationships between human and machine in an interactive performance.