Panel Statement
Panel: Motion Capture and Dance: what it can do, what it can’t do, and what it should never attempt
Motion capture provides ‘snapshots’ of the complexity of movement patterning. This presentation explores how this complexity can be mapped to specific variables for analysis, and what such analyses both reveal and mask in relation to the choreographic practices involved, drawing on my three-year collaboration with mathematician Vicky Mak-Hau and biomechanist Richard Smith at the Deakin Motion.Lab in Melbourne, Australia. The paper explores how can these analyses can potentially drive creative processes in dance, and, through a discussion of performance project Choreotopography, how real-time motion capture can visualize and enhance spatial pathways using 3D stereoscopic projection.
- Kim Vincs is Associate Professor of Dance and Motion Capture at Deakin University (AU), and Director of the Deakin Motion.Lab motion capture studio and research centre. She is a choreographer, interactive artist and researcher specializing in developing new ways of investigating and creating dance using digital technology. Her collaborations integrate scientific and artistic approaches. She is currently working on ‘Capturing Dance: using motion capture to enhance the creation of innovative Australian dance’, a three year project, supported by the Australian Research Council’s Discovery program (DP0987101), which aims to identify choreographic movement signatures using motion capture, in collaboration with Mathematician Vicky Mak-Hau (Deakin University) and Biomechanist Richard Smith (University of Sydney). She also collaborates with cognitive psychologists Kate Stevens (MARCS Auditory Laboratory, University of Western Sydney) and Emery Schubert (University of New South Wales) investigating choreographic structures and audience response. Her choreography focusses on using motion capture and 3D stereo projection to enhance the spatial impact of dance performance. Works include ‘The Silk Road Project’ in 2007 with Matthew Delbridge, QUT, ‘Aura’, 2009 with interactive artist John McCormick, and ‘Choreotopography’ in December 2010, in collaboration with John McCormick, Daniel Skovli, Peter Divers, Rob Vincs, Deakin University’s Centre for Memory, Imagination and Invention and the Melbourne Ballet Company.
Full text (PDF) p. 2504-2508