Lara's Research Updates

As a team, we're pretty set on having a puppet on the projection screen that will be the representation of the performer. Due to issues with costuming and minimum marker requirements on Vicon, I shelved the idea of using motion capture (unless we need it as a last-minute backup). With a few of my teammates, we pretty much figured out how to use 2 Kinects together to get pose and motion data, so that's good news! As we do some more troubleshooting for using Kinects in the final project, I think this week I want to turn my focus on the visuals of the final and the puppet that'll be on screen. In the upcoming days, I will do some tests on TouchDesigner!

This week, a few members of the team and I spent some time in the motion capture studio. We wanted to test a few things and see how feasible it is for us to use motion capture in our final project. The most important question we had was whether we could capture the pose of the performer and track their movements without actually putting them in a full-body mocap suit. An idea our team has been gravitating towards is "marionette on strings". We possibly want to make the connection between the performer on stage and the "puppet" on the projection screen. Putting the performer in a mocap suit would be the most accurate and reliable source to get real-time data, but it would limit the creativity we could use when creating an interactive costume that will go with the performance. Thus, I decided to test the idea of tracking props instead of full-body! (Test prop and "Arm1" tracking in Vicon Shogun Live) My idea was to place multiple marker clusters on the perfo...

For the past few weeks, my team has been doing research and trying to finalize what kind of project we want to create for the DIGM 540 course this winter. Those of us who gathered in this team want to create an interactive art exhibit that will have elements of touch sensors, rear projection, and adaptive music. Currently, our idea is to have a performer in the middle of the stage who will be wearing touch sensors. As exhibit attendees come to the stage to touch and pose the performer, the pressure and location of their touch will trigger different effects and colors in the projection screen, as well as different moods of music. This idea came to be inspired by the artist Marina Abramovic's Rhythm 0 piece. We have not finalized what will actually be on screen, but I'm personally leaning toward abstract art with many elements of colors, particles, lines of varying thicknesses, etc.  I've found this exhibit by Adrien M & Claire B that has a lot of visual elements reactin...