- "motion capture" - the term pertains to the hardware/software technology (e.g. an optical motion capture system such as Vicon) used, for example in a set up with 4 to 32 CCD cameras ( light-sensitive devices), to track over time a number of key points or reflective markers on the performer body and combine them to get a single three-dimensional representation of a movement or performance. To obtain the performance animation, these data need to be cleaned up and mapped onto a character or other three-dimensional figure, and you need animation software for that. So I think we need to distinguish between this motion capture and animation process, and the one that is implied by Robert's post, namely cameras used to see, view, or, if you want, track a performer's movement in order to translate that information (via MIDI) to a sound processing software or other (video, light) kind of databank which you can activate in a performance situation for sound and image dissemination. As to Doug's reply, it's a nice vernacular image: "ultimately if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then...people are going to call it a duck." What would you say if one were to suggest that the ultimately "quacking like a duck" is precisely the sore point in the question that Dawn raised a while ago? What if contemporary choreographic imagination and responses to virtual reality, interactive systems and architectures, or motion capture/performance animation, have not been radical enough, have not left the safe haven of the stage (screen) and redefined what - let's say - an interactive design choreography or signal processing or synthetic surrealism or digital movement compositing or not-yet-familiar form of remediation might be like? greetings Johannes Birringer OSU_dance & technology Doug wrote >>Thanks Johannes for keeping the flame burning. I have been in production on a video project and have had little time to respond. Your points are all as usual very provocative. One comment/question now. You say "that "dance, however mediated, will always be embedded in dance culture" is not a necessarily logical conclusion. On the contrary, mediated dance becomes embedded in other contexts all the time." True, however ultimately there is but one dominant context (historically). Eg artists such as Robert Morris, Rauschenburg, etc. all participated in Judson projects, yet how are the situated in art historical terms? As painters, sculptors, etc. It is certainly possible to swim in many waters, but ultimately if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then...people are going to call it a duck. Sorry for the turn to the vernacular, but it does come down to this I think. Doug>>
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