John Crawford - videodance, interactive media and performance
John Crawford creates hybrid media work that combines live performance of contemporary dance, digital video animations derived from the movement of the dancers, interactive physical environment.
He provides extensive documentation of his works, collaborations and provides an excellent portfolio of projects at: http://www.embodied.net/portfolio.html
Active Space - An Embodied Media Environment
Active Space is an interactive physical environment that engages participants in a dialog of mutual influence involving movement, visuals and sound. Developed by video artist and software designer John Crawford in association with choreographer Lisa Naugle and composer Martin Gotfrit, the Active Space is a site for exploring integration of body-centered performance practices with motion tracking software, motion capture animation, live video and music composition systems.
More info:
Lisa Naugle carries out interesting research into Motion Capture.
Siggraph2004 Sketches conference
Blog post update: May 2011
website: http://embodied.uci.edu/
"Active Space
Active Space is a digital media arts research project investigating embodied interaction through movement and other forms of dynamic expression, integrating body-centered performance practices with advanced user interface techniques. Activities include the development of real-world performative environments that continuously sense, measure and respond to movement, allowing participants to engage and "play the space" as an instrument. The results of this research are applicable to the performing arts, education, telepresence, rehabilitation medicine, and other areas.
Active Space environments are created using a collection of custom real-time media objects developed by intermedia artist and software designer John Crawford in association with choreographer Lisa Naugle and composer Martin Gotfrit. The environments also may incorporate optical motion capture and other advanced technologies for representing human movement. The Active Space media objects include systems for multi-channel live video and audio processing, generative animation, musical composition, mediabase storage/retrieval and high bandwidth networking. Associated motion tracking objects perform real-time sensing and analysis of location, speed, duration and various other characteristics of movement. The results of this analysis are used to generate video and audio in response to movement.
Motion tracking involves real-time sensing and analysis of location, speed, duration and various other characteristics of movement. The results of this analysis are fed to a computer system that generates video and audio in response to the movement. Motion capture is the technique of sampling movement in 3D space and creating graphical representations of the movement. Typical applications of motion capture tend to produce realistic animations, but the aesthetic focus of our Active Space work goes beyond realism to explore notions of non-linear association, embodiment and reflexivity. The interplay between improvisational and compositional elements is of particular interest."
source: http://embodied.uci.edu/projects/active-space
Youtube video embed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWieEmtXz4A