Interactive Performance with visuals and 3D motion capture.
Creation: Sarah Fdili Alaoui (IRCAM/LIMSI) and Marion Cavaillé (Ballet National of Marseille)
Dancer: Marie Sinnaeve.
Performed at CHI2013 and at Open Doors of Ircam-Centre Pompidou / Paris France / 2013
Chiseling Bodies is a duo between a dancer and interactive visuals displaying a large number of light particles. The visuals are made of a massive particle system relying on a physical model that generates behaviors responding to the movement qualities of the dancer extracted in real time with a Kinect camera and and two accelerometers on the dancers’ wrists. The visuals’ dynamics are designed as an echo, a response and a presence, tuned to the dancer’s movement qualities and energy. They generate various metaphorical viual behaviors such as a ‘rosette’, a ‘blossoming’ or a ‘chaotic’. These behaviors evoke the different dynamics and forms of the dance movement. The visuals are both interactive and generative; they have self-agency and vary their response by creating an effect of surprise. They are perceived as alive making their own choices as much as a dance “partner” might respond to the dancer.
Chiseling Bodies was initially developed in collaboration with Marion Cavaillé, a ballet dancer of the Ballet National of Marseille. We collaborated together in choreographing a structured dance improvisation and designing the visuals’ interaction scenarios. We designed a structure of the performance that involves both the physicality of the dancer and the visuals and reflects the subtle dialogue linking the dancer’s movement qualities and the visuals’ abstract dynamics.
Publication: Sarah Fdili Alaoui, Christian Jacquemin, Frédéric Bevilacqua. “Chiselling Bodies: an Augmented Dance Performance”, In the Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2013, Paris, France. CHI13-Fdilialaouietal