Matt Gough Blog [closed]: experimentation
Thursday, Nov 18 2004, 01:29
as you can imagine research students at cmp are given a computer for personal use. normally this is a desktop, but i asked for a laptop due to the fact that i would have to be 'out and about' as part of my work. well today this has really paid off, and i'm thinking that i would like to work like this more often sometimes.
the set up:
so i'm in the studio with the digital camera attached to the laptop shooting at 2fps and the projector facing 180 degrees from the camera. this allows me to dance and see the images being taken at the same time (i would prefer not to be the subject but there are too few dancers on campus).
beginning with an improvised phrase i refine the movement until such time as i am happy with the results, i then notate this in a rough version of the implementation code i am working on. i then compare my written structure with the the images via a fixed reference frame that i overly each picture with. with slow(ish) movement you can get a reasonably realistic playback when using a sideshow mode.
now i could use video, or motion capture to do this kind of analysis, but when it needs to be 'quick and dirty' still images are best for me. what i was looking at today was the facility to manipulate the COM of the bones we use during movement. i'm cheating slightly by taking the midpoint of the bone as the COM (for simplicity) but it's not too important for my purposes. what i want to look at is if we can:
these are early days but it's helping me to solve some implementation issues that i would otherwise have no point of reference for. over the next few months i intend to visit a range classes in differing locations and observe, document and analyse people learning dance techniques and dance works. if all goes well this should start off with Steve Paxton's Material for the Spine' workshop at independent dance at the end of this month.
from there on i'm hoping to go to various dance colleges and independent workshops etc in the UK and Eire. i should get back to what i was doing now... this room has a clear line of sight to a WiFi antenna, Internet in the studio is useful but distracting...
Filed by Article19 at 1:29 PM | 
Stumble It!