VR drawing project research studies 2019-21
Higher has developed as a partnership research project with Creative Computing graduate Dave Webb and Graphic Designer Harvey Jones. With support from the Studio Recovery Fund and CAMERA we have been able to explore the idea of visually communicating through dance to a new level. Please watch the video for more information where we have got to so far and check out the @static2ecstatic Instagram for more visuals.
Below are the original studies, documenting the differences in movement behaviour whilst dancing due to social inhibitions. Each slide shows the same person dancing to a track of their choice first watched, then crowded out by others encroaching on their personal space and finally left alone in the room with no external inhibitors.
Documentation is made digitally using ND filters to allow exposure for the duration of the selected music track and dancers had head torches strapped to their ankles, wrists & forehead. Many thanks to Kirsten Reynolds for her inspiring work and technical expertise that has enabled me to start this project.
Though these images have a real beauty of their own, they are initial studies to look for observable difference in movement behaviour due to social inhibition before I commence a much larger project tracking differences using VR sensors to capture the information in 3D.
Building on the long exposure experiments of Solo Dancer and “in the round” process of Mapping Loci, Drawing Disco tracks dancers in their unconscious motions using 3DVR off-the-shelf software.
The detail is less than long exposure as each dancer has only the one tracking point, but the abstract beauty of form created through motion remains an exciting launch point from which to develop.