Colossal: Asphyxia is an experimental film project by Maria Takeuchi and Frederico Phillips that explores human movement through motion capture technology. The team used two inexpensive Xbox One Kinect sensors to capture the movements of dancer Shiho Tanaka and then rendered the data inside a near photo-realistic environment.
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This is cool as shit. Let me be more articlate. Project Asphyxia has created one of the most natural human projections I have ever seen. Each movement, while it was clearly digitized, but since it was a very presice projection of a real dancer, it had a deeper layer of meaning that did not have to be created via special effects, but came directly from the mover. It makes you feel something. I feel that technology like this will lead to greater motion capture techniques than we already have in the future. Maybe even to the point when you can't tell if it's motion capture or not. 54-102 <54-102> <54102>
Again and again I am amazed by the work that projection designers are doing. Personally, I am amazed that this stemmed from an Xbox Kinect. I mean, I have one of these in my house. They're not fancy-smancy pieces of gear only available from specialty places. That being said, you can't create this kind of art with just that, obviously. Watching the video of the final dance, I'm swept away by the movements of Shiho Tanaka. Shibo's dancing is equal parts graceful and erratic, and more often than not, both of these traits at the same time. The overall projection is beautiful, utilizing lines and points like that. The making of video shows the Ms. Tanaka simply dancing in a space in between both Kinects and then the boat load of computer work that's going on both behind the scenes of her dancing and in post-production. While pieces like these might have a longer footprint than theatrical productions we do here, I hope that we can incorporate more elements of this into shows in the future.
This reminds me a lot of the media projections on the sliders for the Wiz in its very triangular shapes. When I saw this, I thought that it was some sort of projection mapping on a body which was then modified to remove the person and just leave the projections, but the idea of using two Kinect sensors is much easier, and smarter. It would be really interesting if this idea was taken and put on a larger scale with more than one person, and more colors. Color interaction would be really interesting in dance as you could incorporate color theory into the people interaction. Also, the movements in this dance piece are incredibly well suited for this type of motion sensor. I feel like this motion is so successful because it is slow and emotional and that a fast hip hop wouldn’t look as fluid with the motion sensor. I am looking forward to seeing if this type of technology will be incorporated into modern theater.
Ah! Media is a wonderful thing! And technology like this blows my mind. I actually had an idea like this for the future by using the XBOX Kinet with movement. I knew that this idea would work and it's so nice to see it in action. It's also great to see something that really hasn't been done before, looks amazing, and was cheaper than getting really high tech equipment to make this short video. This is why media like this is my cup of tea. It's so immersive and relatable to watch pieces like this and you feel like it's something that hasn't been done before. I would love to experiment with techniques like this. I'm also saving up for a pico projector so I can have experiment more with millumin and other graphic art programs I could use to make my own original works and share it with friends and family.
This. Is. Beautiful. Just watching the video I found myself overcome with a sticky sense of claustrophobia. I felt as though I could feel my own limbs stretch as though they were wrapped in miles of spider silk. I am blown away that a piece of such visceral beauty, that could have such a profound effect on a viewers experience, came from an Xbox Kinect. It is a tribute to both the designer and the dancer to make a piece so striking, fluid and energetic with a fairly simple piece of technology.
The work that media designers are doing is at it's best when it connects with the show's human elements, and this is some of the best I've seen in that regard. The ability to transform in ways impossible tangibly is really what media design is for. Artistic media design exists for the purpose of creating a new reality with new rules. It makes me very happy to see people exploiting that mission to the fullest.
When the article started talking about how the virtual reality can let you interact and annotate in a way that has never been done before, I immediately thought how Tony Stark has his hologram computers. What if you could eventually put on these virtual reality glasses and see your desk the way it was but overlaid with screens that you could touch and interact with. What if your computer with all your reminders was virtual and you could pull up your whole desk space wherever you go? And just edit what ever you wanted without pulling out more hardware than virtual reality glasses. We would all look like crazy people touching thin air, but it would be awesome. That would all be ridiculously in the future considering you still need to have the goggles hooked up to a computer to work and they are intact goggles- massive things. I think virtual reality has some really cool things going on and everyone should be kept up to date with how they are doing.
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