The Departure and Arrival of Sculptural Qualities shaping improvising bodies within motion capture environments

Sykes, Lucie

Abstract

Photo Credits: Adam Lyon, dancer and researcher Lucie Sykes (in the centre), movement participant A (on the right side).



“…Dance is living, kinetic sculpture…” (Korsch cited in Herrera, 2016) and shifts the attention to the actual movement as the vital part of the dancer’s lived experience. The bodily movements I attentively termed in this research as Sculptural Qualities as a process of shaping.



The dancers wear motion capture suits with forty-one reflective and spherical markers attached by a Velcro. These markers capture the dancers’ sculptural motion--kinetic trace-forms (Laban,1966, 2011)--through the array of eight cameras placed around the room. The motion data are mapped onto a digital-three dimensional model (skeleton markers) and visualised in virtual and external environments. The extended body-mind (Clark, 2008) trace-forms are shaped through dancers’ feedback loop responses: dancers respond to the departures of the visualisation, the action shapes the line, curve, and particles, and its arrival shapes the dancers’ perception of self and shapes trace-forms into a new, innovative, and spontaneous sculptural motions with expressive movement qualities while improvising within motion capture environments.

• Online Publication Date: Jun 6, 2022
• Publication Date: Jun 6, 2022
• Deposit Date: Jan 27, 2025
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17866/rd.salford.19952330.v1
• Publisher URL: https://salford.figshare.com/articles/media/The_Departure_and_Arrival_of_Sculptural_Qualities_shaping_improvising_bodies_within_motion_capture_environments/19952330
• Collection Date: Jun 6, 2022