Odissi Across Media | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
Motion capture technology is a process of recording movement in the form of digital data that then can mobilize digital characters in animation. Historically it has been used in the fields of military, entertainment, and applied medicine, as well as new media art practice and production. It provides an important tool to engage with the dancing body as it enables a technological visualization of movement outside of its embodied initiation by the performer.
Using motion capture technology, the Odissi body is converted to three-dimensional data, which can be calibrated onto anthropomorphic systems, such as a human skeleton, for analyzing, visualizing, and capturing movement, as well as abstract formulations. This digital environment allows a 3D access to the dancing body that is abstracted into a skeletal conglomeration via 53 optical markers emanating x, y, and z coordinates for 120 frames per second. While the overall motion is approximated, many nuanced articulations are lost in translation. The overt ornamentation of the Odissi dancing is stripped away, as are the skin, flesh, eye movements, finger movements, and sounds (such as the sound of feet striking the floor). What remains is the uncomfortable juxtaposition of computational translation and sculptural movement with the retainment of bodily postures in Odissi (Bhangas), which also form the basis of sculpture.
The foregrounding of joint articulations in the motion-captured movement both articulates the notion of loss (of finger and facial information) and juxtaposes multiple technologies (such as of sculpture, Odissi movement, and 3D animation) in its visual presentations. This conversation between Odissi and motion capture overtly deals with the question of technology as understood in contemporary society. In Odissi, movement was always multimodal and utilized the various technologies of material culture that were available in different time periods, such as stone sculpture, painting, verbal text, and stone inscription. This project positions digitized movement in a continuum of technological evolution within Odissi. Hence, a combination of Odissi and motion capture technology builds upon a view of Odissi history that has always seen the moving figure constituted by as well as constituting the other technological media surrounding it.