2011. Medium: Video. Technique: custom software, computer vision, motion tracking, simulation.
Forms won the prestigious Golden Nica (highest prize) in the Prix Ars Electronica 2013 Animation category.
Forms is a series of studies on human motion, and its reverberations through space and time. It is inspired by the works of Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton, Étienne-Jules Marey as well as similarly inspired modernist cubist works such as Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase No.2”. Exploring extrapolation techniques to sculpt abstract forms, the work visualizes hidden relationships between the body and its surroundings.
For more than two decades, I have been creating research-based work investigating the relationships between our bodies and technology.
Forms was an early ground-breaking and award-winning work investigating the movement of athletes – extracted from video footage from the National Media Museum’s archives – pushing their bodies to their extreme capabilities. The piece uses state-of-the-art movement tracking and simulation technologies to animate living sculptures that go beyond the physical boundaries of the body, capturing the qualities of movement and hidden relationships between the body and its surroundings: a Speculative Simulation.
The work was awarded the prestigious Golden Nica in the Prix Ars Electronica 2013 Animation category. While the aesthetics and technique may look familiar today, Forms was fundamental in establishing this genre of simulation based computational body-and -movement abstraction and has been very influential to a new generation of artists.
The work was commissioned by the National Media Museum in the UK for its ‘In the blink of an Eye: Media and Movement’ exhibition, to be launched alongside the London 2012 Olympics.
A collaboration with Quayola.
Process (Layers)
Credits & Acknowledgments
The video installation was commissioned by and exhibited at the National Media Museums ‘In The Blink of an Eye’ Exhibition, 9th March – 2nd September, 2012, alongside classic images by photographers such as Harold Edgerton, Eadweard Muybridge, Roger Fenton, Richard Billingham and Oscar Rejlander as well as historic items of equipment, films and interactive displays.
Quayola and Memo Akten – Artists
Nexus Interactive Arts – Production Company
Beccy McCray – Producer
Jo Bierton – Production Manager
Matthias Kispert – Sound design
Maxime Causeret – Houdini Developer
Raffael F J Ziegler (AKA Moco) – 3D Animator
Katie Parnell – 3D Tracker
Eoin Coughlan – 3D Tracker
Mark Davies – 3D Tracking Supervisor
Commissioned by the National Media Museum for the ‘In The Blink of an Eye‘ Exhibition 2012; with the support of imove, part of the Cultural Olympiad programme.
With thanks to BBC Motion Gallery and Commonwealth Games Federation.
