unnamed soundsculpture

This moving sound sculpture is based on the recorded motion data of a real person. For the project we asked Laura Keil, a Berlin-based dancer, to interpret a musical piece – Kreukeltape by Machinefabriek – as closely as possible with the movement of her own body. She was recorded by three depth cameras (Kinect), in which the intersection of the images was later put together to a three-dimensional volume (3d point cloud). We were then able to use the collected data throughout the rest of the process.

The three-dimensional image allowed us a completely free-handling of the digital camera without limitations of perspective. The camera also reacts to sound and supports the physical imitation of the musical piece by the performer. She moves to a field of noise, where a simple modification of the random seed can consistently create new versions of the video, each offering a different composition of the recorded performance. The multi-dimensionality of the work is inherent in every movement of the dancer as the camera footage allows a variety of imaginable perspectives.

Using 3 different Microsoft Kinect cameras, the movement of the dancer was recorded into 3d pointclouds that were synced and exported as one large data set. They were then loaded into 3d max for further rendering as Krakatoa particle files. A three-dimensional scene was created including the camera movement controlled by the audio. Through this process, the digital body, consisting of 22,000 points, comes to life.