Motion capture

Still from Asphyxia by Maria Takeuchi and Frederico Phillips

Glimpsed this at the end of BBC's Newsnight on 11 March and had to track it down. It looks as if it reveals the underpinning of super-real animation, but it may be more contrived than that. Nonetheless, it's amazing - and I'd love to see a bird version.  Text by Christopher Jobson.

"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.  Takeuchi & Philips say:

Motion data was captured using inexpensive sensors and that data paved the way through an extensive number of steps. Once all the scanned point cloud data was combined, that was then used as the base for the creative development on the piece. A series of iterative studies on styles followed and several techniques and dynamic simulations were then applied using a number 3D tools for various results."

Found at: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/03/asphyxia-a-striking-fusion-of-dance-and-motion-capture-technology

See the full film at http://www.asphyxia-project.com/

Illegitimate Objects

Whiteboard in the office of Professor Sam Howison, University of Oxford Mathematical Institute

'The models were not 'evidence' in any sense of the term. They were boundary objects, good for trading meanings and for showing figures but illegitimate as objects of pure mathematics....'

from Mathematical Models, Models The Third Dimension ofScience.

Continuing my interest in geometry and abstraction, I've started on work for a forthcoming exhibition at the University of Oxford Mathematical Institute. Called Illegitimate Objects, it runs from 18 September to 12 November 2015. Invited artists are working with objects from the Institute's collection of geometric surfaces: precise plaster models, which date back to the late 19th century.

Featuring work by: Katrina Blannin, Simon Callery, Bella Easton, Tim Ellis, Gabrielle Hoad, Sally Howkins, Diane Jones-Parry, Elaine Le Corre, Stephen Lee, Iavor Lubomirov, Ruth Millar, Annabel Ralphs, Luke Ralphs, Felicity Shillingford, Kate Terry.

Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG  https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/