Shaping movement improviser’s experiences: document(ing) embodied and extended sculptural qualities within motion capture environments

Abstract

ABSTRACT This audio-visual essay is a methodological approach to a document of my current doctoral practice as research investigating the embodied dance improvisatory approaches within motion capture environments. The research explores the emergence of sculptural qualities as a shaping process between the movement practitioner’s body–mind, movement, technology, and the environment. This video essay demonstrates these emerging relationships through the document(ation) and expands the understanding of live performance and its possibilities within digital environments. This audio-visual essay combines movement practitioners’ living experiences and improvisatory responses with reflective insights into the dynamic and unfolding relationships within the digital environment. Film techniques capture(ing) the improvisatory explorations at that moment, and the transformative potential of performance reveals the fluid, abstract, and temporal unfolding of sculptural qualities that arise from the interplay between improvising bodies, actual and virtual, and motion-capture environments. The audio-visual essay also observes a few initial thoughts on how movement practitioners can access (Range of Coupling ROC and visualisation of digital trace-forms) and activate (T-pose with Stillness) sculptural qualities within digital environments. The accompanying written text expands on the ideas in the video essay and offers contextualising interactions through the post-phenomenological lens and how sculptural qualities are a potential framework within live performances in digital environments.