CoViz @ Found Festival Edmonton

BRIEF:

CoViz_2021 is a durational installation where the audience is the performer. Up to four audience members at a time dance in front of a motion-capture camera, and their actions are mapped onto cartoonish digital avatars in real-time.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

CoViz_2021 is an experiment in computer vision and real-time rendering of live motion-capture data. Using scavenged hardware, a beefy computer, custom CGI, and the free Unity game engine, I wanted to create a fun and accessible party favour, where the users’ movements get mapped onto outlandish characters in a 3D, cartoon world. Up to four people can dance together in front of the Kinect camera, and their movements are translated onto their cartoon avatars in real-time. They move when you move, dance how you dance. For a brief moment, you’re a digital puppeteer. It’s glitchy, it’s imprecise, but that’s all part of the fun.

Computer vision is fast becoming essential to our workflows and our daily lives. Once the domain of high-end VFX houses, it is now possible to hack together your own basic motion-capture system using consumer devices. Smart, AI-powered cameras are increasingly prevalent in our homes and workplaces, feeding identifying data into corporate databases. What if we used that tech for something silly instead? Does every photon of digital media need to be commodified and sold? This installation is an attempt to explore these questions, to vibe in the metaverse for a night, to make a silly thing for my friends.