Mike:Draft Text on Method

Ragdoll physics on animated human figures:

https://youtu.be/0KGyrfy4gtc

Cloth physics on animated human figures:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K_BnH7Ypro
https://youtu.be/JHKCwTofSYM
https://youtu.be/Bvl4eJoKVXA
https://youtu.be/8mBWUu8vmqk
https://youtu.be/qLI7sK-3DnU

Painting Experiments

Plotter Drawings

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Text On Method

Current Projects

I’m currently working on a two interconnected projects, coming from a single source and resulting in two different outcomes. The starting point is 3d animated characters driven by motion capture sequences of dancing and fighting movements. However the characters are not directly driven by these motion capture sequences in a direct one-to-one fashion, instead rag-doll physics are applied to the models and the motion capture sequences are used as physical impulses on the rag dolls. The movements of the characters become these strange, unpredictable dances - that seem to reference nature but often stretch and bend in unnatural ways.

ragdolls interacting

Using characters of varying sizes and using a variety motion capture sources I work in an iterative fashion to generate multiple variations from this starting point. The ragdoll characters are combined in groups, where they collide against each other, and become entangled. 

The first outcome from this starting point is a series of pen and ink line drawings made on drafting plotters. The wireframe meshes of the rag doll figures act as the source for the line drawing. The lines of the wireframe meshes are randomly scattered, squiggled and rotated, to mimic gestural drawing technique. I've been producing a series of larger 70cm x 100cm drawings featuring multiple figures, and smaller A3 portrait format drawings that focus on the faces of the figures.

plotter drawings

In addition to the drawings I have been working on animation that also uses the rag doll figures as sources. The figures are further abstracted by using cloth physics, they deflate and collapse upon themselves and further deform as they crash into each other.

cloth figures

The drawings and animation act in opposition to each other. The drawings become a place where mechanical control fights against the hand-made, while in the animations the human and handmade fight against the expectation of mechanical control.

Future Plans

To further develop this work I would like to experiment with bringing in the feeling of my own hand into the work. I’ve done some initial tests using virtual painting and sculpting tools, both on the desktop and in virtual reality and would like to incorporate some of the techniques in the work. I intend to use digital painting tools, which use splatter and drip simulations to generate the surfaces and textures that will cover the bodies of the figures in my animation.

painting experiments

Another path I’d like to explore is using virtual reality trackers as a motion capture source. The virtual reality setup at the academy has motion controllers that can be accurately tracked in real-world 3 dimensional space, meaning that you can have accurate recordings of the position and orientation the hand-held motion controllers as they move through space. What I’d like to do is use the motion controllers act as a sort of handheld camera that carries with it all the imperfections and shaky movement of a real human hand.

Additionally I would like to work on generating my own motion capture sequences, rather than having to rely pre-existing libraries. Most libraries that exist try to anticipate the needs of industries like entertainment, advertising and gaming and so the movements they record tend to fall into predictable categories. I would like to capture movements that are bit more strange and awkward. I have been lobbying my colleagues at the academy to purchase a motion capture suit, which would be instrumental in creating new sequences and capturing new movements. Hopefully the suit will be ordered by the next trimester and I can begin to experiment with it and approach people to collaborate with to create new motion sequences.

Relation To Previous Work

The work combines the soft body cloth techniques used in my animation “Still Life” with the motion capture techniques seen in a number of my other works. My previous work often deals with the human form as a streams of data, as systems of information and re-purposable containers of data. I’ve been interested in seeing thow many moments and many perspectives can be combined into a single image. The characters that appear in my animations are oftentimes composites figures. The characters are amalgams of different sources and recorded at different times and driven by multiple actors.

I frequently use stock 3d characters in my animation. The forms of the figures are changeable by design, their form is intended to be adjusted to suit the needs of their users. The figures and the worlds that they inhabit in are the result of a series of engineering decisions, with constraints that are simultaneously artificial, practical and arbitrary. The figures are changeable and adjustable, set to an adaptable state where they are reduced to their most basic, prototypic and archetypal form. My previous work was an attempt to see what is retained when these composites are made, what remains of the individual and what happens when these multiple sources are reformed and recomposed.

My work in the past has mostly focused in a self-reflexive way about the qualities of the medium in which it is made. This means animations about animation, animations about animation technology and animations about technology. Formally they often consist of hard polygons, apparent glitches and errors. The works are focused on the artificiality and technical nature of the surfaces and the data they are sourced from.

This new work builds on these previous interests, while having an additional focus on the interactions between multiple human forms, as well as the cascading effects of secondary and tertiary animation techniques generated from physical simulations.

Outside Sources and Influences

One text that helped me situate some of my thinking regarding this project was Benjamin Bratton’s essay “The Black Stack” especially in his articulation of the user layer of the stack. The user’s position within the stack shifts from that of the individual and human, to the plural and the many and then beyond into the non-human and algorithmic in what he describes as “Artificial over-individuation and […] ultimate pluralisation.”

The user within these cloud platforms occupies a contradictory position.Bratton uses the example of the Silicon Valley obsession with the quantified self, using data as a means of knowing and having mastery of the self. In becoming a data stream, he also has to acknowledge the outside data streams that act on him. Where he begins and where he ends in this flow of data starts blur. The blurring continues beyond actual individuals, into proxy users (users acting on other user’s behalf, crossing phyislcal borders, bypassing restrictions in one location by appearing in another) . This expands even further adding in non-human users such as sensors, algorithms and robots.  This ends up in a position where the user is not only an individual but also a composite and an aggregate of other users, both human and non-human. What looks like one is really many, what looks like many may only be one with paranoia and narcissism as two symptoms of the same disposition.

The following passage in particular feels especially relevant to composite human forms I have been working with:

“Like Theseus’s Paradox—where after every component of a thing has been replaced, nothing original remains but a metaphysical husk—the User is confronted with the existential lesson that at any point he is only the intersection of many streams. At first, the subject position of the User overproduces individual identity, but in the continuance of the same mechanisms, it then succeeds in exploding it.” (Bratton, 2014)

I came across a few other helpful sources to think about in relation to my work when participating cinema club screenings where I looked at Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil and Matthew Barney’s Creamaster 3. Simon pointed out a possible subconscious influence and a potential link between the films and my work, where in both films the are elements that should come together seamlessly but instead resist coherence. In Sympathy for the Devil we are exposed to the multiple takes of the Rolling Stones attempting to write the eponymous song, with many false starts and dead ends.

References:
Bratton, B (2014). The Black Stack. E-Flux Journal, [Online] Volume #53. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/53/59883/the-black-stack/ [Accessed 23 May. 2018].