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Created with Christina Laverty, Bailey Hammett and Daniel Miranontes.
No, I will not provide any further context..
“2: The Locomotion (With Me)” is a sequel to Edward Muybridge’s seminal ‘Animal Locomotion’ series of photos. In the piece, I perform a series of stock movements (running, falling, jumping, star jumps, forwards roll) as dictated by the audience via an iPad, and a Rokoko suit captures my movement which is mapped onto an almost-nude 3d scan of myself in Unity and routed via NDI to Isadora, which captures individual frames of the motion and displays them side by side, superimposed on the same grid background that Muybridge used in his original photos.
I was interested in using modern technology to recreate what is often (albeit incorrectly) considered one of the first instances of motion capture, and in continuing to explore the idea of cruelty to performer (I went into this in full knowledge the audience would have me repeat painful or difficult motions, or try to make me do multiple at once - and they did.). The title is a pun on the line “Come on, come on. Do the loco-motion with me”, from the song “Loco-motion”, originally recorded in 1962 by Little Eva - but most known by Kylie Minogue’s cover.
Photos by Mark Williams
An example of Muybridge’s original work.
This piece comprises of the performer, a small goblin-type creature (a stock character named Doozy, from Adobe Mixamo) standing idly next to a campfire in a hilly terrain, which upon closer inspection is made of the same UV texture as himself; i.e. he stands in an environment made up of his own unwrapped flesh. Every time the viewer-participant triggers it, a radio (also skinned with this texture) falls from the sky at a random location around the performer and begins to play the song A Horse With No Name by America. Upon each radio drop, the performer reacts startled, and then commences a twist-style dance, which he continues until the next radio drop which restarts this sequence. Each radio dropped also increases the speed at which the performers movements happen.
Often, I like to do silly little bits to annoy my friends and colleagues (it’s a personality flaw I will not change) and one of my favourites is to constantly tell people to ‘do one of their famous backflips’ when I know full well they can’t.
In this project I’ve turned the tables on myself.
Rokoko motion capture of me trying to learn to do a backwards somersault, while another, better version of me does backflips from Adobe Mixamo stock animation.