About the Project ● Odissi ● Odissi and Motion-Capture Technology ● Composing the Odissi Body ● Analysis

Odissi and Motion-Capture Technology

Using motion capture technology, the Odissi body is converted to three dimensional data, which can be calibrated onto anthropomorphic systems, such as a human skeleton, for analyzing, visualizing, and capturing movement, as well as abstract formulations. This digital environment allows a 3D access to the dancing body that is abstracted into a skeletal conglomeration via fifty-one optical markers emanating x,y, and z coordinates for one hundred and twenty frames per second. While some of the motion is maintained, many nuanced articulations are lost in translation. The overt ornamentation of the Odissi dancing is stripped away, as are the skin, flesh, eye movements, finger movements, and sounds (such as the sound of feet striking the floor). What remains is the uncomfortable juxtaposition of computational translation and sculptural movement with the retainment of the Bhangas, bodily postures in Odissi, which also form the basis of sculpture.

The foregrounding of joint articulations in the motion-captured movement both articulates the notion of loss (of finger and facial information) and juxtaposes multiple technologies (such as of sculpture, Odissi movement, and 3D animation) in its visual presentations. This conversation between Odissi and motion capture overtly deals with the question of technology as understood in the contemporary society. In Odissi, movement was always multimodal and utilized the various technologies that were available in different time periods, such as stone sculpture, painting, verbal text, and stone inscription. This project positions digitized movement in a continuum of technological evolution within Odissi. Hence, a combination of Odissi and motion capture technology builds upon a view of Odissi history that has always seen the moving figure constituted as well as constituting the other technological mediums surrounding it.