Prairie Center of the Arts Residency

We received a 2 week residency at the Prairie Center of the Arts in Peoria which has been a boon in terms of concentrating on the most recent projects involving interpreting motion capture data in sculptural form. The Center offers residencies that allow the use of studios and facilities in the warehouse district of Peoria, right along the Illinois River, and housing in a beautiful, semi-rural house set on the edge of an un-glaciated, wooded area with a small stream 20 min. from the studios.

We recorded motion capture data at Columbia College's Media Production Center in March with subjects doing two classes of activity - walking/rolling and yoga movements. The walking/rolling is destined for the fence adjacent to the facade of the studios that runs for 75' along Washington St., a highway-like street with not much foot traffic.

This is a mockup of a couple of cycles of the walking/running movement just to get an idea of what it would look like and what color material to use (black disappears). We went through many, many options in terms of where to put the work and what materials to use, finally settling on corroplast (corrugated plastic) which we will cut on the water jet machine here. Also, we plan to use mo cap traces from various yoga movements/postures to engrave on stone, and will be doing some tests with stone of different sorts (of the stepping stone variety, but different substances like marble, granite, etc.) to see what doesn’t explode.

Here’s a mockup, and below some of the traces prepared for cutting. If the water jet ends up destroying the stone, maybe we’ll try sandblasting (have to send it out for that).

The idea behind all this has to do with motion capture as metaphor for our movement through time and the invisible influence we have on the world by passing through it.