In this series of research-creation projects, 3D depth cameras are adapted for motion capture and gesture representation. We ask, how can these technologies be best leveraged for use in the art studio, and for collecting documentary gestures on location? In our research, we consider human and animal gesture as a hub or meeting point of discourses and embodied experiences where meaning can be identified and generated.

ABOUT

GestureCloud began with a micro-collaborative formation of artists working in Canada and China. Founded by Judith Doyle (Toronto) and Fei Jun (Beijing), the team investigates art, gesture and the politics of labour exchange. In these projects, 3D depth cameras are adapted for motion capture and gesture representation. We ask, how can these technologies be best leveraged for use in the art studio, and for collecting documentary gestures on location? We consider human and animal gesture as a meeting point of discourses and embodied experiences where meaning can be identified and generated.

We are interested in the syntactic structures of gesture, and consider culturally-situated, historically-informed theoretical models grounded in gesture studies and other interdisciplinary fields (performativity, art history, neuroscience). Key research themes include technological mediation, post-internet conditions, and the changing definition of physical versus immaterial labour. GestureCloud addresses how our ubiquitously networked present impacts conceptions of embodiment, subjectivity, and agency. GestureCloud projects probe changing modes of artistic production and issues of labour.

Over six years and four China-Canada artist exchanges, GestureCloud began with traditional motion capture and subsequently built Kinect-based skeleton tracking to make artworks. The software we have generated can be used to control avatars, mobile devices, and robotic systems. GestureCloud has exhibited artworks in major international contexts and has presented broadly, notably at the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA2013 Sydney), at Art Beijing International Art Fair (2013), at the National Insititute of Design (NID) in Bangalore, India (2014) and at ISEA2014 in Dubai.

LINKS

ISEA2013 Conference Paper: GestureCloud: Gesture, Surplus Value and Collaborative Art Exchange http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/9819

FedDev Ontario Applied Research Project: http://www.ocadu.ca/Assets/pdf_media/ocad/research/2013+FedDev+GestureCloudFinal.pdf

GestureCloud overview: http://readingpictures.com/gesturecloud.html

Gesture Research at National Institute of Design (NID) Bangalore 2014: http://gesturecloud.wordpress.com/

Project 31 art auction (OCAD University, Toronto 2014): digital print, Flow Blue (Judith Doyle) http://www2.ocad.ca/project31/#23

Art Beijing 2013 GestureCloud Interactive Installation: http://vimeo.com/67425782

AV@AR2 2.0 AT C.MoDA (China Millenium Monument Museum of Digital Arts), 2013.4.14 - 2013.4.28

For the AV@AR 2.0 exhibition at CMODA, GestureCloud attempted to respond to the following question: How can labor be transposed via gesture across networked conditions to have material effects elsewhere in the world?' The team converted a zone of CMoDa into a factory floor where labor - stacking, pulling, stomping, and lifting - was performed by visitors. These actions were then collected with an onsite motion capture system and harnessed to power lightbulbs in various nighttime locations in Toronto, spanning a twelve-hour time difference. The process was displayed on an array of flat screen televisions with live projections.

Credits: FEI Jun, Judith Doyle: art direction [www.feijun.net] / Mike Goldby: printing and fabrication / Nick Beirne and Ken Leung: programming / Zacahary Martineau: 3D modeling and virtual architecture / Emad Dabiri: live video in toronto

GENDAI GALLERY 'RESIDENCY IN RMB CITY' GROUP SHOW (2010-11)

Judith Doyle and Fei Jun collaborating as GestureCloud were included in a groundbreaking exhibition curated by Yan Wu at the Gendai Gallery. The exhibition took place from December 4 2010 - January 29 2011.

Yan Wu writes on the project, "Manifesting inside Gendai space at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre and the on-line virtual world Second Life simultaneously, Residency in RMB City is a virtual residency programme intertwining with an actual exhibition, staged to experience, reflect, and agitate the contingencies and resistances around the thresholds of the virtual and the actual in response to the augmented reality our everyday inhabits. Three proposals originally developed for Chinese artist Cao Fei's RMB City in Second Life are put forward by Toronto-based artist/architect, Adrian Blackwell; artist, Yam Lau; and the collaborative team GestureCloud: Judith Doyle and Fei Jun..."

For more, visit the Gendai Gallery website:  http://www.gendaigallery.org/programs/residency-rmb-city

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 - 2:00pm