An exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery will reveal the production processes behind computer-generated video, which is used to create a performing avatar.
Performance Capture, running until July 19, sees actors, musicians and artists involved in the Manchester International Festival hooked up to sensors that record their facial movements and hand gestures while they perform scenes from a script.
The movements and voices are then rendered on to an avatar that becomes a digital double of the original performer. This process is carried out in a second room containing a render farm, editing suites and a whole host of other post-production computing equipment.
Animators and modellers adjust the way the avatar is lit and carries the voices and movements generated from the footage of the performers. Hair and beard growth will also be gradually added to create the impression that the avatar has been performing nonstop throughout the duration of the festival.
In the screening room, visitors will be able to watch the avatar on a huge cinema screen as he accumulates more and more performances.
Speaking at a press preview at Manchester Art Gallery last week, the artist Ed Atkins, who directed the exhibition and wrote the script, said: “At the moment the figure is in this foetal stage still. It is still bald, but over the course of the festival it will sprout hair and also look more and more tired and more decrepit as it has been awake for such a long amount of time.”
The exhibition co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, a curator, critic and historian, and Alex Poots, the founding artistic director of the Manchester International Festival.
“At Manchester International Festival we’ve been relatively cautious about working in the digital field, not because we are not interested but because we always start with the artist and the idea rather than the medium – and in Ed Atkins we found the right artist,” Poots said.
Performance Capture, running until July 19, sees actors, musicians and artists involved in the Manchester International Festival hooked up to sensors that record their facial movements and hand gestures while they perform scenes from a script.
The movements and voices are then rendered on to an avatar that becomes a digital double of the original performer. This process is carried out in a second room containing a render farm, editing suites and a whole host of other post-production computing equipment.
Animators and modellers adjust the way the avatar is lit and carries the voices and movements generated from the footage of the performers. Hair and beard growth will also be gradually added to create the impression that the avatar has been performing nonstop throughout the duration of the festival.
In the screening room, visitors will be able to watch the avatar on a huge cinema screen as he accumulates more and more performances.
Speaking at a press preview at Manchester Art Gallery last week, the artist Ed Atkins, who directed the exhibition and wrote the script, said: “At the moment the figure is in this foetal stage still. It is still bald, but over the course of the festival it will sprout hair and also look more and more tired and more decrepit as it has been awake for such a long amount of time.”
The exhibition co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, a curator, critic and historian, and Alex Poots, the founding artistic director of the Manchester International Festival.
“At Manchester International Festival we’ve been relatively cautious about working in the digital field, not because we are not interested but because we always start with the artist and the idea rather than the medium – and in Ed Atkins we found the right artist,” Poots said.