Motion Pointillism: The (Re/De)Construction of the Normative Body through Motion Capture

Marker-based, optical motion capture systems make use of reflective markers, interpreting them as clusters of dimensionless points in space. Before labeling and arranging these markers, potentially to fit a model of a kinematic chain, these markers possess little referentiality to objects in physical space. However, the construction of a kinematic model of the human body requires making several assumptions about the body and its affordances. In this article, we problematize the use of the kinematic model in dance performance that employs motion capture, placing focus on the referentiality of visual representations derived from markers and models while examining how motion capture contributes to the construction of the body through the embedding of assumptions and values about what a body is and can do within the technology. Through the design and conceptualization of two interactive dance performances titled Reconfigurations and The Shapeshifter, we develop an approach to working with motion capture that we term motion pointillism, which aims to resist the systemic assumptions embedded in the modeling process. This approach conceptualizes the emergence of the dimensionless points’ referentiality to a human body as a collaborative component of system development and performance, which occurs both in the design of visual representations as well as in the viewers’ perception.