Virtual Marionette

Exploring Leapmotion interface using hand / fingers to control a puppet´s head.

Very simple example of digital puppetry build in Unity.

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Exhibition of Virtual Marionette interactive installations at Teatro Municipal de Vila do Conde from 14th December till 31th December 2013.

I was invited to participate with my virtual marionette work as part of my contribution to Lafontana Formas Animadas (LFA) puppetry company. This exhibition gathers the work of 15 years of puppetry from LFA. My research and work contributes to new approaches of puppetry.

I invite the participants to interact with Inversus and bePuppit installations and to send me some feedback to virtual.marionette@grifu.com

more pictures, click the more button.

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The Virtual Marionette installation “BePuppit” in a puppetry exhibition at Teatro Municipal de Vila do Conde.
We invite the audience to participate in this play which recreates a traditional puppet booth.

“PUPPIT” is an interactive experience that explores different ways to control and animate virtual puppets in live environments using digital puppetry methods as a storytelling tool.
With “Body-PUPPIT” the users body is the puppet controller, producing performance animation with body motion. We challenge the participants to explore their bodies to give life to puppets that are different from human morphology as if they were using hand shadows to create imaginative figures.
By playing with puppets in a dramatic way the user can create the illusion of life and build a narrative.

PUPPIT consists in a several prototypes that are the work-in-progress of a PhD research called “Virtual Marionette – Interaction Model for Digital Puppetry”. The goal of the prototypes is to explore and evaluate different rigging, mapping and interaction methods, and to develop tools for artists and non-expert artists that can be used in as collaborative environment for storytelling – making live narratives.

The exhibition is open every day since the 14th till 22th December except mondays.

www.virtualmarionette.grifu.com
December 2013

Results from the explorative work made at “Espaço do Tempo” in Montemor-o-Novo in December 2013.

The manipulation of sound and visual elements using the body as interface like a marionette controller.
We explore the potential of the body motion in three main areas:
– Body expression to model sound and visual
– Body motion to trigger sounds
– Body position in space to model and trigger sounds

We define a sensitive space where the performer could move and interact with the audio-visual elements.

As we can verify in the video the way the performer interacts is somehow resembled  to the way a puppeteer manipulates marionettes.

As future work we will explore deeply the perceptive motion of sound and visual. Creating a relation between diegetic and non-diegetic sounds and similar approach to the performance animation.

Video performance by: Amândio Anastácio
Multimedia: Grifu

Dec.2013