Catching the ghost: the digital gaze of motion capture

Abstract

Created with digital motion capture, or mocap, the virtual dances Ghostcatching and as.phyx.ia render movement abstracted from choreographic bodies. These depictions of gestural doubles or ‘ghosts’ trigger a sense of the uncanny rooted in mocap’s digital processes. Examining these material processes, this article argues that this digital optical uncanny precipitates from the intersubjective relationship of performer, technology, and spectator. Mocap interpolates living bodies into a technologized visual field that parses these bodies as dynamic data sets, a process by which performing bodies and digital capture technologies coalesce into the film’s virtual body. This virtual body signals a computational agency at its heart, one that choreographs the intersubjective embodiments of real and virtual dancers, and spectators. Destabilizing the human body as a locus of perception, movement, and sensation, mocap triggers uncanny uncertainty in human volition. In this way, Ghostcatching and as.phyx.ia reflect the infiltration of computer vision technologies, such as facial recognition, into numerous aspects of contemporary life. Through these works, the author hopes to show how the digital gaze of these algorithms, imperceptible to the human eye, threatens individual autonomy with automation.