Motion Tracking, Telepresence, and Collaboration

Dene Grigar and Steve Gibson

Abstract

This essay lays out research into the use of a particular motion tracking system, called the Gesture and Media System (GAMS), for real-time, embodied telepresence and collaboration. The central question underlying this essay is, “In what ways can telepresence and collaboration be enhanced by motion tracking technology in performance and installations?” Preliminary findings suggest that motion tracking technology makes it possible for multiple users to manipulate not only data objects like images, video, sound, and light but also hardware and equipment, such as computers, robotic lights, and projectors, with their bodies in a 3D space across a network. Implications for use may be of interest to those working on digital media projects where hardware, software, and peripherals must be controlled in real-time by teams working together at-a-distance or where physical computing research is undertaken.

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Biographies

Dene Grigar is a media artist-scholar and Director of the Digital Technology and Culture program as Washington State University Vancouver. Her books include New Worlds, New Words: Exploring Pathways in and Around Electronic Environments (with John Barber) and Defiance and Decorum: Women, Public Rhetoric, and Activism (with Laura Gray and Katherine Robinson); media art works include "Fallow Field: A Story in Two Parts" and "The Jungfrau Tapes: A Conversation with Diana Slattery about The Glide Project," both of which appeared in Iowa Review Web in October 2004, and When Ghosts Will Die (with Canadian multimedia artist Steve Gibson), a piece that experiments with motion tracking technology to produce narrative. The video of the piece has been named Finalist in the Drunken Boat Panliterary Award Competition and was exhibited at Art Tech Media 06 in Spain. Her most recent work, also with Gibson, is the MINDful Play Environment, a live, interactive game environment she is developing (with Gibson) for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. She is also Associate Editor of Leonardo Reviews and International Editor for Computers and Composition.

Steve Gibson is a Canadian media artist, composer, and theorist. He completed his Ph.D. at SUNY Buffalo, where he studied music composition with Louis Andriessen. He also completed postdoctoral research in media and technology with Arthur Kroker at Concordia University in Montréal. He was formerly Senior Lecturer and Director of the Multimedia Program at Karlstad University in Sweden, and now serves as Associate Professor of Digital Media at University of Victoria, Canada.

In 1991 Gibson was resident composer with multi-media ensemble PoMoCoMo, and in 1993-94 he was resident artist at the Banff Centre, in their Art and Virtual Environments program. His Book/CD collaboration with Arthur Kroker, SPASM was released in 1993. Gibson’s experimental work includes interactive pieces Cut to the Chase, Telebody, Virtual DJ and When Ghosts Will Die (with Dene Grigar), which have been performed at major festivals throughout Europe and North America. His installations and compositions have been performed in such venues as Ars Electronica; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the North American New Music Festival; the Banff Centre for the Arts; Festival International Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville; the International Computer Music Conference; the European Media Arts Festival; ISEA; Interface3, Hamburg; Akademie der Bildenden KŸnste, NŸrnberg; the San Francisco Art Institute; 4 & 6CyberConf. His work has been published internationally by St. Martin's Press (US), The MIT Press, New World Perspectives (Canada), Turnaround Productions (UK), Future Publications (UK), Urra Apogeo (Italy), and Passagen Verlag (Austria).