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SUMMARY:Digitisation of modern and traditional dances using motion capture
  technology - Dr Andreas Aristidou\, Graphics and Virtual Reality Lab\, De
 partment of Computer Science\, University of Cyprus
DTSTART:20130228T141500Z
DTEND:20130228T150000Z
UID:TALK43762@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Rachel Fogg
DESCRIPTION:In this talk\, I will discuss recent results (and some ongoing
  work) obtained in the Virtual Reality Lab (VRL)\, University of Cyprus. I
 n VRL\, we pave the way for documenting folk and modern dances\, aiming to
  create a point of reference digital dance library\, where the users will 
 have free access to dance mocap data\, video data\, photographs\, text and
  metadata\; currently\, only 2D video recordings are used to document trad
 itional dance performances\, having although restrictions (mainly due to t
 he character occlusions) by the limited capabilities of the 2D cameras. To
  ensure folk dances are sufficiently well documented\, recorded and archiv
 ed\, apart from text\, drawings\, choreographic notation and video\, it ca
 n be tremendously useful to capture the human motion itself\, directly fro
 m expert dancers. This does not only safeguard the survival of the complet
 e motion objectively\, it also allows the reuse and study or teaching the\
 , usually structured or complex\, motion. Apart from the goal of preservin
 g this intangible cultural heritage by digitizing it\, we are interested i
 n increasing the awareness of the local community to its dance heritage. T
 o achieve this\, a 3D video game for children is developed to teach these 
 folk dances to the younger generations. In addition\, an introduction to t
 he ongoing research for motion synthesis\, motion classification and motio
 n comparison will be discussed. The language of the human body is complex 
 and it is not possible to have a satisfying simulation if rough simplifica
 tions in motion notation are used and motion has not been properly indexed
  from the outset. The Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) system (a system of an
 alysing human movements mainly used for choreography) offers a simple as p
 ossible but complex as necessary description of human movements and will b
 e used for the abovementioned reasons. Subsequently\, we aim to find the p
 otential similarities between dances from various regions\, expecting to c
 reate a dance genealogy of EU dances. In that manner\, we will create the 
 first digital ethnochoreology (dance ethnology). Acknowledgements: This ta
 lk is part of the project DIDAKTOR/0311/73\, which is co-financed by the E
 uropean Regional Development Fund and the Republic of Cyprus through the R
 esearch Promotion Foundation.\n\nBio:\nDr Andreas Aristidou is a post-doc 
 researcher associated with the  Department of Computer Science\, Universit
 y of Cyprus and an affiliated  researcher at the Department of Multimedia 
 and Graphic Arts\, Cyprus University of Technology. Andreas did his PhD in
  the Signal Processing Group\, CUED\n
LOCATION:LT1 (Inglis Building) Engineering\, Department of
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