mediated bodies
How can we leverage face and body tracking technologies in unexpected, even bizarre ways to expand our understanding of what it means to inhabit a body?
• 24. March -21.April 2025
• Online!
• Five-weeks, Mondays, 6-8PM CET
• Small class of participants
Artist / Student (Full Time)
€225*
Freelancer
€245*
Professional
€275*
Generous Supporter Ticket
€295*
course
description
This course invites us to think about how bodies perform with and within technological media. We will consider how bodies are represented in virtual media, from painting to photography, video, and the digital, and how the body itself is a medium and mediator. We will make and share our own experimental artworks while exploring radical and canonical artists and theorists from this multifaceted field.
We will consider the virtual body and the virtual perspective: how we see and how we are seen within technological fields of representation. We know that the movements and framing of a camera shape our experience of a film, putting us in a kind of virtual body moving around the world of the film to see what happens there. We also know that moving image technology allows us to see our bodies and others' bodies in ways that exceed our own capabilities and defy reality -- we can slow things down, speed them up, pause, repeat, zoom in, and manipulate the image in so many ways. When we work in virtual worlds, like 3D simulations, games, or motion-interactive video, we can bend bodies and perspectives even more beyond the real, and yet we still relate to what we experience there, with our bodies.
In this course, we will expand our understanding of embodiment with virtual technology, learning and experimenting with body tracking tools inside TouchDesigner, DaVinci Resolve, and Stable Diffusion. We will create new video works that use these tracking devices to remap, reinterpret, translate, and manipulate our own lived and experienced motion. We will reflect on the nature of these tools and their complicated histories, as well as their current applications in the world, in order to situate our own creations within this broader critical context.
Course Objectives
Broaden knowledge of the historical evolution of media technologies, their precursors, practical applications, and cultural effects, especially regarding the body.
Become familiar with a wide range of artists whose works address, exemplify, or employ mediation of the body.
Gain understanding of body-motion-tracking methods in contemporary creative software, and apply one of the demonstrated methods to a conceptually driven audiovisual project of your own.
Develop a meaningful and applicable knowledge of how relationships between technologies and bodies shape identity and society.
Consider expansive definitions of embodiment and agency, including non-human animals and machines.
In this course you will be introduced to
skeletal tracking with Rokoko Vision
responsive body-tracking tools inside Touch Designer
camera-tracking inside DaVinci Resolve
ControlNet techniques with Stable Diffusion
multi-platform processes, using motion tracked in one program to control animation in another
To see more, check out this Mediated Bodies Zine we’ve just put together!
course
outline
Week 1: Tracing and Tracking
Introduction to the class and to each other
Origins of facial recognition in early surveillance strategies.
Muybridge’s Motion Studies as precursor to motion capture.
Motion capture with Rokoko Studio.
How is the body reconstructed as mechanical and suspect?
Week 2: Perspective
The history of perspective in art (painting to photography to film to VR).
How-to and creative applications of camera tracking in DaVinci Resolve as perspective tracking.
How is the body represented in the way we see, rather than just as the thing we see?
Week 3: Retargeting, Remapping, Re-Bodying
Translating data from previous sessions (skeletal motion capture and camera motion tracking) into Blender or Unity.
What does it mean to source a lived bodily experience for movement in a new virtual world?
Week 4: Who Follows Who
Body Tracking in Touch Designer - set up and experimentation.
What does it feel like to witness your own motion translated into virtual interactions in real-time?
How do we understand our relationship to the machine when it follows us according to our directions?
Week 5: Diffusing the Body
Examining understandings of the body in current machine learning applications.
Working with ControlNet in Stable Diffusion to detect and translate images of bodies.
How do the limitations of our trained machines teach us about our own trained beliefs and expectations with respect to the body?
who is this
class for?
This course is suitable for all experience levels and will be exciting for anyone interested in how visual culture and technology shape our understanding and experience of our own bodies. Whether your interests are more with the body or more with the machine, our experiments with the meeting of the two will be enriching for anyone wanting to find more room for creative expression within our current multimediated reality. Those with prior experience in any of the covered techniques will find new ways of thinking about and combining these tools in their work. All participants will have a broader understanding of how and why tracking tools work, and the possibilities for using them counter-to the status quo.
about online classes
Classes are 'live' meaning that you can directly interact with the instructor as well as with the other participants from around the world. Classes will also be recorded for playback in case you are unable to attend for any reason. For specific questions, please email us and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.
about
scholarships
We are offering a limited number of reduced fee scholarships for this online class for those facing financial hardships. These allow participants to pay a reduced fee and are reserved for women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ who otherwise would be unable to attend. To be considered for one of these scholarships, please use this form.
To apply for a reduced fee scholarship, you must fill in the form no later than one week before the course begins. We will not accept any class sign-ups or scholarship applications after this date, as our regular sign-ups will determine the amount of scholarships we can accommodate. We will notify you shortly thereafter if your application has been approved.
We are a small organisation with no outside funding and like many, we are also in survival mode. We depend on tuition fees for reimbursing class instructers, space fees, and operational costs. We ask you to consider this when applying for a reduced fee scholarship. <3
meet the
instructor
Jessica Tucker
Artist, Musician, Educator
Jessica Tucker is an American and Dutch artist, musician, and educator. In her performances, videos, sculptures, and installations, she playfully examines how we use virtual vision to construct and distort our concept of the embodied self. She has performed and exhibited her work throughout Europe and the USA, including Rewire Festival, FOAM Museum of Photography, Goethe Institut, the Van Gogh Museum, and Mana Contemporary. She is currently conducting new artistic research in Berlin and at the Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie, supported by the Fulbright Germany program. In 2023-24, she was a Grant Wood Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa, specializing in interdisciplinary performance using digital media. She has also been supported by the Mondriaan Fonds, Chicago Artists Coalition, Thoma Foundation, and DCASE, among others.