Bunraku is a traditional Japanese puppet theatre. Original puppets are rather huge – c.a. ⅓rd of human height, and are handheld: directly animated by animators, who are visible to the audience.
Bunraku theatre became a major inspiration to a projection mapping challenge, designed especially for a senior year MA students at the New Media Art Department. Series of animations were created to be experienced as a projection, mapped onto the PJAIT’s man building’s facade.
Students were to animate living humans, live captured by themselves, for further digital development. The act of animating is perceived here as not only moving or drawing scrapes or drawings, but as intensively modifying live footage, real-time movement trace or whichever time-based visual data.
It is well known, that animators often use their own body’s movement as a reference for animation. The Bunraku project is an occasion for students to observe and study the dynamics of human body movement. Registered movement data or footage was further composed in space and time: multiplied, arranged, echoed, to achieve the final choreographies.
Art + tech guidance and instructing: Olga Wroniewicz
2017, PJAIT
