Design Process

Abstract
Reincarnation is an immersive art installation seeking to create a out of body experience of a dream. By exploring the movement of major limbs of the human body with motion capture, this project gives life to objects that are normally static with MoCap data, then representing a process of astral trip with mapping. We gave a new meaning to reincarnation: The energy of a reincarnated object continues to live on and move but only when the soul of the vessel is released.

Ideation
To build this project, we have four major works: Motion Capture, 3D Animation, Projection mapping & Installation and finally, filming. We firstly started with the idea of recreating the out of body experience. The whole process will be divided into four phases, the gentle phases where body falls asleep and soul becomes relatively active; the medium phase where soul tries to get out of body; then the phase where soul is completely separated from the body; last but not least, the soul is being drag back to the body when the person is soon to being  awake.

Process
With this design, we did three phase of motion captures, accordingly. Having the data does not mean we have aconvincing story. So we choreographed the stages based on Psychology stages of sleep: Light Sleep, Deep Sleep and REM sleep, corresponding to our MoCap stages, Gentle, Intense, and relatively Intense. We bought four Gypsum Models, which will be used in the Installation, including a sphere, a cylinder, a rectangular cube and a cross-shaped model, representing head, arm, leg and turso. We 3D modelled these models in Blender then binding Motion Capture data from each body parts to the correspoding model, to make them alive. The next process is to render these animations and then edit them in Premier Pro based on our choereography. After finishing the final combined animation, we set up the installation and project the animation to the real gypsum objects with Touch Designer. Last but not least, we gradually realized that the projection and the installation itself may not be able to well explain the process and our concept. So we also made a film for further, better demonstration. Gradually The film played an important role in implementing the installations, and provided a great help for conveying our idea.