Capturing the relationship between human movement and site
The Motion in Place Platform brings together a cross-disciplinary group to develop new technologies allowing researchers to move out of the studio,to map and measure the human experience and response when moving through places. The video clip above shows an expert archaeologist working on summer dig. The MiPP team captured this data over the 2010 season at the Silchester Roman site.
Over centuries, societies have built up a wealth of written knowledge of human behaviour and emotion in response to specific environments. Such narratives are, however, subjective and not necessarily quantifiable. At the same time, the physical study of a site or the cataloguing of material objects often falls short of capturing the human experience of a site. In an effort to develop new tools for recording and articulating the human physical and emotional response to specific environments, the Motion in Place Platform (MiPP) is developing technologies and research strategies to enable the study of how people understand a site by moving through it.
Understanding human movement
The MiPP team uses motion capture (mocap) systems to record different forms of movement data on site. A first system developed in collaboration with Brighton-based motion-capture company Animazoo, adapted their IGS-190m, currently the most advanced inertial motion capture system on the market, for use outside a studio. Using gyroscopic sensors attached to flexible suits, this system allows the collection of high-resolution, full-body data from two people in a fixed area over limited time periods, recording, for example, the movements needed to collect water from a well.
MiPP is funded in part through a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Digital Equipment and Database Enhancement for Impact (DEDEFI) scheme, and brings together a cross-disciplinary team of researchers directed by Kirk Woolford (Media, Film and Music, Sussex) and including, among many others, Sally Jane Norman (Director of the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts [ACCA], Sussex) and Martin White (Computer Graphics Centre, Sussex).
The team has an initial year to develop the Platform, and conduct tests in conjunction with the University of Reading’s Silchester Field School. At the completion of this pilot phase, the Platform will be hosted until 2013 through the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA), a cutting-edge research and teaching infrastructure with a strong focus on creative arts, performance and technology. Ultimately, this hardware, software, and data will be made available to researchers throughout the UK as part of the programme of the AHRC to develop digital resources for the wider academic community.
