Motion capture technology...?

Hi Anna, responding just one last time to the Rotman... and his mention of motion capture technologies and our discussion of gesture.

I like this image (above) very much. It is an image of Vsevolod Meyerhold's system of biomechanics. In short, biomechanics was a rigorous training system through which Meyerhold sought to standardise and refine the movements of the body to act as a kind of language. By establishing these "etudes", Meyerhold wanted to establish a system of communication through isolating and slowing down movement in order that these gestures could express certain actions, intentions and be understood. 

Meyerhold wanted to breakdown the illusion of theatre in order to show its mechanical structures and he included the body and language within this. There's some fantastic images of the way in which he achieved this breaking down of the illusion of theatre by extending the stage into the auditorium and showing the mechanical workings of the sets etc.. 

But in terms of language, I think Meyerhold's interest in the body as a kind of machine (evident in the rigorous training his actors undertook, for example) is particularly interesting in relation to the question of motion capture technologies, because here (in the image above) we see the body capturing movement as a form of language much in the manner in which Rotman suggests motion capture or kinetic technologies might do. And therefore, we can consider the photographs of these movements to be a kind of notation or alphabet (in Rotman's terms).