Daniel Finnegan tests the kinect ‘Dot-Mirror’ at CLARITY in DCU.

JOINING

THE DOTS

In 1973, the Swedish scientist Gunnar Johansson explored how our eyes connect dots. He attached small lights to people’s joints- elbows, knees, shoulders etc. - and filmed them in the dark. with the figures represented only by thirteen points of lights, johansson demonstrated the extraordinary ability of the human mind to reconstitute the human form from minimal information.

Inspired by Johansson’s work we worked with the choreographer Cindy Cummings and with Dr. Philip Kelly of CLARITY to create a ‘dot-film’ with children from Ardfert National School, exploring a universe of dots in which particles and people coexist. During the summer of 2011, Daniel Finnegan, an intern at CLARITY, and Dr. David Monaghan helped us find ways to allow you to re-enact Johanson’s experiments in real time. The final result uses a KINECT camera (a camera system for the xBox used for 3D tracking of gamers) to track your movements and turn you into A Dot-Man/DOT-Woman.

Video installation.

Dimensions : variable.

Year : 2011.