The Electric Body Project is a standalone software package running on the SGI platform designed to work as a plugin with LifeForms choreographic software. It offers output of file format compatibility creating movement for choreography and animation. In The Electric Body Project , the movement of the participant is literally sampled and displayed, and is metaphorically treated to influence, direct, and determine what is presented and represented visually. The Electric Body uses a series of mapping systems, which originate from the physical mirrored body and result in the transformed mapped body. Mapping strategies include 'imprinting', 'following', and 'tracing', concepts informed by choreographic studio techniques.
Movement is sampled and treated using inverse kinematics techniques.
The Electric Body extends the literal photo-realistic world model of motion capture by introducing the concept of metaphorical mapping used in compositional practices of choreographing movement for dance in the studio. Metaphorical mapping means that a sampled input gesture can be transformed using User Defined Maps that are predefined, or that are created on the fly during the data capture process. In addition User Maps can be combined over time, to produce additive phasing. These techniques provide a mechanism for composing movement which parallels sound filtering used in music composition and image filtering used in image processing. Users can work directly with the computer monitor display, or in a performance situation, interact with their own life size projected images.