ABSTRACT
Liam Somerville is a cinematographer and video artist who has created two pieces in The Void – a video, Welcome to Larrakia Country, with First Nations musician MRLN and a virtual reality (VR) art-game as part of the Assemblage Artist-in-Residence program. In the former project, the movement data of a live music performance of two performers playing electronic music was captured and used to create a crowd interacting with live music. In the latter project, a VR simulation of the last 100 seconds of humanity was created. The Void was used to capture movements of human figures and create a playable, digital VR experience where monolithic titans destroy the world, while the player of the game/art piece has to decide what they do with their limited time in the experience which offers a perspective into what the player does in their life outside of VR. These experimental projects developed significant insights into the use of motion capture in relation to the simulation of live music performance, digital scale within VR, and the relationship between motion capture and digital art. The residency in The Void also provided the opportunity to explore questions around the transition from filmmaker to digital and motion capture (MoCap) artist, the creation of production language and protocols for MoCap, and the lack of gender diverse avatars in MoCap software.
