fered more possibilities of motion visualisation, featuring not only aesthetics, but even more scientific aspects of body motion. Digital tracking of motion offers large field of investigation, extending to ecological psychology, perception psychology, memory studies, creativity studies, media studies, biomechanics, semiology, and the history of ideas. Just like the composer and performer Joseph Rovan maintains about his project with dancer Ami Shulman in his text titled ‘Let us imagine a straight line’, exploring movement, motion, philosophy, and science: ‘I’ve learned so much about movement during this process of working with Ami and developing these filming techniques. To come up with a way to capture something that, in a sense, has an analytical quality and also a beauty ... balancing those has been an enlightening project, which will definitely affect the rest of my work. This has opened a window about human movement and how one can translate it into different media forms.’ (Rovan, 2012)
For example, Rudolf Laban’s choreosophical studies include a graphic approach to movement analysis, and an analytical approach to dance-movement based on an understanding of human motion as a collection of fixed points in a movement continuum. Central to this approach is the idea that movement can be captured graphically for its analysis via different techniques of graphic representation: including drawing, 3D modelling, graphs, diagrams, and notation. Graphic models play a key role in the development of Laban’s theory of harmonic space. Based on a series of geometric and topological models, Laban was able to develop a material method as part of his creative research on movement analysis. Laban’s graphic approach encourages the use of visual media and technologies of graphic inscription as inventive methods for the better understanding of movement, which is why Laban’s thinking can be adequately reconceptualised using technologies such as video and motion capture. One of Laban’s most fundamental and yet least known material models ‘the spheric form’ presents a much broader understanding of Laban’s movement analysis as a form of material thinking, and not only within the context of dance-training, but as part of a vision of the dance that is complete in its philosophical perspectives, and which Laban calles choreosophy. (Sutil, 2012)
Fig. 121 and 122 Movement analysis – Chronophotography of dancer Ami Shulman walking, Montreal, July 2009. A movement analysis of a jump, a still image of dancer Ami Shulman
19.2 Theoretical Knowledge of Motion The focus on aspects of the principle concerning human body movements increases the empirical and theoretical knowledge found among stage artists such as William Forsythe, Jerzy Grotowski, Doris Humphrey, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Daniel Nagrin, Yoshi Oida, and Mary Overlie, as well as among movement specialists namely Moshe Feldenkrais, Erving Goffman, and Rudolf Laban. (Jan-Gunnar Sjölin, 2011)
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Fig. 123 and 124 Rudolf Laban’s Icosahedron, a part of his theory of movement analysis
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