My first iteration utilizes a custom 3D model to animate the motion-captured Odissi data. The skeletal model (the default for the Motionbuilder software) maps onto a character generated by the Autodesk Character Generator that provides choices in clothing, skin tone, eye-color, hair color, height, weight, musculature, and facial contours. I choose a brown male body in black overalls to complement her capturing process. Movement in Odissi is not gender segregated. Both male and female dancers perform the same movements, although the attitude of the dancer often represents gender. For example, maleness requires sharper and bolder movements while femaleness is ascribed to softer and gentler movements. I choose a male dancing body to examine my movement’s cross-gender translation in a digital environment. The question of obscuring and surfacing bodies in this digital translation underscores my experiment throughout since I invest in surfacing the Mahari from within her Odissi movement practice. Transposing her movement to an identifiably male character, I question the easy associations of soft movements to femininity in Odissi. Through this maneuver, I resist the easy ascription of the Mahari to soft and feminine gestures that will continue to disavow any artistic and innovative agency of the Mahari.
The purpose of this iteration was to ascribe movement to the fingers of the dancing body, as the choreography of the Mudras (hand gestures) were lost in translation with the first iteration. The addition of Mudras in the avatar and their corresponding visual aids in the environment foreground the movements’ symbolic codifications. This particular sequence includes Mudras (hand gestures) and Bhangas (body postures) depicting an oil-lamp, a bee, a female sculptural figure, a spring time blossom, the deity Jagannath, an Odishan temple sculpture, and a cow. These embodied gestures and postures are supplemented by a series of corresponding images. The movement does not have a linear story as such. The gestural information adds a linguistic understanding to the dancing avatar that is further supplemented by visual images. This iteration presents a collection of images that aid the non-linear narrativity of the avatar. For viewers who do not have access to the highly codified Odissi movement vocabulary, these images provide a visual aid for understanding the dancing body’s expressive communication.
The digitized choreography of the fingers into Mudras (gestures) at certain moments in the piece remains interspersed with the transitions from one gesture to another, which questions the association of the dancing body to its adherence to South Asian aesthetic theory. This creates the possibility of punctuating the linguistic determination of the gesture. The digital iterations create the possibility of interfering with the linguistic codification of the Odissi body. For example, as the animated body holds a Tri Pataka (the single-handed gesture with a sharp bending in the ring finger while the remaining fingers stay upright), the picture of an oil-lamp emerges in the surrounding. Tri Pataka represents the oil-lamp according to Natyasastric principles. Hence, it contextualizes the Mudra for its reception from a cultural perspective. As the avatar spins, the image of the oil-lamp travels alongside the Tri Pataka. However, the initial tightness of the ring finger in Tri Pataka slowly gives away as the fingers arrange in Tamrachuda (the single-handed gesture where the tips of the tall, ring, and little fingers touch the thumb while the index finger bends gently). The Tamrachuda represents a female figure and the picture of a classical female body appears in the environment. The avatar applies computational logic to transition from Tri Pataka to Tamrachuda. This transition is different from that of my live performance while transitioning between the two Mudras. This creates a distinct characterization that is germane completely to the digital sphere. While I manually animate the fingers as Mudras, the avatar reorients my choreography by adding its own logic.
These digital punctuations in Natyasastric aesthetics deviate from the flow of mimetic movement in Odissi, where mimetic movement refers to movement that represents something else. Here, meaning-making through movement happens according to multiple registers spanning South Asian aesthetics and digital processing. The digital processes question the construction of meaning according to the representation of the real world in movement. Other than representation, here meaning is being constructed through digital abstraction that increases the generation of Mudras manifold. The multiple configurations of the fingers while showing the same contextual information opens up the linear connections between gesture and meaning.