Tango Dance

Shows / Talks: Currents New Media Festival, iDocs Symposium, StoryTeching/Immersive Tales Exhibition, Bad@Sports Podcast

Role: Creative Technologist

Collaboration: Michelle Hessel

Features: New Media Art, Lidar / 3D Scanning, Real-Time Data Visualization, Pointcloud

Medium: Google Tango, UE4

Date: 2019 - Ongoing

Tango Dance Scans: Instagram, Sketchfab

Tango Dance is a series of unique looking 3D scans that explore the creative potential of scanning moving subjects.

3D scanning is a technique used to create a volumetric representation of something. When 3D scanning people, the subjects are usually asked to be very still to achieve detailed and realistic results. That makes them very self-conscious of their bodies. In this work, the artist lets subjects move freely. This results in a more human, “imperfect” scan, where silhouettes and gestures are contextualized in the environments they are in and in which there is room for creativity and storytelling. The goal here is not to have a life-like volumetric replica of something, but instead, to invite the audience to think about the movement of volumetric representations of bodies in the context they are in.

The project aims to experiment with a new visual language that borrows from photography, painting, and digitally created artworks. You might see in the scans a parallel with chronophotography, motion blur, and pointillism. The holes and empty spaces exist for a purpose. Like in an overexposed photograph, the viewer must fill in the blanks with their imagination.

To create this project, we used a discontinued technology from Google - Project Tango. Tango was a 2014 effort from the tech giant to bring augmented reality to phones, but it never really panned out. In March 2018 Google announced via Twitter that it would stop supporting the technology in favor of their new Augmented Reality tool - ARCore and with that, they took all Tango documentation, support, and promotions down.