Boxing Rants by G.H. Hovagimyan

G.H. Hovagimyan

Boxing Rants, 2011

Digital Video, Performance, Kinect Camera

Available

Boxing Rants extends the ideas of performance art by utilizing digital tools. I have taken videos of myself doing standard training exercises for boxing such as hitting the speed bag or heavy bag, jumping rope, shadow boxing etc.. While doing these I also speak a rant performance. These short clips are put into a computer database. I’ve written a PD program that selects these clips at random and feed them into one of nine projected cubes, mapping them onto the cubes.

The controller mechanism is an Xbox Kinect Camera I have hacked. The camera scans my physical position and maps the coordinates onto a virtual skeleton that is also part of the final projection. The camera tracks the x,y,z coordinates of my hands in real space and triggers the videos according to the position of my hands.
This allows for a performance that is based on my body’s movements and is somewhat freeform in it’s structure. Part of the show is the endurance of my shadow boxing another is the turning off and on of the cubes in projected space.