LaJune McMillan
LaJune is a practicing creative technologist and gave a workshop in Spring 2023 in DTEM 2417: Data Visualization course at the Lincoln Center campus.
In this video work from the Black Movement Library is projected onto the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
In the Spring 2023 workshop given by LaJune at Fordham, the topics of motion capture, mixed reality, and race we introduced and discussed. In the past few years, access to motion capture data, 3D base models, and software to “make an animation of yourself” has skyrocketed. While these resources are extremely helpful to create a range of projects, they lack tools to create diverse characters and movements unexplored by systems that center assumptions of neutrality. The Black Movement Pop Up Library (BMPUL) is a library for activists, performers & artists to create diverse XR projects, a space to research how and why we move, and an archive of Black existence. BMPUL seeks to grow community through the use of performances, XR experiences, workshops, conversations and tool making.
In the workshop, students explored emerging media tools and discussed LaJune’s work with the Black Movement Project. In addition, students tried on motion capture gear and used DeepMotion software to see their movements mapped onto a 3D avatar.
Here a student is doing a cartwheel while wearing the motion capture gear. On the projector screen you see their movements mapped to a 3D avatar that can then be skinned using DeepMotion tools.
Civic Media Platform
As part of the work with LaJune we explored how existing content created by creative technologists around
The prototype was developed using ReactJS and allows for connecting existing resources to teaching materials to more easily facilitate the use of content to support civic media and racial equity lessons.