About the Library
To address the scarcity of culturally-specific and openly accessible motion capture (mocap) assets, the Songa Mocap Library emerges as a research project dedicated to the study of African gestures. This library prioritizes the capture and dissemination of movement data encompassing gestures, non-verbal communication cues, and other embodied elements integral to traditional oral storytelling practices.
Authored by Melisa Achoko Allela and bolstered by a fellowship from the Rhode Island School of Design's Movement Lab, this project seeks to establish a comprehensive and freely accessible collection of motion capture assets. These assets are re-enacted motion capture recordings based on oral storytellers' performances as well as other non-verbal expressions and gestures from life-observation as noticer and witness of day to day lived experience.
Motivation
While presenting progress on a research project exploring embodied storytelling agents for African orature, a colleague's observation served as an impetus for addressing an existing gap in the availability of culturally appropriate digital assets. The 3D character was modeled after Lawino, a brash and outspoken Acholi woman from Okot p'Bitek's literary work Song of Lawino. However, the motion capture data used to synthesize her movements originated from publicly available datasets and research outputs from various institutions, none of which offered variations for typical East African gestures. The asset was labelled "Brad." This observation underscored the incongruence between Lawino's appearance and her movement style (described as "looking great" but moving "like a white man"), highlighting a critical limitation within available motion capture assets (the data being labelled "Brad" and lacking variations for typical East African gestures).
This mismatch between Lawino's cultural background and the motion capture data's origin sparked an additional question: how can embodied storytelling agents be designed to reflect cultural nuances in movement and expression? While Lawino's appearance conveyed her strong personality, her movement, based on generalized mocap data, lacked specific cultural embodiment.
Pamoja/Together
Through this growing collection, Songa Mocap also seeks to prompt wider engagement with practitioners in Africa and in the diaspora through a collaborative and/or crowdsourced creation of diverse motion capture assets.
We invite storytellers, animators, game developers, educators, and enthusiasts alike to join us in growing this collection. Get in touch with us for guidelines on how to submit your mocap data.