Gigant Doku: Lu Yang The Destroyer
Hybrid Motion Capture Performance
Garage MCA, Moscow
In May 2021, we presented a live motion capture performance, Gigant Doku: Lu Yang The Destroyer at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow. The performance was live streamed on the Garage MCA YouTube and Facebook channels, as well as presented to audiences on-site as a hybrid event. The work features Doku, a non-binary digital reincarnation of Lu Yang, which is short for Dokusho Dokushi meaning “We are born alone, and we die alone,” as we are of our own creation in our journey through life and transcendence in Buddhism.
This performance included rigging the new Doku avatar with hyper-realistic facial and hair effects, where facial tracking was used with an off-screen actor. A new city environment was developed where the giant Doku could destroy buildings in the scene, turning them into burning piles of rubble. New camera views were developed from inside buildings, on the ground on mobile phones from pedestrian views, from inside helicopters, cars and boats on the water etc. New visual effects were added including eye lasers, and darkening of the sky, lighting and meteor showers. Rokoko motion capture suits were used by Russian dancers Banzay BNZ and Nikita Belykh alongside DJ sets by Moa Pillar and HMOT. The Garage team supported the production on-site with remote development by Lu Yang and MetaObjects.
On 12 August 2021, MetaObjects presented an artist talk together with Lu Yang, dancer Banzay BNZ and musician Stas Sharifullin (HMOT) livestreamed on GarageMCA YouTube.
About the artist
Lu Yang is an artist who works across video, installation, animation, performance, motion capture and games. Lu Yang graduated with an MA in New Media Art from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. Lu Yang’s work explores existential issues about the nature of life through references to Chinese medicine, neuroscience, popular culture and religion.
Lu Yang has presented solo exhibitions at Zabludowicz Collection, London (2022), ARoS Aarhus Art Museum (2021), Spiral, Tokyo (2018), M Woods Museum, Beijing (2017), and many others. Lu Yang was selected for the Chinese Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale and has featured new work in The Milk of Dreams exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Lu Yang won the BMW Art Journey award in 2019 and was selected as Deutsche Bank's Artist of the Year in 2022.