eMotion Arrives; Mac Donationware Makes Gestures and Dance Visually Alive

eMotion+Wiimote in IR mode from Adrien Mondot on Vimeo.

eMotion, an all-Cocoa Mac app, is now available as alpha donationware, and it’s capable of some stunning, particle-based visuals. Wave around a Wiimote, and get satisfying swirls of particles – even if they send a chill down my spine as I sit here in snowy Chicagoland.

Creator Adrien Mondot of Grenoble, France practices juggling and dance as well as programming, and it shows. He has some nice ideas about the software that I think could inspire other, similar directions. As he describes it:

eMotion is a tool for creating interactive motions of objects for live visual performances.

Electronic motion seems often artificial, synthetic… well… in fact it does not convey any emotions. By defining new rules to create movements, eMotion is a new kind of software made for visual live animations.

As it is based on real world physics law, all motions seems natural, full of emphasis.

It allows to manipulate different kind of objects like still image, videos, text, drawing.

Targeted mainly for theatre/dance performances, it can be used in broader situations.

In fact, talking about just the tool seems to miss the point of thinking about jugglers, dancers, and dancing pixels. But to summarize quickly, eMotion provides physics-based animation rules, multiple particle systems, and layered, scriptable behaviors. Add Wii, Wacom, MIDI, audio, and OSC inputs to control it with whatever you like.

With eMotion and Animata and Processing and vvvv, we’re seeing a real renaissance in live, performed visuals.

Thanks, Anton!

eMotion Project Page [description, documentation, downloads]