Movement in Time, Part 2: Motion Analysis in Chinese Martial Art Films and Calligraphy

The project works on the visual similarity between the Chinese martial art fighting sequences in motion pictures and the cursive style of Chinese calligraphy to generate calligraphic animation automatically. The author developed a custom software to capture the fighting sequences from a number of selected Chinese martial art films. The software employs the optical flow analysis to interpret and represent the fighting details in each picture frame. The author also digitized all brush stroke information from the famous cursive style Chinese calligraphic text – the One Thousand Characters Classics and maintain in a database. The project implemented a machine learning model to match the fighting sequence details against the spatial configuration of each Chinese character. In the end, the software will select the closest match to display as animation on screen. In the exhibition, the artwork runs in real time to analyze the motion details and generate the live animation of the calligraphic characters in synchronization with the fighting sequences.