Still Standing

Yesterday I presented a paper on motiongrams at the Sound and Music Computing conference in Copenhagen. Today I will present the paper A study of the noise-level in two infrared marker-based motion capture systems. This is a quite nerdy, in-depth study of the noise-level of two of our motion capture systems. Abstract With musical applications in mind, this paper reports on the level of noise observed in two commercial infrared marker-based motion capture systems: one high-end (Qualisys) and one affordable (OptiTrack). We have tested how various features (calibration volume, marker size, sampling frequency, etc.) influence the noise level of markers lying still, and fixed to subjects standing still. The conclusion is that the motion observed in humans standing still is usually considerably higher than the noise level of the systems. Dependent on the system and its calibration, however, the signal-to-noise-ratio may in some cases be problematic. ...

On Thursday we are organising the first Norwegian Championship of standstill at University of Oslo. This is part of the University’s Open Day, a day when potential new students can come and see what happens on campus. Besides the competitive part, the championship is (of course) a great way to gather more data about how people stand still. The art of standing still is something that has been a great interest of mine for the last year or so, and I have been carrying out different types of smaller experiments to understand more about the micromotion observed when standing still. ...

Yesterday Miles Phillips{.url} suggested that the word “motionlessness” may be what I am after when it comes to describing the act of standing still. He further pointed me to a web site with a list of the world records for motionlessness. The rules to compete in motionlessness is as follows: The record is for continuously standing motionless. You must stand: sitting is not allowed. No facial movements are allowed other then the involuntary blinking of the eye. Deep breathing is permitted provided it does not involve observable movement notably greater than that in normal breathing. No rest breaks are allowed at any point during the event. The venue for such an event should be such that the general public can view. But from my point of view, being interested in micromotion, I would be very curious to see how still these record holders actually were. ...

As mentioned previously (here and here), I have been doing some experiments on standing still in silence. One thing is to do it, another is to talk (or write) about it. Then I need to have words describing what I have been doing. To start with the simple; the word silence seems to be quite clearly defined as the “lack of sound”, and is similar to the Norwegian word stillhet. There is also the broader concept of stille, which, in addition to quiet, also covers metaphorical uses of the term, e.g. calm, but I do not want to get into more trouble by using that word. ...