“The Magic Mirror Game” (Director’s Cut), a one-man two-actor live performance, is part of my UCSC Digital Arts MFA thesis (Mocap & Mimesis), which is a cross-disciplinary performance study in expressive and improvisational 3D synthespians using motion capture. The two performances in the study, “The Avatar Dance” and “The Magic Mirror Game”, envision future methods of re-creating classic dance and pantomime gestures with a live digital double, or Avatar.

“The Magic Mirror Game” performance explores a virtual rendition of the classic Marx Brothers “Mirror Gag” in a backstage dressing room between performances of our group production, “Stop the Press!” This is intended to show a vision or proof-of-concept for further PhD research in Computer Science I will be starting in fall 2010 in UCSC’s Expressive Intelligence Studio. My intent is to develop a new medium of live interactive entertainment I call The Theatre of the Avatar.

Concept, design, animation, and performance by Chris(Topher) Maraffi. Background music excerpts by Chris Molla, Harry Connick Jr, and Radiohead. The artist wishes to warmly thank his thesis committee members from UCSC’s Theater Arts and Computer Science departments for their inspiring guidance: Kathy Foley, Ted Warburton, and Michael Mateas. Special thanks to Ricardo Tobon, John Lingemann, Jim Bierman, David Cuthbert, Kimberly Jannarone, Eric Mack, and Joe Weiss. Additional thanks to UCSC DANM faculty, staff, and students, including Soraya Murray, Lyle Troxell, Felicia Rice, Christine Imai, and fellow DANMites.