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About Wiri
The Wiri project is named for the ‘wiri’, which represents the origins of performance in the cosmogeny of te ao Māori (the Māori world).
The pūrākau (story) of wiri begins with Tamanuiterā, the atua or deity of the sun, who spends six months of every year with his winter wife, Hinetakurua, and the other six with his summer wife, Hineraumati. The son of Tamanuiterā and Hineraumati, Tanerore, amuses his mother during winter months with a dance, the Haka Tanerore. The dance manifests as the shimmering heat haze which rises from the earth after rainfall. In Māori performance traditions, the dance of Tanerore is denoted by the wiri, a quivering hand movement which accompanies songs, dance and rituals of celebration, love, welcome, grief, anger, resistance and despair.
The Wiri project draws on this whakapapa to reflect our methodology:
drawn from Matauranga Māori, connecting to emotional representations beyond the literal or codified, and bringing in a range of bodies, voices, brains and hearts to work through ideas in interdisciplinary collaboration.
Bridging the gap between stage actors and digital actors.
Current interactive media tools lack a significant puzzle piece: full-body interactive animation informed by human models of emotion, the core of human interaction. Creating character animation for the interactive context is a complex, labour-intensive process that is difficult to scale well. We will enable the creation of truly emotive character animation for digital humans in the interactive context.
The Making of
Our Team
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Creative Technology
The Wiri Project is made up of an interdisciplinary team of researchers and academics. With unique approaches across Psychology, Design, Game Development, Computer Science and Theatre. The Wiri Project provides a unique lens to approach the problems in digital character development.
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Our Connections
Affiliated Team members:
Avery Ward
Elena Limmer-Wood
JP Lewis
Contributors:
Consultants:
Mohsin Ali
Tama Kawha
Our Goals
We want to transform the understanding of basic human interaction with innovative approaches, including multichannel recording and machine learning, challenging existing categorical models of emotion.
This work will contribute to elevating the quality and productivity of the NZ interactive media sector, such as games and animation, to the next level by providing cutting edge technology innovation.
To do this, we captured human emotional performances based on a new model of emotional embodiment. Based on body motion, physiological activity, facial expressions and self-reported emotional states, we derive a holistic expression of the emotional performances.
Using the data obtained from the performances, we develop flexible models of emotional interactions using machine learning analyses. These models will provide the basis for feature implementation in interactive media development.