The German Institute for Standardization (DIN) has created over 33,000 standards in the last century. These standards influence our daily physical movement. By recording a freely improvised dance with motion capture and translating these movements into unique character designs, we delve into the irony of technical standards: designed for us, yet limiting us. Dancing in Norms invites us to question what it means to be a human who moves within modern standards and technology.
Dance
The core concept juxtaposes human movement with technical visualization. The process began with motion tracking (full-body and camera tracking) of a freely improvised dance performance by
Character designs
Based on the recorded motion data, several abstract visualization principles were developed, such as visualizing the distance between two points or three perspectives simultaneously. These led to character designs inspired by chair design icons.
Animated patterns
The credit sequence captures the synergy of technological standardisation and human movement through 2D patterns that dynamically interact with the dancing 3D characters through a code-based system.
About the creators
Lewek
Director, animation and visual design
Stoeckler
Producer
Bornitz
Character designer
Jung
Editing
Carubia
Motion graphics and visual design
Heckle
Motion graphics and creative coding
Wittkopp
Motion capture camera
Monschauer
Technical support
Hellmann
Music and sounddesign
Vogler
Music
FMX 2025 Trailer
Klabunde
Sounddesign
FMX 2025 Trailer
Dancing in Norms is a joint effort. Get in touch if you have ideas for future endeavors, want to showcase the project, or just want to go dancing!
2:25 min
4K, DCP, 7.1
Dance: Thomas Lempertz
Music: Frederic Hellmann
Music (FMX Trailer): Frederic Hellmann, Jonas Vogler
Voice: Angela H. Fischer
Editing: Katharina Jung
Sounddesign: Frederic Hellmann, Vincent Egerter, Jannik Ost
Sounddesign (FMX Trailer): Frederic Hellmann, Vincent Egerter, Timo Klabunde
Production: Sabina Stöckler
Animation: Ole Bornitz, Samuel Lewek
Motion graphics: Luca Carubia, Victor Heckle
Graphic design: Luca Carubia, Samuel Lewek
Creative coding: Victor Heckle
MoCap camera: Jan Wittkopp
MoCap technical direction: Justus Henne
Technical support: Leon Monschauer, Paolo Henrique Scatena
Graduation project by Samuel Lewek for the postgraduate program Motion Design.
Many thanks to: Max Alber, Tille Berger, Chantale Eglin, Erica Esserman, Ole Freytag, Simon Haag, Lucas Hesse, Martin Lorenz, Zoi Panteliadou, Tobias Röttger, Dirk Schuster, Benjamin Simon, Shinjiro Sueda, Tatjana Theuer, Ziyan Xiong and Rebecca Zahor.
Supervised by Prof. Dr. Heike Sperling & Alexander Hanowski.
A production by Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH.
Nominated for The Motion Awards 2024
Gold at ADC Talent Award 2024
Silver at ADC Talent Award 2024
Silver at ADC Europe Student Awards 2024
Student merit at Young Ones ADC 2024
Talk at ADC Creative Club 2024 – Micro Edition (Stuttgart)
Screening at ITFS Stuttgart / Hochschulpräsentation
Talk at ADC Creative Club 2023 (Stuttgart)