Nadi Digital
Nadi Digital is an AI-driven exploration of the body in motion, emerging from the intersection of yoga, computation, and generative art. Initiated in 2015 in collaboration with creative programmer Mallikarjun Malkiodeyar, the project began as a custom-built interactive software designed to study the rhythmic ebb and flow of yogic movement. Using a depth camera, the system captures the profile of the moving body and translates gesture into evolving digital forms through computer vision processes.
The work is titled Nadi, referencing the subtle energy channels described in yogic philosophy. To evoke this energetic duality, the captured motion is intentionally mirrored, allowing the left and right sides of the body to converge into symmetrical compositions. The resulting forms resemble Rorschach-like patterns—simultaneously anatomical and abstract—where movement becomes a visual trace of inner flow.
By transforming embodied practice into algorithmic expression, Nadi Digital proposes a dialogue between ancient knowledge systems and contemporary AI. The project investigates how computational perception can reveal hidden rhythms within the body, translating physical gestures into living digital structures that continuously evolve through interaction.
Technology: Motion Capture, Computer Vision (AI), Depth Camera, Computational Art
Nadi Software
With Motion Tracking and application of AI, we were able to create a unique rule based software which records the body movement as frames . These frames then are translated to occupy space in three dimension. The outcome of the custom made software is Digital art and Generative Data sculptures.
Nadi Live Tracking
Nadi Scrolls
Nadi Generative Digital Prints
Each asana emulates a unique motion from the start of the practice to the end. Each asana has a unique data trail, which looks like rorschach placards. There are 80,000 asanas in Yoga, out of which 80 are the main.
“Can the past ever stop generating? Natasha and Mike’s work on Yoga movement pattern is in direct response to this question. As we move into a post autonomous future where we are staring at everything being generated automatically by autonomous systems, but do we even understand our past, or has the past stopped giving? The work ‘Nadi’ shows the past as a continuous fountain of generation.”
- Srinivas Mangipudi, Curator, Sunaparanta, Goa Center for Arts
Credits
Software Co-Design and Development\\ Mallikarjun M, @mikecj184