Movement/Sound | Doug Van Nort

A series of two pieces combining text/graphic scores and a custom gestural language, for large-scale ensemble in the telematic medium, created to mark my 20 year anniversary of telematic musicking.

The Original Program Notes for Dispersionology #1:
In the world of physics, dispersion describes a phenomenon in which the rate of propagation of a wave in a medium, its phase velocity, is dependent on its frequency. This can be seen in light, sound, gravity waves, etc. Its a property of telecommunications signals, including the pulses of light in optical fibre cables, describing how the signal broadens and spreads out as it moves across the channel. Dispersion therefore is inherent in the medium that more-and-more binds us these days, in the movements of light pulses that transports our attention, and our listening, around the globe. A beautiful consequence of dispersion is a change in the angle of refraction of different frequencies, leading to a prismatic opening up of a full colour spectrum from incoming light. This ability to broaden out as signals propagate through the network reflects a much wider expansion of distributed listening and sounding that is made possible in the context of telematic musicking. It occurred to me recently that, as of early 2023 I’ve engaged this medium now for 20 years, with an ear towards exploring the myriad ways that the shared real/virtual and nowhere/everywhere site of performance can act as both a point of convergence towards a singular locus of performative attention — yet also a dispersive prism, reflecting individual voices and the preservation of creative agencies of every performer.

I call this current exploration of this phenomenom, at this current milestone moment, “Dispersionology”…. I’ve invited a wide array of past telematic collaborators (spanning this entire 20 years) to explore this and other related tales with me on May 10th. I hope you can join us!

-Doug Van Nort

The concert for piece #1 took place on May 10th as Dispersionology and Other Tales with the following program:

Tuning Meditation
Composer: Pauline Oliveros
Performers: All Sites

Dispersionology
Composer: Doug Van Nort
Performers: All Sites

Other Tales: Algorithmic-chance-structured improvisation
Composer: Doug Van Nort
Performers: All Sites

Performers:

Dispersed/Various Locations:

Chris Anderson-Lundy, Saxophone, Toronto, ON
Tom Bickley, EWI + Max processing, Berkeley, CA
Anne Bourne, cello, Toronto, ON
Cássia Carrascoza Bomfim, flute, Brazil
Chris Chafe, celletto, CCRMA/Palo Alto, CA
Viv Corringham, voice, electronics, New York, NY
Bjorn Eriksson, analog electronics (feedback boxes), Solleftjea, Sweden
Colin James Gibson, guitar, Toronto, ON
Bill Gilliam, piano + electronics, Toronto, ON
Scot Gresham-Lancaster, electronics, Maine
Theodore Haber, violin, Montreal, QC
Glen Hall, Soprano saxophone, contrabass clarinet, Brampton, ON
Holland Hopson, banjo, Tuscaloosa, AL
Rory Hoy, bass + electronics, Brampton, ON
Kai Kubota-Enright, piano (+/- preparation), electronics, Montreal, QC
Al Margolis, violin/contact mic(s)/objects, Chester, NY
Scott L. Miller, Kyma, Minneapolis, MN
Emma Pope, piano, Montreal, QC
Ambrose Pottie, percussion and electronics, Castleton, ON
Dana Reason, piano/inside piano, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon
Omar Shabbar, guitar + electronics, Toronto, ON
Kathy Kennedy, voice + electronics, Montreal, QC
Doug Van Nort, soundpainting, greis/electronics, voice, Toronto, ON
Sarah Weaver, conducting, New York, NY
Zovi, Theremin, Albany, NY

Bogotá (Universidad de Los Andes):

Ricardo Arias, balloons
Leonel Vásquez
(featuring U de Los Andes students)

Chicago (School of the Art Institute of Chicago):

Eric Leonardson, springboard + electronics
Garrett Johnson, electronics
Gordon Fung, electronics

Oslo (Universitetet i Oslo):

Krisin Norderval, voice
Fabian Stordalen, Bass guitar, Guitar, No-input mixing
Kristian Eicke, Guitar (percussive) on lap
Nino Jakeli, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboard
Aysima Baba, Accordion
Alexander Wastnidge, Guitars, Live Electronics
Emin Memis, Ney Flute, Drums

The immersive multi-channel performance – placing the performers at distinct points in the Dispersion Lab space – was recorded with a Zylia 6DOF ambisonic microphone array and is being prepared for future release as a virtual/immersive realization of the piece.

The premiere for piece #2 in this series took place in November 2023 as part of the 2023 NowNet Arts Conference/Festival.

Credits:

Composition and Direction:
Doug Van Nort

Performers – Dispersed/Various Locations:

Performers – Performance Nodes:

Chicago (School of the Art Institute of Chicago):

Eric Leonardson, springboard + electronics
Garrett Johnson, electronics
Gordon Fung, electronics

Oslo (Universitetet i Oslo):

Also Broadcasting from Chicago on Free Radio SAIC
In-person audience at Universitetet i Oslo (IMV Salen)

thee Doug Van Nort Electro-Acoustic Orchestra is an ensemble comprised of a mixture of acoustic and electronic performers. It is an emergent sonic organism that evolves through collective attention to all facets of sound, software instruments and text/graphic pieces created by Van Nort, and gesture-based real-time composition in combination with a growing repertoire of these pre-composed structures that are fluidly traversed and integrated spontaneously during performance. The gestural-compositional conducting language used with the group draws upon Van Nort’s experience in electroacoustic improvisation and its unique approach to sound sculpting, shared signal manipulation, the distinct relationships to time/memory/causality that electronics afford, and works that integrate improvisation with pre-composed structures or generative systems. The language is built upon Soundpainting, with many modifications and additions for this project.

This ensemble builds upon the larger Electro-Acoustic Orchestra project, as a more professional and established group which has now had a fixed membership over a longer time scale. This ensemble emerged from the pandemic, integrating select long-term members coming out of the course-based version of the EAO ensemble, with members of the international community of electro/acoustic improvisers (and notably, collaborators from the international Deep Listening community), via telematic connections. The ensemble meets regularly to work through new materials, gestures-concepts and pieces.

The course-based EAO often acts as a pathway to join the professional ensemble for students and professional performer alike. The professional DVN-EAO ensemble has converged to a much higher degree of refinement and specificity, with Van Nort able to compose more involved sonic structures (both electronics as well as text/graphic scores) that are rehearsed and can be called upon and nonlinearly combined in performance, as well as much more “two-way mind reading” that happens in the moment.

thee DVN-EAO regularly performs online and in-person (typically with mixed in-person/telematic performers), and invites proposals for venues and festival performances.

Upcoming and select recent performances include:

November 2023: Ongaku no tomo hall, Tokyo, Japan

December 2022: online/streaming performance for the Winter Solstice

October 2022: keynote performance for the exhibition/symposium Sensoria: The Arts and Science of Our Senses with audiences in Gdansk, Poland and at the Dispersion Lab, featuring immersive haptic/light piece by Van Nort.

May 2022: Elka Bong (Walter Wright and Al Margolis) and thee Doug Van Nort Electro-Acoustic Orchestra in first in-person concert at the Dispersion Lab since the pandemic.

December 2021: Works for the Winter Soltice – online/streaming concert.

June 2021: nO(t)pera Summer Soltice Selections – online/streaming concert.

December 2020: Quarantine: A Telematic nO(t)pera, large scale piece online/streaming concert with audience participation.

Credits:

Composition and Direction:
Doug Van Nort

thee Doug Van Nort Electro-Acoustic Orchestra:
Chris Anderson-Lundy (saxophone), Tom Bickley (EWI+electronics), Viv Corringham (voice+electronics ), Björn Eriksson (feedback boxes), Rory Hoy (bass+electronics), Kathy Kennedy (voice+electronics), Omar Shabbar (guitar+electronics), Danny Sheahan (violin+electronics), Doug Van Nort (soundpainting/composing/electronics).

Booking:

dispersion[dot]relation[at]gmail[dot]com

Quarantine: A Telematic nO(t)pera is a piece by Doug Van Nort, created for the Electro-Acoustic Orchestra (EAO), for the virtual space of connected isolation, for Casper the cat, and for self-sanity. It is not an Opera, but it is not not an Opera. It is a composition for musical, visual and virtual engagement. The music consists of six movements that span disparate sonic landscapes. It is organized by pre-composed palettes that integrate text, graphics, Soundpainting and software instruments, and are augmented with additional real-time composition via EAO’s unique Soundpainting conducting. This content is a crystallization of ideas that have emerged from months of regular online rehearsals that date back to the beginning of the pandemic, bringing together performers from three continents and numerous time zones. As a meditation on (and a product of) our network-mediated present, the nO(t)pera also introduces diverse networks of improvised collaboration: cross performer-machine collaboration, performer-animal collaboration and audience-machine-performer collaboration.

In one movement of the piece, the audience is invited to improvise drawing input that are interpreted by machine learning algorithms, and in turn will determine the overall structure and sonic content of the music.

Credits:

Composition and Direction:
Doug Van Nort

Electro-Acoustic Orchestra:
Tom Bickley (EWI+electronics), Lo Bil (voice), Viv Corringham (voice+electronics ), Björn Eriksson (feedback boxes), Faadhi Fauzi (synths), Colin James Gibson (guitar), Yuanfen Gu (notpera granular patch), Rory Hoy (bass+electronics), Melanie Jagmohan (guitar+legos), Kathy Kennedy (voice+electronics), Aida Khorsandi (notpera FM patch), Nicholas Lina (bass), Kieran Maraj (kin/electronics), Diane Roblin (inside piano/synths), Omar Shabbar (guitar+electronics), Danny Sheahan (violin+electronics), Peter Vukosavljevic (percussion), Doug Van Nort (conducting/composing).

Live action-or-lack-thereof:
Casper, the cat
Cat-herding and video work:
Stacy Denton
Virtual Staging and visuals:
Rory Hoy
Deep Machine Learning (conducting and drawing recognition):
Kieran Maraj

Origin8 was an interactive dance/media piece which utilized MYO sensing technology. This was a collaboration with Van Nort (music), Sinclair (visuals) and the National Ballet School of Canada (Shaun Amyot, choreographer). My work as composer centred around creating interactive music composition that was driven by the electrical muscle (myogram) and movement activity 21 dancers (hailing from 21 different countries) in collaboration with machine learning – a kind of biosensing and machine co-creation. The piece was created for the quadrennial Assembleé Internationale festival which brings together top Ballet schools and their select students internationally. In this work, the interactive music applied machine learning to the task of learning mappings between MYO sensing and sonic output. As part of the interactive musical composition, the overall musical structure emerged from the actions and movements of the dancers, so that each of the performances had an overarching form but differed in their details. There are four sections, and the (choreographic and musical) content from sections 1-3 are combined and layered in section 4. Below is a video taken during the dress rehearsal, just prior to the opening.

Credits:

Shaun Amyot (choreography)
Don Sinclair (interactive visuals)
Doug Van Nort (interactive music composition)

Additional Reference:

Doug Van Nort, “Gestural Metaphor and Emergent Human/Machine Agency in Two Contrasting Interactive Dance/Music Pieces”. Proceedings of the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA), 2020.

This project integrates two MYO muscle-sensing armbands, shared-signal sound processing of an electro-acoustic ensemble and gestural recognition of Soundpainting-style conducting. In the project, the Soundpainter shifts modes between guiding performers, collaborating through movement/sound improvisation, and explicitly processing the sonic output of performers through their movements. These shifting modes of interaction require all performers to become attentive to the tensions between acoustic and electronic sources, between their origination point (instrumentalist vs. Soundpainter) and between bottom-up structured improvisation and top-down guiding via conducting. These continuums are amplified and explored through another layer of shared articulation, as machine learning is applied to recognition of the composer/conductors gestures, with symbolic recognition opening up channels of electronic processing and discrete states of potential sound transformation, . The underlying machine learning system is also trained on continuous mappings between conducted motion and sonic transformations, allowing the Soundpainter to perform these transformations through their (now free and unconstrained) movements, continuously co-shaping the output with a given performer. The presence of these two distinct modes of machine-mediation create a tension between the symbology of conducted instruction and that of continuously co-constructed sound, with the Soundpainter and performer sharing signals and intentional resonance in performance. I diagrammed and mapped out this larger human/machine system of listening and co-creation, as can be seen in the below image gallery.

Intersubjective Soundings narrows in on this collective experience as a compositional parameter, allowing for moments of getting “lost” in one another’s sound world and gestural intentions, while needing to pull back to the symbology of soundpainting-based conducting. The work therefore traverses the spectrum of embodied listening-in-the-moment at one extreme, and a reflexive consideration of musical meaning at the other, with both of these modes being mirrored in the movement of the conducting language. This project has been developed in the context of the Electro-Acoustic Orchestra and was premiered at the 2017 International Conference on Movement and Computing (MOCO), with myself at Deptford Town Hall at Goldsmiths University in London, and the EAO at the DisPerSion Lab in Toronto. In this piece, the sense of “listening across” that occurs between instrumental performer and conductor/performer was further heightened through the introduction of a telematic connection between sites.

In 2019 I was invited to present work for a CBC sponsored festival called CRAM. In this context I applied this project to a new piece with another instantiation of EAO, in this case co-located in an acoustically-interesting silo space on York University’s campus known as Vari Hall. We played it twice that evening, and someone was kind enough to post a phone-recorded video of one of the sets.

Credits

Piece Creation/Direction: Doug Van Nort

EAO for the London performance was:

London: Doug Van Nort (composing/conducting, MYO-based transformations)
DisPerSion Lab: Dave Bandi (guitar), Chris Cerpnjak (cymbals, glockenspiel) , Glen Hall (saxophone), Ian Jarvis (catRT+supercollider) , Ian Macchiusi (Moog mother), Mackenzie Perrault (guitar), Danny Sheahan (keys, samples), Fae Sirois (violin), Lauren Wilson (flute)

EAO for the CRAM performance was:

Doug Van Nort (composing/conducting, MYO-based transformations)
Chris Anderson-Lundy (saxophone), Dave Bandi (guitar), Chris Cerpnjak (cymbals, glockenspiel) , Erin Corbett (analog synth), Glen Hall (saxophone), Rory Hoy (bass), Ian Jarvis (catRT+supercollider) , Kieran Maraj (electronics), Ian Macchiusi (Moog mother), Mackenzie Perrault (guitar), Danny Sheahan (violin+electronics), Fae Sirois (violin), Lauren Wilson (flute)

Additional Reference:

Doug Van Nort, Conducting the In-Between: Improvisation and Intersubjective Engagement in Soundpainted Electro/Acoustic Ensemble Performance, Digital Creativity, 29(1), 68-81, 2018.

Elemental Agency is a piece concerned with an emergent gestural language that manifests across movement, sound and light. Rather than sound/light articulating movement, or movement driving media, the approach builds outward from gestural metaphors as a point of shared intersection for these phenomena. The work draws upon the metaphorical constructs of Japanese Godai and Indian Vaastu Shastra theories of five elements: earth, water, wind, fire and void/space. Working with conceptual metaphors drawn from these traditions, constraints are provided to the dancers of embodying a given element as a collective – a texture of movement, rather than a singular human entity, that manifests the non-human agency of a given element. Motivations related to world, body, motion, emotion and enaction are given: earth as stubbornness and resistance to change, wind as expansive, elusive and compassionate, fire as energetic and forceful, etc. Using machine learning methods, the sonic interaction designers seek to capture moments of gestural expression and fuse this with sounds that similarly embody a given elemental quality/profile. Negotiation between art forms leads to a collective choreography and sound design that emerges from the embodiment of the nonhuman elements and the mediation of the machine agents. Visual projection functions as both lighting and enhancement of embodied experience in space, rather than screen-oriented media experience. Spotlights both enhance elemental qualities as well as embodying behaviours that align with the constraints of the element metaphors: rigid tracking of movement within earth state, amorphous following within water state, tendency towards consumption in fire state, etc.

The pieces moves through short movements of distinct elements: water swells and then recedes into earth, which tectonically shifts before dispersing to the wind, dying down to invoke fire. Gestures and movement are recognized and mapped to sound and light output. The collective texture of these elements then shifts to the individual gesturality of each dancer, who singularly choose to embody a given element: moving from the collective texture of mono-element to the collision and transformation between elements, passing between dancers. The pervasive aether of machine listening recognizes gestures captured throughout the four-elements sections and re-inject loops of these into the performance: this aether ever-listening to elements, and re-performing its understanding of each dancers elemental offerings. Increased density and destabilization of dancers’ elemental transformations lead to an ascendance into the void: pure energy, beyond the everyday, a distribution/suspension/expansion of presence and expression. Void is devoid of any object-hood or gestural points of reference.

The piece rests in void state during its installation period. If audience members interact (browser via laptop or mobile device) with the elemental portal, they may bring the piece back into the world of a given elemental state. The performance space then invites interaction from audience.

Credits:

Doug Van Nort: conception, direction, system composition, void state sound/interaction design
Vanessa Boutin, Holly Buckridge, Shaelynn Lobbezoo, Joshua Murphy, Paige Sayles, Marie-Victoria de Vera: emergent and collective choreography, dance
Yirui Fu: spotlight visual/behaviour design
Akeem Glasgow: kinect tracking and mapping to visuals
Rory Hoy: earth state sound/interaction design
Ian Jarvis: fire state sound/interaction design
Kieran Maraj: water, wind states sound/interaction design
Michael Palumbo: mobile audience interaction,network architecture programming
Mingxin Zhang: spotlight visual/behaviour design

Additional References:

Van Nort, D. “Gestural Metaphor and Emergent Human/Machine Agency in Two Contrasting Interactive Dance/Music Pieces”. Proceedings of the 2020 International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA), 2020.

Jarvis, I., D. Van Nort. Posthuman Gesture, in Proc. of the International Conference on Movement and Computing (MOCO), 2018.

This project was in collaboration with Thomas Gerwin, connecting the DisPerSion Lab to
Germany. It explored varying modes of attention, including cross-continent gestural interaction between the ensembles. The event connected the lab with the Brandenburg New Music Festival in Potsdam, with performances by the EAO in collaboration with the Stream ensemble. Pieces for this group were created by Doug Van Nort (Canada) and Thomas Gerwin, John Rausek, and Sabine Vogel (Germany), and also included cross-site Soundpainting gestures involving Vogel and Van Nort.

Credits:

Direction: Doug Van Nort and Thomas Gerwin

Performers:
DisPerSion Lab: Electro-Acoustic Orchestra (dir. Doug Van Nort)
Potsdam: Ivo Berg (recorder), Jenny Döll (dance), Reinhard Gagel (accordion, Moog synthesizer),
Thomas Gerwin (banjo, objects, live electronics), Dietrich Petzold (violin,, viola), Sabine Vogel
(Soundpainting)
Composition: Thomas Gerwin, John Rausek, Doug Van Nort, Sabine Vogel

This piece was commissioned by New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) for their 2017 Deep Wireless Festival. It was written for the Electro-Acoustic Orchestra with featured violinist Mia Zabelka, and centres around processes and concepts of tuning, fission and fusion.

The concert event, co-produced by Dispersion Lab, NAISA, and Thomas Gerwin at the Exploratorium in Berlin under the theme of “tele-conduction”.

Credits:

Composition:
Doug Van Nort

Performers:
DisPerSion Lab: Dave Bandi, Chris Cerpnjak, Erin Corbett, Ian Jarvis, Ian Macchiusi, Mackenzie Perrault, Fae Sirois, Doug Van Nort, Lauren Wilson

Other Concert Participants:
Berlin: Ivo Berg (recorder), Jenny Doell (dance), Reinhard Gagel (accordion, piano, Mini-Moog),
Thomas Gerwin (banjo, objects, electronics.), Dietrich Petzold (violin, viola)
Compositions: Doug Van Nort, Thomas Gerwin, Sarah Weaver and Glen Hall
Audio Broadcast: NAISA radio

In 2014, while a Banting Fellow at the Topological Media Lab, I curated two parallel series – one focused on performance and the other on discussion/workshopping/presentation of ideas.

Topological Improvisations was a series presenting improvisations across media, that explored unique topologies of performance: modes of continuity, connectedness and differing boundary conditions, between players and with the space itself. I also took part as a performer in several installments of the series.

These included:

Volume 1: A/V QUARTET ++1: Immersive sound and video, featuring solo/duo/quartet/quintet configurations drawn from: If, Bwana (electronics, objects) / Doug Van Nort (voice, electronics) / Katherine Liberovskaya (live video) / Éric Létourneau (synths, gamelan, wind instruments) / Akunniq (the dog)

Volume 2: TRANSMISSIONS & RESONANCE: A set of improvised sonic explorations, transmission to/from the boundaries of the space. Meditations on the continuity and connectedness of resonance. Julien Ottavi, Erin Sexton, Doug Van Nort in solo/trio combinations.

Volume 3: QUARTETTO TELEMATICO: Pauline Oliveros, Doug Van Nort, Chris Chafe, Jonas Braasch, four site telematic performance for Frontiers Festival, Birmingham, UK.

Volume 4: SINGING IN PLACE: Singing In Place is a live performance. Improvised singing – with and without electronic processing – is used to convey the memory of walks taken. The voice is often combined with field recordings and texts. Viv Corringham solo and in duo with Kathy Kennedy.

Volume 5: MOVING SPACES: Moving Spaces (2002) – Christian Wolff (b. 1934) – Christian Wolff wrote Moving Spaces in 2002 for Loose Time, a work by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The piece is rooted in improvisation, ruled by indeterminacy, and energized by noise, silence, and electronic manipulation. The piece was performed by seven improvisers from the Montreal scene: Zach Hale (electronics), Emily Lair (french horn), Molly Wreakes (french horn), Duncan Campbell (trumpet), Felix Del Tredici (bass trombone). Joining them were dancers Bailey Eng and Samantha Rust.

Topological Re-Mediations were a series of workshops and lectures that explored new modes of collective play and co-creation, speculative inquiry and technico-aesthetic innovations in the context of responsive environments.

These included:

Volume 1: HMMM Vocal Workshop with Kathy Kennedy

Volume 2: “Sweet on the Spot” – A presentation and participatory demo on spatial audio with Peter Plessas (IEM, Graz)

Volume 3: Threads: Oana Suteu Khintirian and Navid Navab lecture/demo on “Threads”: Threads is exploring new haptic ways of engaging with paper. Dwelling with the mnemonic dimension of the written word, it puts under the magnifying glass the acts of reading and writing in an intricate play of sensorial relations.

Volume 4: Orbital Resonace: Discussion and Performance. A Research-Creation Project by Margaret Jean Westby and Nikolaos Chandolias In Collaboration with Anne Goldenberg and Doug Van Nort.

Volume 5: Mother of Balloon Music: Judy Dunaway gave a lecture/demonstration about the amazing ways that balloons function as sound makers, offering some history of the balloon in experimental music. This was followed by an audience performance of her “Balloon Symphony No. 2.”

Volume 6: Radius: Jeff Kolar discussed his ongoing curatorial project Radius, an experimental radio broadcast platform based in Chicago, IL, USA. Radius features a new project monthly with statements by artists who use radio as a primary element in their work. Radius provides artists with live and experimental formats in radio programming. The goal is to support work that engages the tonal and public spaces of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Credits:

Curation and Performance:
Doug Van Nort

Performers/Presenters:

Various – see above.

Event Promotion, Flyers, Web pages:
Nina Bouchard, Lauren Osmond

Inspirator, Lab Context:

Sha Xin Wei and the Topological Media Lab

More info – historical links:

Topological Improvisations

and

Topological Re-Mediations

“Orbital Resonance is an exploration of internal physiological states of the body, outwardly displaced in light and in sound to create an immersive sensual environment. The performers improvise with sound and movement through breathe, voice, and bodily sensors. The larger environment merges the interactions between various elements (audience, performers, light, sound, architecture, sensors) into a unified, existential orbit. The material produced in real-time resonates back into the space. The traces create their own life, interacting upon themselves for new configurations and interpretations to arise among the spectators.”

In collaboration with Margaret Westby, Nikolaos Chandolias, Anne Goldenberg

in collaboration with Heidi Boisvert and an international team of artists, [radical] Signs of Life is a large-scale biophysical dance show.

Through responsive dance, the piece externalizes the mind’s non-hierarchical distribution of thought. Media is generated from dancers’ muscles & blood flow via biophysical sensors that capture soundwaves from the performers’ muscular tissue. The choreography for the hour-long performance is composed in real-time by five dancers from a shared movement database in accordance with pre-determined rules based on principles of self-organizing systems. Outfitted with two wireless sensors each, the dancers–Jennifer Mellor, Ellen Smith Ahern, Hanna Satterlee, Avi Waring and Willow Wonder–create patterns that dissolve from autonomous polyrhythms to intersecting lines as they slip through generative video and light. Van Nort improvises original multi-channel electroacoustic music live in collaboration with new interactive dancer/sound instruments that he has created (using Xth sense technology), to sculpt a dense web of complex texture and emotion around the audience.

Regarding my interactive composition for this project:

All sound is generated from the dancers’ muscles. During performance, the qualities and patterns of the sonic gestural output from each dancer are learned/remembered by an interactive system. Near the conclusion, the stage lighting goes down and I improvise with this material towards an ending to the hour-long piece.

[radical] premiered at EMPAC (NY), the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in May 2013 through generous support from the Arts Department at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute along with iEAR Studios. Rehearsal space has been granted through an Artist Residency at the Contemporary Dance & Fitness Center in Montpelier, VT. The project was realised thanks to the Creativity + Technology = Enterprise grant, awarded by Harvestworks through funds from the Rockerfeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Credits:

Director & Producer // Heidi Boisvert
Choreographer // Pauline Jennings
Music/Sound Designer // Doug Van Nort
Visual Designer // Raven Kwok
Lighting & Set Designer // Allen Hahn
Costume Designer // Amy Nielson
Xth Sense Creator // Marco Donnarumma
Wireless Network Engineer // MJ Caselden
Industrial Designer // Krystal Persaud
Set Fabricator // John Umphlett
Dancers // Jennifer Mellor, Ellen Smith Ahern, Hanna Satterlee, Avi Waring & Willow Wonder

Additional Reference:

Van Nort, D. [radical] signals from life: from muscle sensing to embodied machine listening/learning within a large-scale performance piece, in Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Movement and Computing (MOCO), ACM, 2015.