performing ourselves
Performing Ourselves is a multimedia installation and performance project that looks at how queer bodies can create new ways of making notation, sound, and collective improvisation. The project started with motion-capture recordings of two queer dancers moving in four different social settings (moving from the privacy of their bedrooms to the public space of Central Park in NYC). I turned their movements into datasets and then into graphical scores. These scores became the foundation for an artist book that I designed, printed, and hand-bound. The book serves as both a record of the project and a tool for performance, offering a visual notation system that encourages new interpretations and playful sound-making. The graphical scores came to life in an installation that brought together data sonification, live improvisation, and spatial sound. I used the movement data to create a generative sonic composition, which played through a 7.1 ambisonic speaker system. Two musicians joined the installation, using the graphical scores to improvise live and create a conversation between the recorded data, the visual notation, and their own performances. The project continued beyond the installation with live performances. A different dancer later reinterpreted two of the graphical scores in two staged shows, demonstrating how the notation system could shift and evolve across different people and settings. Through the artist book, sound installation, and live performances, Performing Ourselves explores how movement data can be used for queer expression, experimentation, and working together in new ways.
publication
edition of 25 printed in March 2021
movement
by Lucia Biondi and Teddy Tedholm.Their improvisation is based on movement scores in the above book. The scores were made from writing and plotting data from my own body. The movements of Teddy and Lucia were processed into lines and points and plotted to produce graphical scores for sound.
score 1
score 2
score 3
score 4
score 1
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score 2
score 3
score 4
graphic scores and sound
Scores created by plotting data from motion capture of improvised body movement, interpreting the above movement scores. Sound performed by Steven Ashby, Eric Eckhart, and me. Mix and mastering by me.
how to play the scores
score 1
score 2
score 3
score 4
performance
Movement performed by Tamara Denson to score 3 and score 4.
Scores were selected based on how she was feeling before each performance. The improvised
movement is created by hearing sounds (generated from data from other dancers) and by seeing the score for movement.
score 3
score 4
documentation
Sound installation: ambisonic set mixed for 7.1 speaker system. Ambisonic is an ideal way to
display sound because it embodies the multiplicity inherent to understanding gender politics, just as ambisonic installations do. There is
flexibility for change in a perpetual reorientation of the self/speaker array in response to people, things, and space. The person is the same, the audio input is the same, but the physical expression changes everything (i.e., moving from private headphone space to multi-channel loudspeaker array in a gallery space).
Sound installation: ambisonic set mixed for 7.1 speaker system. Ambisonic is an ideal way to
display sound because it embodies the multiplicity inherent to understanding gender politics, just as ambisonic installations do. There is
flexibility for change in a perpetual reorientation of the self/speaker array in response to people, things, and space. The person is the same, the audio input is the same, but the physical expression changes everything (i.e., moving from private headphone space to multi-channel loudspeaker array in a gallery space).
