The Sound Performance.

The live performance combines the latest technologies with musique conrète to create an embodied sound experience of human development. The collective work was created during The Field Kitchen Academy 2020 residency with the theme “The Curious Loop” under the direction of Ove Holmqvist of holonic.systems. Closed feedback loops – both functional feedback and biofeedback – influenced the sounds of found and miced objects, telling the story of evolution as a loop of rise, decay and transformation, initiated by human awakening and eternally repeated ever since. The creative but also destructive abilities of human kind are the focus.

Contact microphones picked up the sounds from old agricultural objects, that were produced by hitting, stroking, spinning them and with human voice. The performers’ movement data controlled musical effects that linked to these instruments through Suunto Movesense wearables and the Holon.ist app. For example, delay, reverb, the stereo field, and harmonies could be controlled by the performers’ movements and body positions.

Emilie Wright, who embodied the human, wore a sensor on a chest strap that generated the basic beat of the performance from her heartbeat. The sound, which represented her pulse, was activated by her posture. If she was lying on the floor, the beat stopped. Her horizontal body movement from left to right, simultaneously shifted the sounds from left to right in the stereo field. Other performers controlled the effects on their instruments by certain arm or leg movements, turning their body around its own axis or rotating the object.