A dramaturgy of digital sound: Towards an aesthetic approach

Wireless Body-worn Sound System for Dance and Music Performance

“…The work was conceived as a site-specific multimedia installation where ‘dancers and musicians perform simultaneously with digital objects that mutate; garments are custom-built for sound in motion’ (UKYO 2010). During the performance of the piece, a singer and a dancer wore sound vests especially designed for the project while an actor carried two spherical loudspeakers on a yoke (Wilkins and Ben-Tal 2010: 20–2). The body-worn sound systems used for the piece, while original and visually attractive, revealed, in the opinion of the author, technical and practical problems that constrained to some extent the performance of the piece.…”

“…Quizzed about the acoustic power of the system, most participants considered that the wearable sound device was capable of covering the size of a small and medium-sized dance studio. Questioned about the quality of the application’s reproduced sound, most respondents were positive about the overall functioning of the system, but noted that, as observed in similar performance projects with worn sound devices, the quality of the reproduced sound is dependent on the type of sound material played (Stahl and Clemens 2010: 429; Wilkins and Ben-Tal 2010: 21–2). In most cases, this behaviour relates more to the acoustic phenomena of mobile loudspeaker reproduction than the intrinsic qualities of a particular wireless sound system used.…”

“…Finally, the artist welcomed the possibility of being able to radiate sounds through his arms. As in similar dance projects where performers had control over sounds on and off stage, in this case the performer felt that he could play a more important role in the implementation of the piece by conceiving his role as blend between a dancer and a musician (Lanzalone 2000: 23–6; Wilkins and Ben-Tal 2010: 20–2).…”

“…It is evident that the use of multi-channel sound systems for the presentation of films and videogames has increased awareness among audiences and composers about the creative possibilities of spatialised audio (Otondo 2007: 16–19; Stefani and Lauke 2010: 251–6; Peters et al 2011: 10). In recent years the use of spatial audio tools has also slowly expanded to the performing arts, whereby composers, performers and technology developers have started to incorporate wireless sound devices as organic components of music and dance projects (Wilkins and Ben-Tal 2010: 19–20; Stahl and Clemens 2011: 427–8; Birringer and Danjoux 2014: 9–13). Nevertheless, there is still a lack of software and hardware tools that will allow composers and choreographers to relate creative and structural features of electroacoustic music and dance choreography in collaborative projects.…”