This project is about sonifying the little fluctuations that exist in our body motions even when ... more This project is about sonifying the little fluctuations that exist in our body motions even when we are seemingly at rest. Here we present an example of sonifying heart activity. We utilize ECG signal collected by wearable biosensors on dancing bodies, to extract musical features and characterize the ECG activity of the dancing bodies to create music. In this work, we transform a dancer's body into a musical instrument. We aim at creating a new type of performance, whereby people could experience an audiovisual form of dance. This form of dance would expand the audience's perception beyond visual into auditory via the sounds that the body in motion could produce.
How can music produced by automated technologies be expressive? Transitive theories of expression... more How can music produced by automated technologies be expressive? Transitive theories of expression dominated 18th-century ideas of automated music, and many contemporary designers of robotic instruments adhere to this idea, increasing sonic nuance to make their instruments seem closer to expressive human performers. A listener-centered understanding of expression—an “intransitive” perspective—allows us to reconcile automatic instruments’ capacity for expressivity, even without human performers. The expressive potential of these instruments is best understood as a product of their mechanical nature—their idiomatic movements and sounds, which remain distinct from human-operated instruments. This paper explores two case studies in the history of “expressive” automated instruments: Diderot and Engramelle’s cylinder-driven instruments from 18th century France and contemporary musical robotics.
Proceedings of Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society's 2014 Annual Conference (KEAMSAC2014)
Scholarly literature on musical robotics has primarily focused on design and technical capabiliti... more Scholarly literature on musical robotics has primarily focused on design and technical capabilities rather than the musical potential of robotic instru-ments. Drawing upon the author’s experience designing and composing for robotic instruments as a co-founder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), this article considers electromechanical musicality: the unique musical characteristics of robotic instruments. Though computer-controlled, electromechanical robotic instruments have only existed for a few decades, they can be traced back to musical automata from the eight-eenth century. Many of the same aesthetic considerations apply to both musical robots and musical automata, including criticisms that music pro-duced by these instruments fails to be expressive. The relationship between electromechanical musicality and expressivity is discussed within the context of several of the author’s compositions for EMMI’s musical robots. These pieces include hyper-virtuosic music that is unplayable by humans, the “broken machine” aesthetic, and the use of robots to critique contemporary notions of futurism.
Music composition is seldom considered a physical activity or embodied experience. As current tec... more Music composition is seldom considered a physical activity or embodied experience. As current technologies enable the mapping of movement to musical parameters, the consideration of gesture and movement becomes essential to shaping the identity of a piece. This paper discusses the concept of choreographed sound as part of “kinesonic composition,” an approach that foregrounds embodied experience, integrates physical and imagined gesture, kinetic and kinesthetic experience, and sonic elements. It also describes the Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing (RAKS) system, a wearable wireless sensor interface designed specifically for belly dance movement. Discussing three recent pieces that use the RAKS system, the authors outline the bidirectional relationship between movement and music in a kine- sonic framework.
The Modular Electro-Acoustic Robotic Instrument System (MEARIS) represents a new type of hybrid e... more The Modular Electro-Acoustic Robotic Instrument System (MEARIS) represents a new type of hybrid electroacoustic- electromechanical instrument model. Monochord-Aerophone Robotic Instrument Ensemble (MARIE), the first realization of a MEARIS, is a set of interconnected monochord and cylindrical aerophone robotic musical instruments created by Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI). MARIE comprises one or more matched pairs of Automatic Monochord Instruments (AMI) and Cylindrical Aerophone Robotic Instruments (CARI). Each AMI and CARI is a self-contained, independently operable robotic instrument with an acoustic element, a control system that enables automated manipulation of this element, and an audio system that includes input and output transducers coupled to the acoustic element. Each AMI-CARI pair can also operate as an interconnected hybrid instrument, allowing for effects that have heretofore been the domain of physical modeling technologies, such as a "plucked air column" or "blown string." Since its creation, MARIE has toured widely, performed with dozens of human instrumentalists, and has been utilized by nine composers in the realization of more than twenty new musical works.
This dissertation explores the evocation of myth in contemporary instrumental music in the Wester... more This dissertation explores the evocation of myth in contemporary instrumental music in the Western classical tradition, and how this music reflects comparative myth theories developed in the twentieth century, specifically structuralist, ritual, and Jungian theories. Historically, musical evocations of myth have been based on specific mythical stories. Using Mieke Bal’s broad definition of narrative, I focus on theories surrounding instrumental music’s ability to narrate and how structuralist theories illuminate the specific case of music and myth. I apply these theories to two contemporary symphonic poems, Chen Yi’s Chinese Myths Cantata and Kaija Saariaho’s Orion. More recently, composers have begun to incorporate generalized conceptions of myth into their music, employing musical gesture based on ritual that evokes mythical meaning in non-narrative music. Incorporating categories of musical, mythical gesture developed by Eero Tarasti, Victoria Adamenko, François-Bernard Mâche, and adding my own category of mythical temporality, I examine George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children as an exemplar, followed by pairings of a cross section of more recent pieces, including Christopher Rouse’s Gorgon and Harrison Birtwistle’s The Cry of Anubis; Steve Reich’s Tehillim and Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa; and Trevor Wishart’s Vox II and Jonathan Harvey’s Ritual Melodies. I examine critiques of cultural appropriation and overgeneralization in Pauline Oliveros’s composed ceremonies Crow Two and Rose Moon. Finally, I explore cross-cultural mythical referents and their theoretical influences on my own pieces, The Seven Stars and Mythical Spaces, and conceptions of science, technology and myth in Anticenter Stream, composition: Old Stars and In Illo Tempore.
This project is about sonifying the little fluctuations that exist in our body motions even when ... more This project is about sonifying the little fluctuations that exist in our body motions even when we are seemingly at rest. Here we present an example of sonifying heart activity. We utilize ECG signal collected by wearable biosensors on dancing bodies, to extract musical features and characterize the ECG activity of the dancing bodies to create music. In this work, we transform a dancer's body into a musical instrument. We aim at creating a new type of performance, whereby people could experience an audiovisual form of dance. This form of dance would expand the audience's perception beyond visual into auditory via the sounds that the body in motion could produce.
How can music produced by automated technologies be expressive? Transitive theories of expression... more How can music produced by automated technologies be expressive? Transitive theories of expression dominated 18th-century ideas of automated music, and many contemporary designers of robotic instruments adhere to this idea, increasing sonic nuance to make their instruments seem closer to expressive human performers. A listener-centered understanding of expression—an “intransitive” perspective—allows us to reconcile automatic instruments’ capacity for expressivity, even without human performers. The expressive potential of these instruments is best understood as a product of their mechanical nature—their idiomatic movements and sounds, which remain distinct from human-operated instruments. This paper explores two case studies in the history of “expressive” automated instruments: Diderot and Engramelle’s cylinder-driven instruments from 18th century France and contemporary musical robotics.
Proceedings of Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society's 2014 Annual Conference (KEAMSAC2014)
Scholarly literature on musical robotics has primarily focused on design and technical capabiliti... more Scholarly literature on musical robotics has primarily focused on design and technical capabilities rather than the musical potential of robotic instru-ments. Drawing upon the author’s experience designing and composing for robotic instruments as a co-founder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), this article considers electromechanical musicality: the unique musical characteristics of robotic instruments. Though computer-controlled, electromechanical robotic instruments have only existed for a few decades, they can be traced back to musical automata from the eight-eenth century. Many of the same aesthetic considerations apply to both musical robots and musical automata, including criticisms that music pro-duced by these instruments fails to be expressive. The relationship between electromechanical musicality and expressivity is discussed within the context of several of the author’s compositions for EMMI’s musical robots. These pieces include hyper-virtuosic music that is unplayable by humans, the “broken machine” aesthetic, and the use of robots to critique contemporary notions of futurism.
Music composition is seldom considered a physical activity or embodied experience. As current tec... more Music composition is seldom considered a physical activity or embodied experience. As current technologies enable the mapping of movement to musical parameters, the consideration of gesture and movement becomes essential to shaping the identity of a piece. This paper discusses the concept of choreographed sound as part of “kinesonic composition,” an approach that foregrounds embodied experience, integrates physical and imagined gesture, kinetic and kinesthetic experience, and sonic elements. It also describes the Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing (RAKS) system, a wearable wireless sensor interface designed specifically for belly dance movement. Discussing three recent pieces that use the RAKS system, the authors outline the bidirectional relationship between movement and music in a kine- sonic framework.
The Modular Electro-Acoustic Robotic Instrument System (MEARIS) represents a new type of hybrid e... more The Modular Electro-Acoustic Robotic Instrument System (MEARIS) represents a new type of hybrid electroacoustic- electromechanical instrument model. Monochord-Aerophone Robotic Instrument Ensemble (MARIE), the first realization of a MEARIS, is a set of interconnected monochord and cylindrical aerophone robotic musical instruments created by Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI). MARIE comprises one or more matched pairs of Automatic Monochord Instruments (AMI) and Cylindrical Aerophone Robotic Instruments (CARI). Each AMI and CARI is a self-contained, independently operable robotic instrument with an acoustic element, a control system that enables automated manipulation of this element, and an audio system that includes input and output transducers coupled to the acoustic element. Each AMI-CARI pair can also operate as an interconnected hybrid instrument, allowing for effects that have heretofore been the domain of physical modeling technologies, such as a "plucked air column" or "blown string." Since its creation, MARIE has toured widely, performed with dozens of human instrumentalists, and has been utilized by nine composers in the realization of more than twenty new musical works.
This dissertation explores the evocation of myth in contemporary instrumental music in the Wester... more This dissertation explores the evocation of myth in contemporary instrumental music in the Western classical tradition, and how this music reflects comparative myth theories developed in the twentieth century, specifically structuralist, ritual, and Jungian theories. Historically, musical evocations of myth have been based on specific mythical stories. Using Mieke Bal’s broad definition of narrative, I focus on theories surrounding instrumental music’s ability to narrate and how structuralist theories illuminate the specific case of music and myth. I apply these theories to two contemporary symphonic poems, Chen Yi’s Chinese Myths Cantata and Kaija Saariaho’s Orion. More recently, composers have begun to incorporate generalized conceptions of myth into their music, employing musical gesture based on ritual that evokes mythical meaning in non-narrative music. Incorporating categories of musical, mythical gesture developed by Eero Tarasti, Victoria Adamenko, François-Bernard Mâche, and adding my own category of mythical temporality, I examine George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children as an exemplar, followed by pairings of a cross section of more recent pieces, including Christopher Rouse’s Gorgon and Harrison Birtwistle’s The Cry of Anubis; Steve Reich’s Tehillim and Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa; and Trevor Wishart’s Vox II and Jonathan Harvey’s Ritual Melodies. I examine critiques of cultural appropriation and overgeneralization in Pauline Oliveros’s composed ceremonies Crow Two and Rose Moon. Finally, I explore cross-cultural mythical referents and their theoretical influences on my own pieces, The Seven Stars and Mythical Spaces, and conceptions of science, technology and myth in Anticenter Stream, composition: Old Stars and In Illo Tempore.
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