Audible and Inaudible Choreography

Abstract

This essay sketches current research practices conducted by the DAP-Lab (London). A main focus of our research presently engages the interconnections between sound and wearable technologies in interactive live performance and dance. We are exploring propositions regarding the sound of the costumes worn in performance, investigating wearable textures and the manner in which they enable or constrain movement, touch body, extend body and physical shape into sounding instruments amplifying movement and performance environment through audible or inaudible dimensions that are generated and processed. Our wearable “design-in-motion” prototyping begins with instrument design (costumes and embedded analog/digital technologies) that is gradually extended into the production of suspended choreographic feedback systems. These systems have historical dimensions insofar as the work addresses particular ideological constellations of the introduction of sound to movement, or movement to sound.