In the fall of 2006 I was in New York to work with choreographer Luis Lara Malvacias on his piece “There Is No Such Thing”, premiered in Dance Theatre Workshop in New York on November 28th.
In the first scene recording, playback and manipulation of sound was generated live on stage by the performers. The dancers step on a kind of cushions or martial-arts pillows. The sound of the air coming out of the pillows was recorded into a buffer in my computer using LiSa (a live sampling application developed by STEIM). Underneath the pillows I attached pressure sensors (available at sensyr.com) that send out midi using the JunXion box (the JunXion Box is a analogue to MIDI box developed by STEIM, see also my Blog “Memory Scan“) in this way allowing the performers to control playback and filtering parameters. The sound always came a tiny bit later than you expect, resulting in an interesting combination with the movement of the dancers.
Choreography, sets, costumes and installation: Luis Lara Malvacias
Dancers: Marcel Dou, Jocelyn Evans, Nathalie Dressner, Luis Lara Malvacias, Kate Martel & Jeremy Nelson