Re: radio dance

Jeff Miller (jgmille2@students.wisc.edu)
Thu, 21 Jan 1999 14:03:02 -0600

I'll reply more later, but I'd like to recommend a program (sorry, Mac-only)
called Metasynth which is a visual sound editor...and then some. Although
I've not yet used it in a practical setting, there's hours of interesting
tweaking to be done, and it can do much of what Johannes is suggesting.

Back to work,

Jeff

Johannes Birringer wrote:

> thanks for your response (Jeff).
>
> you suggested:
> > Certainly the sounds of breathing,
> >of clothing, of bodies contacting the floor all are aspects of the form
> >that are rarely appreciated or even noticed. Lately I've become annoyed
> >with dance for the camera that completely ignores the sounds of the
> > dance in favor of the musical accompaniment. Seems like a museum
> >focusing all the good light on the frame, rather than the picture within.
>
> A good reminder of dance noise. contact sound. body/breathing rhythms.
>
> it would interest me if we could share some sound files here on dtz. The
> sounds of different kinds of dance, recorded with contact mike?
>
> I recently suggested to Scott Sutherland that we might be allowed to
> post images too, if they are intrinsic to a commentary.
>
> Back to sound. Has anyone (composer?) experimented with these live
> contact sounds, sampled them, transformed them into algorithms? how
> would contact sound (feet screeching, thumping) translate into abstract
> visuals, x-rays, visual-sonic patterns of a certain kind of movement
> impact on ground, other bodies? is there an electronic caress, slide,
> jump landing, what does it look like/sound like? Why is the fundamental
> pulsation of the body "cleaned up" or cleared out/filtered out in edited
> music tracks over dance?
>
> I see (hear) the contact you describe as the body's intonation, physical
> vibration. How does our technology connect to the resonating skin, and
> if we were able to create an audio dance (for audio), how would our
> digital capturing choreograph such a dance for the ear?
>
> greetings,
> Johannes Birringer
> AlienNation Co.
> http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~orpheus/session1.html