Dance Driven Live Electronics
Alkiviades Philippides
Postgraduate in ‘Arts and Technologies of Sound’
Music Department
Ionian University
Abstract
‘Dance Driven Live Electronics’ is an
interactive dance performance about
the route from birth to death(caused
from external factors) of an animal. Is
an effort to control and adjust musical
parameters via movement. Some of the
question we had and we still have to
answer, during this project are: How
movements are translated into sound
and how can only one person
encounter the choreography(and the
dance), the musical composition and
the programming of the responsible for
the interaction softwares?
Introduction
When we speak for interactive dance,
we mean a choreography, during
which the movement is translated into
sound. In fact , it’s about an interactive
musical composition, where sound
mixing and processing is implemented
in real time, influenced by the very
movement. The moving body becomes
a musical instrument and takes
decisions for the evolution of the
sound material. From Philippa Cullen,
being one of the pioneers who work on
interactive dance performances, from
the early ‘70s, using only theremin and
synthesizers, we reach our days, with a
lot of such efforts, using several
softwares and spatial or body sensors.
Such a piece of work has performed
from Danish Institute of Eectroacoustic
Music(DIEM), which implemented an
interactive composition influenced by
1
dance, via a new interface, based on
flex sensors, which are worn on the
dancer, and the programming language
Max(IRCAM/Opcode). Todd Winkler
has also participated to a lot of
interactive performances, using
especially the Very Nervous
System(VNS) device and Max/MSP.
VNS is a device designed by artist
David Rockeby, which uses a video
camera to report the on-stage location
and speed of the performer to a
computer. Similar efforts have been
done from Laboratorio di Informatica
Musicale at the DIST department of
the University of Genoa. This
laboratory has developed the EyesWeb
software, which, using a camera as
sensor, outputs data, which can be used
by several systems, including
Max/MSP, Kyma, Pd and real time
Csound. The use of free
softwares(open source), far away from
commercial and cracked programs and
the fact that it’s about an one man
project, constitute the two particular
characteristics of the ‘Dance driven
live electronics’ project. It was a
challenge for me to work
simultaneously on dance, music
composition and programming. The
EyesWeb and SuperCollider free
softwares are used for the needs of this
project. Combining several
potentialities of these two softwares, I
tried to work on a choreography,
through which the music composition
is produced and having as main
intention to represent the route from
birth to death of an animal.

Basic Idea
The realization of the totalitarian other
species exploitation from the human
being in combination to the basic
question which has to do with the
possibility to express this kind of
personal worries, through artistic ways,
led me to try working on such an idea.
On a parallel level, being directly
involved in contemporary dance and
body kinesiology the last four years, I
tried to perform an interactive
choreography, based on the common
expressing element of human and
animal beings, that is the very moving-
alive body. So the plan is to present the
way from motion to immobility and
vice versa, researching at the same
time on a kinesiological level these
two extreme life expressions: birth and
death.
Design
The choreography is separated into
different parts with maybe not so
distinctive limits. The animal body
starts from immobility and learns its
first basic skills, is getting familiar
with its environment and develops its
senses. As the time passes , tries more
and more new kinesiological
potentialities, coming slowly in the
final period, where it realizes the death
which is close. Physical sounds are
used at the first stage and as the time
passes the sound processing level
increases. Concerning the expression
of interactivity, I decided to produce a
combination of simple mapping tend to
be immediately understood by the
observer with mappings which can not
be perceivable. The gradual shifting
from physical to more processed
sounds indicates the animal route
through the several periods of its life.
Close to its end, the choreography is
2
characterized by highly processed
sounds, trying to emphasize the stress
of the animal before the death.
Sounds-Sound Design
The sounds that have been chosen for
the music composition are basically
three. Sea, swallows and bells. All of
these remind me of Corfu where the
post graduate course takes place.
Moreover, these three sounds offer a
rich spectral content that could lead
someone to interesting results. The
dialectic between repetitive and not,
physical sounds was a main desire
from the beginning. This dialectic
indicates the abnormal situation that
the animal encounters during the first
period of its life. After this point,
processed sounds from the same source
material are used, in order to have
sound results which ranges from very
low to very high frequencies. The
sounds juxtaposition is done so as to
allow a gradual transposition from
static condition to peculiar mobility
and intensive nervousness.
Choreography
In order to be accurate, regarding the
inceptive idea which I wanted to
implement with this project, it was
necessary to give to the moving body
concrete kinesiological characteristics.
The dynamic coming to life is
followed by very slow movements of
the dancer, approaches slowly slowly
the reference posture(this posture is
repeated during the performance).
After this point the choreography
becomes more and more dynamic and
the animal-dancer moves easier up to
the point it gradually realizes the
oncoming death. Intense dynamic
characteristics dominate at this stage of
the performance. After a series of
stresful moments, the animal dies,
under the sound result which is coming
to light through the conflict between
monotonous and nervous sounds.
Technical Equipment
The basic used technical equipment for
the implementation of the performance
is a miniDV camera and two
computers (PC and Mac). The
EyesWeb software runs on the PC. The
moving silhouette is being captured by
the camera and the signal goes to the
PC by firewire connection. EyesWeb
has many potentialities of optical
signal processing and outputting data. I
decided to use the followings: output
of the silhouette center of gravity co-
ordinates(tracked point). Computing of
the total quantity of motion of the
moving body. Computing of the
motion and pause duration(in frames)
of the body. Moreover, placing the
camera on the ceiling of the
performance hall, the program splits
the ground into cells, which produce a
grid, in order to identify the position of
tracked point at any time, as long as
the moving body moves between the
limits of the camera’s eyeshot. The
exporting data from EyesWeb are
transmitted wirelessly with the use of
OSC(Open Sound Control) Protocol to
the Mac computer, where
SuperCollider runs.
SuperCollider plays back prerecorded
and preprocessed sound samples, and
as the time passes it uses effects for the
real time sound material processing. Hi
and Low Pass filters , Phase Vocoders
and objects which granulate the sounds
are used for the needs of this project.
The data which go to SuperCollider
from EyesWeb are used in the
following ways: to activate and
deactivate sound samples(mixing) and
3
to control sound parameters in real
time(processing).
Thoughts
As I was spending more and more time
on this project I realized my high
desire to create in the future such an
interactive dance performance, using
only one sound source.
Moreover, during the project I present
at this paper I faced the challenge to
use or not, image reproduction and
projection. I finally rejected this
possibility, since I believe that a
parallel image projection would evoke
cracks to the final result, because of
the undoubted dominance of the vision
against the rest of the human senses.
Moreover this kind of performance
includes by itself the image and it has
its own internal mechanisms which
lead to an integrated audiovisual result.
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