Body as Instrument: Performing with Gestural Systems in Live Electronic Music

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Body as Instrument explores how musicians interact with movement-controlled performance systems, producing sounds imbued with their individual physical signature. Using motion tracking technology, performers can translate physical actions into sonic processes, creating or adapting novel gestural systems that transcend the structures and constraints of conventional musical instruments. Interviews with influential artists in the field, Laetitia Sonami, Atau Tanaka, Pamela Z, Julie Wilson-Bokowiec, Lauren Sarah Hayes, Mark Coniglio, Garth Paine and The Bent Leather Band expose the transformational impact of motion sensors on musicians body awareness and abilities. Coupled with reflection on author-composed works, the book analyses how the body as instrument metaphor informs relationships between performers, their bodies and self-designed instruments. It also examines the role of experiential design strategies in developing robust and nuanced gestural systems that mirror a performers movement habits, preferences and skills, inspiring new physical forms of musical communication and diverse musical repertoire.

Reviews

This book makes an important contribution to embodied cognition which Mary Mainsbridge brings to life through the experiences of practicing artists and designers. Readers eyes are opened to the rich seams of new knowledge embedded in the body as an expressive instrument coupled with a rigorous exposition of the philosophical, historical and technological foundations of this interdisciplinary field. All practitioners and researchers working with creative technologies will find it an invaluable source of ideas and inspiration. -- Linda Candy, independent scholar, author of The Creative Reflective Practitioner: Research Through Making and Practice (2020)
This book tells us how musicians turn electronic devices into a creative potential for music making, using bodily response and gesturing as a key ingredient of their expression. I really enjoyed this insider-perspective about the human value of music in our booming techno-culture. -- Marc Leman, Methusalem research professor in Systematic Musicology and director of the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM), Ghent University, Belgium
With Body as Instrument Mary Mainsbridge makes an important contribution to the somatic approach to HCI, discussing musical instrument design and dance performance. This is done not only through interviews and studies of many pioneers and innovators in the field, but also and most importantly through her own experiences and practice of using the body as a performative instrument in a spatial interaction paradigm. Highly relevant! -- Bert Bongers, Associate Professor and founder of the Interactivation Studio, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Author Bio

Mary Mainsbridge is a composer and performer of improvised live electronic music, exploring vocal augmentation and movement expression through gesture-controlled instruments. Her works span audio-visual compositions, interactive installations, and performances at festivals and galleries throughout Europe, the UK and Australia. She lectures in music at Macquarie University, Australia, specializing in the research areas of embodiment, gesture studies, performative inquiry and sonic interaction design.