Carima and I tested out the BrainSynth in new ways. Here follow her notes:
I focussed on one muscle, the trapezius, testing its function and capacity for movement. We separated the electrodes on 3 different places on the same muscle, so that I could explore these 3 different parts of the muscle.
For me the sense of directness and concreteness was very apparent: I’ve got electrodes on my muscle and while using it in movements its activity is directly translated into sounds. This makes visible the often invisible agency of the dancer: In this situation the dancer doesn’t dance to the music (a hierarchy of music above the dancer). Instead I am making the noise. I am the author of the music…
What is the dancer’s role in this situation?
What are the boundaries of dance and choreography?
In what context are we dancers and when are we not?
Is everything choreography?
There is a difference between an agent of conscious control and one of automatic habitual movements, such as those we do everyday. I am asking myself whether it would be interesting to go deeper into this negotiation between the two in which the dancer decides, controls the muscles and make decisions when and how much it should be used. Also, to explore the different types of awareness: awareness of the muscle, the sound, the music Jean-Louis is playing, the people on stage, the people off-stage.
I am still figuring out where the closed feedback loop comes in; the feedback loop of hearing and responding to the the effect of the sound I (and JL) are making, which changes how we act, which changes the sound, etc. In the situation in which there is a direct relation between movement/muscles and the synthesizer, it was interesting to move and hear how it sounded. This time I was making music through and with my body. And so does JL with his hands, through his muscles, but in a different way. He is using the actions of many muscles, while I’m aware of one muscle/body part making a sound. Its also a question about dynamics. Dynamic of the muscle, related to the sound.
Am I a musician? Is Jean-Louis a dancer?
In yesterday’s session, I was a musician because I was curious to make music rather than dance? In the next session I’ll be curious to dance.
The choreography of actions is what makes the sound, both voluntarily and involuntary. I therefore also tested actions where I wasn’t in conscious control of the muscle, but instead was aware and in control of the actions. I was moving objects, which caused the muscles to be activated, resulting in the experience of the resulting sound.The sound was like a ”rest product” of an action, or, if the timing is more direct, a direct correspondences with that action. We shot a short video of one of those series of actions you can see below. In this second situation, there is a difference between the experience of volition of the actions, and the voluntary control of the muscles. My focus here was not on moving a particular muscle, but to pick up different objects and gather them in a circle. I didn’t have a direct focus on making the sounds. Those just happened.
[I found it very interesting that at certain moments the agency seemed to shift from Carima to the object she was manipulating, as if the object was making the sound. You might be able to imagine it in the video as well – SW].