Rivulet Post-Thesis

In "Rivulet," I worked with graduate Composition student, Ned Emerson, Jr. to see how we could create a more dependent relationship between music and dance. Rivulet was meant to ask a simple question: Can a dancer be both a physical and a musical performer? In preparing to create this piece we both realized that music in dance often has little interaction within the dance itself. Music is sometimes written or chosen for a dance, but once the dance begins, the music has little to acknowledge about the dance itself, though dance often acknowledges or ignores the music.

We wanted to find out if there was a way to make music aware of the dancer on stage and have it react to the performance. In "Rivulet," the movements on stage are tracked by the costume we constructed, a ‘sensor suit’ that monitors acceleration and light-exposure. The sensors send data to a computer, which, via prescribed instructions, subtly alters the music being played. An example we left for the audience in our program insert asked the audience to listen for changes in volume as I would expose my right hand and left elbow to more or less light.

I found a number of challenges in working with a composer/programmer, most of which dealt with time. Being a musician myself and having taken the Electro-acoustic Music Composition course with Dr. Mark Engebretson in the Spring of 2012, I understood that I would have to allow for more time spent in programming than anything else. This did become an issue because we each had different expectations of what the sequence of events needed to be in creating our collaborative piece. As a mover and choreographer, I felt that a working construction of the suit and patches (program) was needed in order to experiment in a way that considered the sensors and created a more integrated way of moving in response to and in conversation with the music. Unfortunately, the programming aspect and physical construction of the suit continued to take more time and resources than we initially thought.

About a month before the performance, we realized that our physical construction of the suit had some flaws that were going to be unreliable in performance. To make the suit more wearable and flexible, we used conductive thread to connect the sensors to the main motherboard and power supply. Conductive thread is a creative way to connect various electronics onto clothing. This thread can carry current for power and signals and is a plated silver type thread (as opposed to stainless steel) and can be used in standard sewing machines. Something we did not realize originally is that proximity to skin caused interference, often jumbling up our numbers and making the program unpredictable and unreliable. We also found due to the threads low capacity for power and the distance from where we placed the sensors to the board, the thread was not the most reliable option. We were also overloading the capabilities of the thread due to the number of sensors we were attempting to use. We decided to reconstruct our suit using stereo wiring, which would not interfere with skin or matter if we crossed paths with other wires, and we were able to solder the wires to the sensors, giving a more reliable connection. We also decided to move the sensors all to the upper body, as I was finding that sensors on the legs were much more difficult to control.

Around the same time, we were still having difficulties finding a way to be wireless as the Bluetooth modules we were experimenting with did not have consistent ways of connecting with our program, MaxMSP. The week of the concert, we realized our only way of consistently communicating between the sensors and the computer was through USB, so we found a USB to Ethernet extender and powered the suit through an extension cord. Though this was aesthetically not my preference, it was a necessary compromise that many audience members actually found helpful in realizing that my suit was connected and communicating with a computer program.

Because of the various obstacles in construction and programming, it left little time to the artistic choices we made in creating the piece as a collaborative process. We both agreed to a particular idea and structure for the piece, but we did not get to put the music with the dance until the week of the concert. My preferences of physical aesthetics did not necessarily work with the addition of an extension cord being attached to my body, so that was a challenge I had to deal with as a performer and choreographer in considering how the physical dancing would be affected and how the audience might respond to this addition. The feedback I got from audience members was mixed, but after adding an insert into the program explaining the functionality of the suit and how the piece works, my audience’s response was mostly positive regarding the physical cord. Many thought the cord was intentional, referencing to the fact that I was hooked up to the computer, giving them some way of making sense, as well as linking the idea of a “stream” of consciousness, or “rivulet” by using the cord.

We are still working with this piece; the video above was from an outdoor performance on April 25 called Extended Humans Making Noise, a performance preceding screening of the documentary, “The Trouble With Being Human.” We also have an upcoming performance in ReVision this summer (a monthly series of performing arts that integrate live media and digital art) in Queens, NY with UNCG MFA alumna Rebekah Kennedy, as well as other future performances in the fall, including Ned’s Masters Recital. I feel that we are now in a good place to really start working in the way I was hoping to in December. We have working parts, so now we are trying to put the movement and music together more thoughtfully than we were able to for the March concert. Luckily, I was able to receive funding through the Graduate Student Association for the construction of the suit, but we are looking into artist grants to create a more reliable and less cluttered looking version 2.0 for August performances. Aesthetically, we are both interested in making a cleaner looking version, though some of our reasons for creating a new suit are more necessarily for reliability reasons.