Understanding Material Embodiments in Live Electroacoustic Music

In our oral presentation we would like to present and discuss the methods and current results of our artistic research project “embodied gestures”. Our goal was the development of a new paradigm of interfaces for musical expression especially designed to emphasize a performer's gestural embodiment within an instrument. For that, “embodied gestures” explores the possibilities of shaping the physical affordances of designed digital instruments with the intention of inspiring particular forms of gesturality. Specifically, our objective was studying the implications of designing musical interfaces which can afford the same type of gesturality that a particular sound inspires.

Under these perspectives of musical creation, we have developed our hypothesis is that a possible solution to the problem of disembodiment with digital instruments can be formulated from the incorporation of the notion of “sonic gesture” to nature of musical interfaces. In “embodied gestures” we propose that through the incorporation of gestural metaphors into the body of the interface, especially the ones inspired by specific sonic contents, our digital instruments will be able to afford physical reactions intimately connected to those particular sonic contents