Sonic Dancer is an innovative creative technology project aiming to develop human connection and interaction through movement and sound when physical presence is not possible. Participants can connect remotely and sense people in a shared virtual space without relying on screen based technologies. From connecting dancers to maintain creative practices from different locations, Sonic Dancer also aspires to create connectedness between isolated people, enhancing wellbeing. It is an inclusive and accessible technology designed with people that cannot rely on their vision or who are visually impaired in mind.
This new way of working together can influence the way the choreographic process happens when working from different places around the world remotely.
It also offers opportunities for future audience development as a way of experiencing live dance that is happening remotely.
One of our aims is a solution that can be built on a budget and will be open-source, which increases the chances of a wider audience to teach, practice, experiment and feel connected without being physically in the same space.
Sonic Dancer provides a sense of togetherness and wellbeing without the need of a camera offering a way to engage meaningfully using sound to “feel” the presence of others.
It is an inclusive technology designed with people that cannot rely on their vision or who are visually impaired in mind.
From a collaboration that started at the South West Creative Technology Network (SWCTN) Talent Development online workshop in 2020, Silvia and Swen started developing a sound based technical framework and device that enables dancers situated at different locations to move and improvise with each other, creating a network of presence, thus, enabling connection beyond the physical or visual sphere.
After receiving seed funding to develop a first proof of concept, which was demoed at the SWCTN showcase in October 2020, Sonic Dancer moved into the next creative phase of development with the addition of a sound technologist which enabled the first proof of concept device to become a relational and creative tool through co-creation with dancers.
With a desire to expand how we perceive and interact with each other online/remotely as a response to the C-19 pandemic in order to continue our dance research explorations, we became curious to investigate ways of being together that would enable dancers to feel others in the space, to expand our sensorial capacity, to understand patterns of interactions and how we affect each other’s movement improvisations beyond looking at each other on the screen.
“How would we be affected if we could sense/ hear others in our private spaces and move with them?”
The aim of our research is to understand and aid how people can interact with one another through non screen-based technology when physical presence is not possible.
We want to offer a way to engage meaningfully through movement and sound.
Silvia’s question motivated Swen to propose a “dance sonifier”, using a set of raspberry pi microcomputers with microphone arrays and networked software based on the free ODAS library. The resulting proof of concept of this integration of technology into a 3D printed device allows us to determine the spatial location (position) of multiple distinct sound sources in real-time within a given space.
The position and trajectory is used to sonify and visualise this information to allow a non-screen based communication and sensing of a group of dancers to create a novel virtually-shared experience. Screens will only be used to create a stronger immersive experience but not for locating.