It explores how the behavior and movement of a performer—a human body in space—can connect with an audience through its acoustic dimensions.
The project proposes an innovative experience where spectators, equipped with wireless headphones, enter a darkened space or connect via radio streaming. In this immersive environment, they are enveloped in a meticulously crafted soundscape that allows them to virtually share space with a performer (a dancer) also in the dark.
The dancer defies habitual perceptions and expectations, creating an experience where sound, rather than sight, becomes the primary mode of connection.
Edgardo Rudnitzky (AR/DE) – concept, composition, electronics
Maria Colusi (AR/DE) – choreography, dance
Laura Schultis: assistance
Fragment of the streaming of the work in progress at Exploratorium Berlin in April 2024.
NOTE: Headphones are recommended in order to get the same auditory impression as the audience on site, who were also equipped with headphones.
Technical Considerations
Based on my experiences in the late 90’s and early 2000’s the propagation sound system should be based on Ambisonic and Binaural techniques: This combination allows the use of Ambisonic to capture sound with spatial positional accuracy and then reconstruct it using the Binaural technique to obtain three-dimensional sound reproduction in a stereo format using conventional headphones.
Through this combined techniques the audience, wearing headphones, literally submerges and virtually shares the space with the performer and the choreography.
Capturing the body movements and displacements presents challenge due the diversity of data so a combination of different methods of capturing data and sound is need..
A matrix of sensors and microphones installed under a dance floor, surrounding the stage and on the body of the dancer capturing sounds and data (position in space, body impacts, direction of movement).
A set of piezo sensors are placed under de dance floor and have multiple functions, sense the pressure, capture the sound produced by touching the floor and could serve as trigger for added responses.
A set of proximity IR sensors and provides data concerning the position of the performer in the performing space.
This information received is processed and decoded through software tools and algorithms generating the basis of a soundscape which is transmitted to binaural format, ensuring that the spatiality is accurately perceived by the headphones available to each visitor.
A binaural head is placed on the performing space receives the sounds of movements, breathing, clothes rubbing from the performer and deliver it positioning this sounds in the headphones in the same perceptual position where the performer produce it.
A head tracker worn by the performer allows capture the position of the head wherever her/he is facing, right, left, front, back, up or down, in consequence turns, bounces, shakes, etc. are transmited and “shared” with the auditor.
So, as we stated above, the audience is virtually moving and displacing with the performer in the performing space.
Wireless Headphones System -Silent Disco