Embodied Generative Music

Which qualities link bodily to musical expression? In this project, we propose to enable dancers` expertise to interpret generative music: An environment of new technologies shall serve as a platform for a systematic inquiry into a spectrum of aspects of bodily expression (gesture, motion, posture, touch, space) and its transformation into musical expression. This transformation takes place via a computer body model part of a motion tracking system and a composition model of generative music. As dancers` bodily presence turns into sonic qualities and structures in real time, they effectively interpret the composition, performing and improvising in a new space of hybrid, intermedial expression - Embodied Generative Music. The setting follows Eckel`s extensive preliminary research and project activity in computer composition, sound synthesis and scientific sonification. On the basis of a developing theory of Aesthetic Ideas to understand non-symbolic expression and musical immediacy (Peters, PhD dissertation Graz 2005), the goal of the experiments is to understand how bodily presence can be traced in perception, conception and imagination within the aesthetic experience. The resulting theory of intermedial expression (bodily-musical) includes exemplification in a catalogue of interactive case studies, to demonstrate essential aspects of hybrid expression in the process of its forming and to substantiate the musical and expressive understanding reached. The primary goals of the proposed project are: 1) to develop a software environment with the capacity to transform bodily expression into musical expression, furthering the current aesthetics of Electronic Music; and 2) to inform the design of the environment aesthetically, by testing hypotheses about bodily presence in Classical and Contemporary Art Music as gained from analysis, and by working towards understanding qualitative and organisational aspects of intermedial aesthetic experience. Given the symbiotic relation between musicology and aesthetic labwork, this project represents artistic-scientific research.

The Embodied Generative Music (EGM) project followed an interdisciplinary approach combining scholarly and artistic research aiming at an improved understanding of musical experience from a music philosophical point of view and, following the application oriented character of the TRP funding scheme, at creating new means of artistic expression in computer music composition and performance. As one of its main results, the project established a conceptual, procedural and technological research infrastructure known as the Aesthetic Lab, enabling a collective exploration of embodiment phenomena involving dancers, composers, philosophers, choreographers and interaction designers. The following views concerning the role of embodiment in musical experience have been developed, argued, and refined through the course of the project and are documented in high-quality publications: (1) musical experience is strongly grounded in bodily experience, (2) musical expression strongly taps on collective and intersubjective bodily knowledge, and (3) musical expression occurs at the intersection of the bodily presence of composers, performers and listeners. In attempting to create an embodied form of generative music, it has been found that performers have to be enabled to extend their bodies into the music generation process in a way analogous to instrumentalists extending their bodies into an instrument. The project developed an open source software environment, the EGM toolkit, which is part of the Aesthetic Lab infrastructure. This software has been used also to introduce and explore a new variant of live electronics composition and performance called Motion- Enabled Live Electronics, to conduct a pilot study in the field of physiotherapy using movement sonification as intuitive and motivating feedback in therapy (PhysioSonic), and for artistic research projects carried out at the Orpheus Research Centre in Music in Ghent (Rebody and Transbody) making direct use of the results of the project, in particularily of the EGM case study Bodyscapes, an intermedial (dance/music) solo performance presented to the public in January 2009. The findings of EGM have been presented and discussed in the context of a dedicated international symposium entitled Bodily Expression in Electronic Music, organized as part of the project. Refined versions of the symposium contributions will be published by Routledge in the anthology Expression in Electronic Music: Perspectives on a Reclaimed Performativity in 2011. The Aesthetic Lab forms one of the methodological bases for the follow-up project The Choreography of Sound funded by the FWF in its program for arts-based research (PEEK). It is expected that the results of EGM will inform further research in the fields of music philosophy, computer music, and sonification.