Project with Johanna Ciampa

Project with Johanna Ciampa

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Project with Johanna Ciampa

In the spring of 2023 I did a series of workshops with dancer and choreographer Johanna Ciampa from Montana (US) developing an interactive performance entitled Moving, Listening and Being: An Iterative Process. The performance featured 3D sonic landscapes with elements controlled by the dancer with the use of body-worn sensors and an interactive digital instrument. The workshops were a part of Ciampa’s Master project, which she submitted at the international Choreomundus program Dance Knowledge, Practice and Heritage spring/summer’23.

The topic of the performance was how human activities pose threats to aquatic life, using the coral as point of focus for the dramaturgy of the performance.

The main ideas and concept in the project were Ciampa’s, and my role was to be a co-creator and off-stage co-performer with responsibility for the interactive audio technologies involved. In the performance, Ciampa embodied the character of an adult-stage coral in a fjord. She then controlled an interactive instrument intended to portrait an unhealthy coral gradually coming back to good health. Accompanying the coral sounds were sounds of differently sized ships as well as aquatic life - the former thanks to a set of bioacoustic recordings from the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø.

The performance took place in Music Technology’s Portal (Fjordgt.1 campus) at NTNU in front of a small, invited audience. We used the 20.2 speaker setup I have put up there, using MIDAS-M32 mixer and a Mac Mini running Reaper with ICST ambisonics fourth order plugins to spatialize the sounds. My interactive instruments were integrated in a VST plugin made with Csound and Cabbage. Three NGIMU sensors (x-io) were used to track Ciampa’s movements.

Post-project reflections

One aspect of this project that implied a new approach for me was that I deliberately took a less active role than I am used to. Since the project is a part of a Master’s thesis work, it was important for me to let Johanna take a leading role, and leave most important decisions to her, and limit myself to making open suggestions or showing some possibilities of the technology. Even though I took a more supporting role, I felt that there were many things to learn during the project.

In contrast to several of the projects I have been working with earlier, this project has been driven much more by conceptualization, body awareness, reflection and dialogue than directly working with movement, sound, and interaction. Johanna used both personal experiences as well as what she has learnt from encounters with biologists and others as input to the project.

When we have had our sessions we have worked very effectively, with my role involving very rapid prototyping of an immersive audio environment with different degrees of interaction. Some of the early work, e.g., a noisy rumbling sound that Johanna could play with her torso, was discarded since it was difficult to integrate with the concept that came in place later.

For me it has been interesting to work with an underwater scenario and to learn about corals and their life cycle during this project. It has been inspiring to bring the concept a lot more to the fore than I have been used to earlier. However, this has maybe made the range of movements and the musicality of the sounds less rich and varied than I have been used to aiming for. Still, it was interesting to note how the audience at the showing really appreciated the conceptual approach.

Working with the project has given me a chance to work with several technical issues that has nevertheless been on my research agenda:

  • Using balance between an ambisonics reverb and dry sound, together with sound intensity and high pass filtering to simulate the perceived distance of sounds.
  • Creating a simple simulation of the movements of sea creatures using random spline generators (rspline). Despite the simple technique the results were quite convincing.
  • My setup and dataflow have been further streamlined, making it more flexible and modular.

There were several things I would like to improve in future iterations of the project. Firstly, the coral sounds could be made more interesting, with more changes and variations happening throughout the process. Secondly, the vessel noise in the beginning could have been given a spatial articulation. Third, the tonal colouring could perhaps be combined with spectral variation.