lady’s ball(s)

The gesture IS the instrument

During the pandemic, I tried to think of the simplest possible instrument I could make.  Of all the sensors I had sewn onto the lady’s glove, the accelerometers were the most expressive.  So I used a wireless accelerometer on my wrist and moved a ball of wires…

There is an illusion that the ball has embedded sensors, but it can actually be any objects. The data from the accelerometer is parsed in Max-MSP and fed into the Machine Learning software (here I mostly use RapidMax) which then controls the models which I have prepared for realtime audio synthesis. Certain gestures can also change the models being used. The ball amplifies the gesture and allows me to “locate” the sounds. The larger the ball, the higher the resolution.

It turns out to be a nice instrument for improvisation with our duo Sparrows and Ortolans (James Fei and I). The fact that I can “locate” sounds with the ball, allows me to go back to certain sonic fields.

Videos soon…