lady’s ball(s)

The gesture IS the instrument?

During the pandemic, I tried to think of the simplest possible instrument I could make.  What would be essential?  Of all the sensors I had sewn onto the lady’s glove, the accelerometers were the most expressive, and I have to admit that I often miss the lady’s glove. Now with machine learning tools I could map them pretty effortlessly (if creating models is effortless!) So I used a a wireless accelerometer  (for instance this one) on my wrist and moved a ball of wires…

There is an illusion that the ball has embedded sensors, or is made of special radio kind of wires(?) or the many other guesses audience members have made, but it can actually be any objects. I could be swinging a shoe..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) and more recently for solos. The fact that I can “locate” sounds with the ball, allows me to go back to certain sonic fields, which I cannot do with the Spring Spyre. It is so simple though, and I have resisted using my right hand for any functionality, which I had stuck to with the lady’s glove. I do have foot switches, but it makes me look down for some decision making and I do not like that.. so.. to be continued.

“Space Surfer” -for David Wessel – ICMC 2025.