Choreosonic Wearables: creative collaborative practices

This chapter examines wearable research inquiry undertaken within the context of DAP-Lab’s interactive dance performance for the time being (2012-2014), inspired by the experimental Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun (1913). It introduces sounding prototypes for devising dance, where wearable performance design is inextricably intertwined with motivations for movement character and sound composition. The first four prototypes introduced in the chapter – inspired by the historic libretto and early twentieth century Russian avant-garde art, are positioned as experimental instruments, compositional tools and basis of sonic material for DAP-Lab’s experimental dance performance. Design and performance strategies involving collaborative approaches, wearable-partnering and other methods for the interrogation of choreosonic wearables in relational and activating ways are discussed. Furthermore, in this particular context the term choreosonic is not limited to the wearable prototypes but can also be used to describe a particular type of choreography that becomes audible and connects to movement-sounding ¬– a mobilizing of sonorous fragments through multi-sensory dancer-wearable interactions. This subtle but significant interchangeability in the work, and the illustrations I provide, aim to highlight the centrality of wearable design in a specific case study involving integrative and collaborative methods of performance-making for multi-media dance opera. A final fifth prototype more closely scrutinizes the connectivity of bodies in the research-creation process.