Design-in-Motion: Choreosonic Wearables in Performance

Design-in-Motion: Choreosonic Wearables in Performance entitles a PhD thesis, undertaken at the London College of Fashion, consisting of practice-based research in design and performance. The project interrogates the choreographic space of real-time interactive dance performance through experimentation with specially designed audiophonic wearables. The fashion design-led interdisciplinary concepts presented here challenge movement processes and perceptions of the role of costume within dance and the performing arts. The thesis begins with a theoretical and historical investigation of pertinent artistic works which exemplify material extensions of the moving body or hint at acoustic and sensory-kinetic dimensions of fashioning the choreographic – what this project proposes as ‘transformational wearing’. It then focuses on the compositional dynamics within which such instrument bodies actively perform and become sounding- movement characters in two choreographic productions by the DAP-Lab – UKIYO (2009-2011) and for the time being (2012-2014). The written thesis is accompanied by media documentation of these productions which underlie and constitute my strategies of inquiry into wearable design.

Over the past decade, the interest in wearables as intermediary devices in mediatised performance has become notable in artistic explorations and research inquiry in the sonic arts and dance fields alike. Moreover, as this research reveals, dress/costume is becoming more studied in academic contexts for the multifaceted and significant role it can play in performance. This thesis investigates the performative and affective potentials of audiophonic garments and bodily extensions – where the act of wearing becomes a multi-sensorial (sound, image, touch) and perceptual performance technique for the dancer, enabling a new movement-sounding creativity.

The generative choreosonic aspect of the work is also theoretically and historically traced back through dance and music contexts (such as gesture-controlled music interfaces and interactional choreography) illustrating the notion of the ‘intertwined body’ proposed in the thesis. Positioned as wearable-performance design, and placing the creation of prototypes at the start of a performance-making process, the original designs introduced here augment both body and process by provoking new movement choices. The work thus questions how wearables/costume can be used to extend the sensory engagement of performers and shape the emergent dance through a specific entwinement of body and material artefact. The wearable also plays a significant part in the overall scenographic and choreographic organisation of interactive performance, integrating into the dramaturgical conception. Historical instances, for example Loïe Fuller’s voluminous costumes at the turn of the twentieth century animating her body through lighting technology and motion, and the Bauhaus Dances with sculptural costume designs by Oskar Schlemmer, are used to illuminate the context of my practice as well as the theoretical and practical concepts for wearable sound that I have advanced.

Transformational wearing is methodically examined here for analogue and digital corporeal engagement. It offers a newly expanded system of expressivity to the dancer for the emergence of movement which evolves through the dynamic interrelations between her perceiving body, the materiality of the wearable, and the ensounding.

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