Designing Interactive Movement Sonification For Hip-Hop Dance

Hip-hop dance battles are events where dancers improvise to an unfamiliar DJ’s mix. The dancers’ technicality in responding to the music, along with the collective dimensions of these encounters, represents a largely unexplored area of investigation in HCI. Using an autobiographical design approach grounded in the hip-hop practice of the first author, we developed five interaction scenarios on a hip-hop–specific movement vocabulary. Our interactive sonification enables both individual and collective improvisation through synchronized motion sensing and interactive sound loops. This approach allowed us to design three interconnected workshops to investigate how dancers use sonification in improvisation. Our findings show that sonification was perceived either as a validation of movement or as a medium for open-ended exploration. We contribute with: (1) the formalization of a movement vocabulary and the design of interactive scenarios for hip-hop movement sonification, (2) insights into how dancers experience sonification through exploration and improvisation, and (3) guidelines for the design of movement sonification in hip-hop contexts.