Faculty of Senses
February 28, 2020
Kommunal Kunst og Teknik, Copenhagen DK
20:00 – 23:00
As part of Marije Baalman’s Norway tour for her book, “Just a question of mapping”, Marije will be giving a talk about the technical and aesthetic choices in designing systems of mapping.
“There is nothing more human than the machine” Gottfried Willem Raes said during a panel discussion at the NIME 2007. Humans have been making technology to extend the capabilities of their bodies (including the mind) for milennia. Currently, digital technologies are at the forefront of this – and technology is often used as a synonym for digital technology.
Interactive technologies provide ways for us to explore different senses of our body. In different artistic disciplines there are various approaches. In music the creating of digital musical instruments allow us to explore new musical concepts in an embodied way. In dance, the use of interactive technologies can change our sense of the body, as how we move affects the environment in a different way.
Interactive technologies can help us to experience physical phenomena that normally we cannot perceive with our senses. To achieve these new experiences for our bodies we make use of interactive systems consisting of sensors, electronics and algorithms. The design of these systems is often called ‘mapping’: from gesture to sound, light, haptics or video. While the implementation often requires ‘engineering’ skills, the choices are motivated by the aesthetic concepts for the experience the artist wants to create. The choices that we make for these systems, determine how the system perceives and acts in the world, and thus how these systems can interact with us and vice versa.