Laptop Music and Embodiment: Materializing the Ephemeral

Abstract

Embodied experiences of music and dance are difficult to describe, let alone preserve for the future. Every listener—those who play or dance and those who don’t—experiences it differently. And when that embodied experience takes place across the digital divide, as diverse bodies differently respond shifting material conditions, perceptual response, and improvisatory navigation—what is the material and how do we share it? In this panel discussion, four KU faculty from the departments of American Studies, Dance, Music, and Theatre, will discuss the material and ephemeral findings of their work on improvisation utilizing a musical instrument download that responds to movement large and small, adapts to all bodies, and calls attention to the user’s experience of their body as they face the screen of a laptop, PC, or IPad. Music and dance are not disconnected in this practice built on body-triggered sound; instead this connection is heightened. In addition, dance need not configure a bodily ideal, but shapes bodies, incorporates all bodies, and constructs connections between people. Panelists will speak at the brink of a forthcoming multi-media performance (KU Commons, October date TBA 2013) that explores lines of performance/research, dis/ability, mobility/stasis, agency/eminence, and sounding/perceiving.