vancouver new music Tag

In the first part of the work I perform in a strategically manipulative, first-person address, suspending the listener into a dream state inspired by Tara Rodgers’ feminist description of sonic waves, using aesthetics borrowed from ASMR roleplay in my electroacoustic music. 

In the last half I introduce seven biofeedback performers, who I refer to as surrogates, inviting the audience to participate with us in guided visualization/hypnosis. Each surrogate is equipped with a BioSynth: a hardware musical instrument of my own design controlled by physiological markers of emotion: cardiac activity, respiration, and skin conductance. The mapping of the BioSynths is explained plainly so listeners can listen to how mood shifts in the room during the performance. It is through the assemblage of bodies that affect emerges as an ecological relation rather than a state of individual subjecthood. A light illuminates in front of biofeedback performers when their signals are amplified, allowing for solos, duets, trios, and full ensemble moments. 

Expanding the field of biofeedback music beyond quantification and sonification, I use folk hypnosis, verbal suggestion, clinical psychology methods, roleplay, song, and textural sounds that approximate haptic experience to create biofeedback work inspired by feminist thought.