As it happens, hunching over your computer does not center your body and mind. So, drawing from yoga and other practices, Adriano Clemente is getting his whole body into the act of making music. While Kinect is not a perfect solution for every vision application, either in tracking capability or latency, it is stunningly good at following your skeleton through space. And here, using moderated, slow-moving motion, the body can navigate musical worlds with applomb.
With apologies to everyone staying up late at night working on tracks in your undies, it’s also a convincing excuse to perform music without shirt or pants. (Given some of the world is now at 43 degrees C / 110 F or so, I can think of no better time.)
Kin-Hackt is Adriano’s Kinect-controlled performance rig, combining the ingredients of Ableton, Kinect, OSC and TUIO (an open protocol for vision based on OSC), and make-it-easy Mac control tool Osculator.
Pants-Off Dance-Off Ableton Live, indeed.
Description:
This is one of the Body Instruments designed by Adriano Clemente for his project Kin-Hackt.
This performance is one extract from the “Composition for Five Bodies and Kinect”.This is achieved with a 3D sensor (Kinect) able to map the joints of a human body, then tracking their movements which are translated to musical impulses.
My art project is based on the idea of the body itself as the ultimate instrument of expression and communication, without the use of any other objects to hold, wear or touch. Interacting directly with a virtual sound-space, the essence of the expression is contained in the movement.
The person performing is the composer, the music player, the instrument and even the orchestra.
The possibilities of this new “instrument” are limited only by one’s imagination.
This is, of course, a different take on what we saw yesterday. Marco Donnarumma’s body control system is similarly about using your entire physique to make music. But while it does require additional gear, the payoff is a interface that works directly from muscle impulses; Kinect, while allowing the body to be naked of other equipment (pants or no), relies on watching the body from a distance. Each approach has some unique advantages.
Check out New York City-based artist Adriano’s site for more information:
http://www.adrianoclemente.com/#!__kin-hackt/ableton-trainer
For more Ableton Kinect goodness, see this previous effort by Adriano, with more layers of clothes (ideal for Ableton’s hometown of Berlin, which is cold and rainy as always in July sunny, warm, and beautiful).