The Echo I Touch De- & Embodiment in spatial Vocal Performance Art

When using technology such as gesture-controlled live electronics, an expanded field of vocal art performance opens up with the potential to reveal a multitude of vocal extensions and compositional strategies that question the relationship between body, gesture and sound as we know it. The boundaries between the human voice, on the one hand, and the computationally manipulated, bodily and in real-time controlled, but yet disembodied voice, on the other, become increasingly blurred.1 Through this practice a hybrid in the aesthetic emerges. Motion sequences, which are visible, can add an additional meaning to the sound creation. The gestural communication can serve the understanding, but can also contrast it, put it in a different light or even create a false conclusion (Trugschluss). Most of performers use interfaces as controllers in the sense that it is supporting the music they want to do. My view is that we need to deepen the question of body presence of the vocalist and to ask about gesture composition and the meaning making of its mapping strategies. The possibility to compose with a mapping machine individual gestures connected to sound processes is a major enabler of creativity. Tailor made interactions open up a hybrid field in the aesthetic perception. Motion sequences, which are visible, allow for an intuitive approach to the understanding of the energy control which deals with sound creation. Questions occur on the mediation between the presence of being a singer and on the other hand gesturally controlled dis-embodied voices (acousmatic voices)