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We live in a world where more and more online content is being produced by users.
We are continually sharing thoughts, ideas, links, videos, images, music, texts
through social networks such as Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reditt, etc ...
But the Web was not always so social, it was because of our creative participation
that the web went from being a broadcast channel, which is the case with television, to a democratic platform.
And this process of appropriating a technology and using it in an innovative way happens every day with the objects around us.
For example when Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877
he had no idea to what that technology was going to serve.
A month after the invention he wrote a list that included the following suggestions:
animate toys, recount stories, describe advertisements, giving directions, recite speeches, etc ...
Only at the end of the list did he mention using the phonograph as a musical instrument.
It took several years before the world realized that the most important and profitable use
of the gramophone would be precisely to record and play music.
In a certain way this is happening now in Luanda. How? Let me tell you a story.
One day my younger brother came home with a present.
It was a video game console that you plug in to the television to play video games called Xbox.
Interestingly, he did not play with a remote control, the console came with a special camera that stood in front of television
and analyzing the player's body to allow movements to interact with the game.
You can see in the picture my brother jumping to dodge a light saber in star wars game.
I brought that same camera from Xbox that is now on the ground in front of me.
In the projection you can see the result of the capture.
This camera called Kinect can identify and track in real time all the limbs in my body.
Since I am a musician and research new media, I ended up incorporating this camera in my process of musical composition.
For example I can put notes of an instrument in the space around me that respond to the position of my hands.
With practice I can even compose melodies.
It took me 25 years to finish this melody.
This is not only an accessible technology, but it’s also relatively cheap.
The result of this instrument is an inverse relationship.
Instead of having a choreography where movements follows the music, the music follows is the dance.
Help me here, name a very popular place where we listen to music, dance and socialize? Nightclubs.
But have you noted that despite this important role nightclubs are a place where patrons cannot participate musically?
Like the radio, we have a small group of people called DJs deciding what the public should hear. Why?
Do we need continue to be spectators or can we go on stage and receive applause?
Then I had an idea.
Organize events in nightclubs with this interactive system that allows patrons to use movements to generate music.
In this photo of one of these events that I organized we see a girl dancing on a podium in front of a camera
that follows the position of her hands to create sound effects.
And here are two guys with Wii remotes like mine.
The acceleration of the arms played musical notes.
I learned two things organizing these events.
The first is that technologies often allow a different usage than the original intention of the inventor.
The second is that these processes of recycling, re-mixing and appropriation
open new avenues through which new ideas flow.
I wanted to invite the dancer Piny to help me in the following performance called Dance Jockey.
She will start with the initial position called cactus that helps the camera to identify her limbs.
During the performance the position and movements of Piny’s arms are mapped in different ways
in order to control and modulate sounds and visuals.
The distance, height or speed of her hands are some of parameters that are used as controllers.
Basically she has to dance, play an instrument and manipulate visual effects at the same time.