Andrea Giomi

Feedback Loop Driver

A bio-physical music performance

“Feedback Loop Driver” is a music performance, strongly based on improvisation, that involves both motion sensing and bio-signals technologies. All sound manipulations are generated in real time by the performer’s physical behaviour on the stage. The performer’s body is equipped with a complex system of sensors that detect three main corporeal descriptors : the electric activity of the muscles, the gesture’s qualities and the performer’s movements in the space. The core metaphor of this work is the notion of feedback. On one hand, the auditory feedback is a response to the performer’s physical behaviour. On the other hand, the feedback affects the way the performer decides to adapt his own corporeality (posture, gestural patterns, movements in the space) to the sound environment. Such a feedback loop mechanism drives the internal evolution of the improvisation. Moreover, physical energy accumulation (effort) and sound energy accumulation (overdrive and distortion) are connected at a very sensorial level : if the corporeal effort generates the audio distortion, the physical tension expressed by the performer reflects the embodiment of the sound environment. In doing so, the bio-physical devices become a sensitive body’s part that stimulates a high degree of resilience and enactive knowledge. As an outcome, the body itself is transformed in an emergent territoriality inhabited and transfigured by the sound.