Normalised Interfacing (Karlsruhe)

I was commissioned by Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe (ZKM) (Centre for Art and Media, Karsruhe) as a part of their “My City My Sounds” residencies. ZKM was developed as an Arts and Media museum, with a mission to continue the classical arts into the digital age. The “My City My Sounds” programme is a part of their exploration of sound and the digital space. The My City My Sounds app was developed by the Institute for Music and Acoustics at ZKM by a team of artists and scientists. My project was inspired by the notion that my body is an interface between myself and my environment. I can only experience that environment through my body. What happens when you do not posses the body that the city was built for? My disability creates a unique interface on a practical and social level. My proposal for “Interfaces – My City My Sounds” was to map and document the process of a disabled body interfacing with a new city via a series of body sensors (EEG & ECG), a sound recorder, video, photo stills, improvised spoken blog posts and a location tracker. What impact does a city have on a sick body? I then reworked excerpts from the documentation into a soundscape controlled by the body sensors. EEG and ECG sensors attached to my body processed the different layers of the recording in real time during the performance events. The beautiful hand drawn map was made by Emily Fong for the project.