Codespace

Abstract

A doublebass-player, composer and digital artist, Jasch is active in electronic and exploratory music, in jazz, contemporary music, performance and installation art as well as writing music for chamber-ensembles, theatre and film. His main focus is on works combining digital sound and images, abstract graphics and experimental video in the field of electro-acoustic music and in mixed-media projects for the stage and in installations.Jasch has been invited as artist and lecturer to numerous cultural and academic institutions and has presented installations in galleries and performances in clubs and at festivals such as Résonance Festival (Paris), Sonar Festival (Barcelona), Transmediale Festival (Berlin), the Holland Festival (Amsterdam) and many other venues throughout Europe, North America, Australia and Japan.

Capture and express, question and understand: Gloves in gestural electronic music performance

“…The capabilities of combined finger position and attitude sensing (using flex sensors and an accelerometer, respectively) subsequently enabled the author to use the gloves in a number of different performance configurations beyond the initial live-electronics composition (Figure 1). A recurring configuration used the interface for gestural control of real-time motion graphics in live audiovisual performances (Schacher, 2007a(Schacher, , 2008. 12 With the addition of a second identical glove, the use of gestures for audio spatialization became a research topic in its own right (Schacher, 2007b).…”

“…The basic idea of the empty-handed performance without an interposed screen is based on technical methods for exerting control or influencing sound processes without having recourse to the conventional cockpit-like control arrays or the traditional physical instrument (Schacher, 2019). The sensor-bearing gloves and at a later point a sensor-equipped staff-like interface (Schacher, 2013) enable the purely gesture-based modulation, navigation, and expression of musical materials without the need to directly access software and control parameters (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. System overview for “new islands”: The performer is equipped with a wireless headset microphone and a pair of wireless sensor gloves; in addition, a wireless sensor staff and other materials such as woodblocks and metals are used.

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“…A recurring configuration used the interface for gestural control of real-time motion graphics in live audiovisual performances (Schacher, 2007a, 2008). 12 With the addition of a second identical glove, the use of gestures for audio spatialization became a research topic in its own right (Schacher, 2007b). A cycle of performance pieces and media composition was initiated in 2010 under the title “new islands” and serves to explore the possibilities of empty-handed, gestural electronic music performance (see below in the “Empty Handed Play” section).

Figure 1. A performance of “new islands” by the author in the process of annotation.

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“…Part of field of reference of this practice is research on the signification of Gesture from the linguistic perspective (Kendon, 2004 ; McNeill, 2005 ; Gritten and King, 2006 ), and in particular research related to music making (Jensenius et al, 2010 ; Gritten and King, 2011 ). Other directly related domains are: on-body sensing for performance in the disciplines of dance (Siegel and Jacobsen, 1998 ); for music with full-body engagement (Schacher and Stoecklin, 2010 ; Todoroff, 2011 ; Schacher et al, 2016 ); remote sensing of the entire body or just the hands for musical purposes (Bevilacqua et al, 2001 ; Hantrakul and Kaczmarek, 2014 ; Tits et al, 2016 ; Jakubowski et al, 2017 ); or hand sensing with on-body sensors (empty-handed or functional triggering actions; Brown et al, 2020 ).…”

“…The piece “new islands” was premiered in 2011 and has been in ongoing development since, with one or two performances per year. 13 The guiding principle for this composition is the exploration of sensor-based, gestural actions with empty-handed gestures, controlled with the aid of sensor gloves and cameras and a symbolic staff-shaped sensor instrument that restitutes the object character of an instrument without providing actual sound generation (Schacher, 2013 ). The current version of the piece concentrates on performing with a pair of sensor gloves and a wireless headset microphone.…”