Speaker Bio
Atau Tanaka conducts research in embodied musical interaction. This work takes place at the intersection of human computer interaction and gestural computer music performance. He has a joint position at BIG’s Culture Lab and the Centre for Sound, Technology & Culture at Goldmiths University of London. Atau has previously been Artistic Ambassador at Apple, researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, and professor and guest professor in Japan, Germany, France, and northeast England. His work has been supported by the European Research Council (ERC), Horizon2020, and both science and humanities sections of Research Councils UK (RCUK).
Sonic Entanglements with Electromyography: Between Bodies, Signals, and Representations
Atau Tanaka, University of Bristol
Thursday 10th October 2024. 13:00-14:00 GMT. The Buncar.
This talk presents a paper recently published at DIS2024 that looks at sound/music interactions using electromyography (EMG) to instrumentalise muscle exertion of the human body. I situate EMG within a family of embodied interaction modalities, where it occupies a middle ground, considered as a “signal from the inside” compared with external observations of the body (e.g., motion capture), but also seen as more volitional than neurological states recorded by brain electroencephalogram (EEG). To understand the messiness of gestural interaction afforded by EMG, we revisit the phenomenological turn in HCI, counterposing it against the grain of recent posthumanist thought, which offer performative interpretations of entanglements between bodies, signals, and representations. We take music performance as a use case, reporting on the opportunities and constraints posed by EMG in workshop-based studies of vocal, instrumental, and electronic practices.