The Belly Dancing Kit / Osman Koç
If the music keeps up with you, would it encourage you to dance? And would you dance more freely? This wearable project is inspired by the oriental belly dancing style. Visitors just wear the product, and dance. Music is generated from the computer, but controlled by the user. The recordings are taken from oriental instruments (hand cymbals, darbouka).
The clothes become a part of our organic being as we wear them. But what happens if the clothing has inorganic components like sensors or RF transceivers? As we wear the product, it augments our body, and with the given setup, it gives the ability to control some parameters in the music. But the gestures to control the system are not by turning some knobs or pressing buttons, but by dancing. This results in a contradiction to the conventional dance paradigm, where the dancer tries to keep up with the music. The project also experiments on the effect of the relationship between music and dance. It may not be easy to break the habit of listening to the music and trying to dance accordingly, but the users are encouraged to do so.
When the user wears the product, the overall being becomes a synthesis of both organic and inorganic components. There is a mutual relationship between the two parts, in order to create an aurally and visually aesthetic performance. As the performer dances freely, the sound is manipulated by the movement of the performer through the hardware and software setup. But while it gives this freedom, it also gives feedback to the performer through the aural sense. The user can dance freely, as long as the manipulated sound fits the users’ aural aesthetics.
Belly dancing is one of the fundamental elements of the Turkish culture. The project also aims to introduce this element to the users. To overcome the visitors’ reluctance to belly dance, the project eliminates the concern of keeping up with the music. So the system also creates a guideline for the belly dancing novices.
This setup constitutes a basis for the future developments for this project. The most important part of the body in this installation, as the name implies, is the belly. But the belly just creates the infrastructure of the whole form. The torso, arms and the head just build upon this base, to create a richer form.
Notice
The Belly-Dancing Kit is a sound installation with a specially designed belt. The visitor is invited to put on the belt, and then move the hips, as indicated on the instruction sheet. The visitor hears the sound as accompaniment to his/her movement. Technically, the work consists of an accelerometer, two buttons, and two RF transceivers. The data read from the accelerometer is passed through a running average filter and then used to manipulate the recordings. The buttons in the hand cymbals are used just as accompaniment to the sound. To avoid space limitations of the performer, the data transmission is done through radio frequency.
Credits
Concept: Osman Koç, Mustafa Bağdatlı, Salih Alp Tugan
Interaction design: Osman Koç
Visual design: Emir Can Arkman
