Felt Sound – Stanford Residency with ShareMusic

In her project Felt Sound, doctoral student Doga Cavdir from CCRMA (Stanford University) investigates the relation between movement, sound, and haptics. In this case, the investigation is focused on how dancers can use vibrations. Felt Sound is specifically aimed at persons that are deaf or have a hearing impairment. During her residency, Doga has been working in workshop-format with participants from the Malmö area in the autumn of 2021. Dancer Marie Lander, who has previously worked with Skånes Dansteater, participated during the process in Malmö.

As a knowledge centre for artistic development and inclusion, ShareMusic has received an increased request from researchers around the world. A five year research strategy has been developed as a guiding tool to be able to prioritize among the enquiries. Doga Cavdir’s research on haptics is completely in line with the strategy through the innovative technology with an emphasis on artistic expression. ShareMusic has initiated a collaboration with Stanford University and this residency is one of many that will be conducted jointly with the university.

We did an interview with Doga Cavdir a while after the finished residency to find out more about her work.

What has happened in your residency at ShareMusic?  

– During my residency between September – December 2021, I facilitated three workshops and one live performance and public demonstration session to explore Deaf and Hard of Hearing participants and their family members’ experience with music and movement interaction. With a Deaf dancer, we tested two different modalities of vibrotactile feedback and co-created a music-movement composition. This participatory process revealed the Deaf participant’s preferences, expectations, and reflections on creative practice with sound and music.

Can you describe the process?

– We basically held three workshops and a final performance/artist talk/public demonstration session, artistically and academically exploring new musical interfaces and compositions for hearing-impaired participants. Due to the nature of my work and its strong emphasis on embodiment, working with dancers or artists who engage with movement arts and kinesthetic expression was important.

The first workshop was with four participants, 3 in person and 1 online. Two participants from the first session wanted to continue to the next stages. Although Marie attended the following two workshops in person, I have regularly checked in with Maja and we planned to collaborate in the final performance three of us together. Unfortunately, due to covid related reasons both Marie and Maja could not join the final session.

During this process, both Malin (previously coordinator at ShareMusic) and Jan (producer at ShareMusic) were very supportive and helpful. They communicated with potential participants and facilitated the logistics such as location, resources, organization. It was great to work with them, especially due to their interest and involvement in the project.

What have you learned during your residency?

– This residency emphasized the importance of merging music and movement practices both for artistic and therapeutic reasons as well as developing more embodied listening experiences for all. I believe the implications of inclusive music research also reach out to hearing people. For example, some hearing participants during the demo session expressed that “[they] had to listen in a different way, not only aurally but also in their whole body” and “[they] did not consciously separate two different modalities” (sound vibrations from the subwoofer speakers and on-body vibrations from haptic modules), instead “[the listening] became one experience.” Similarly, feeling the music through vibrations first was“neutralizing the listening experience beyond localized sensations on the body.”

Additionally, it showed, once again, the interest of Deaf participants in participating, composing, and playing music. It also highlighted the lack of resources Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities have access to and/or offered in order to actively participate in these creative practices.

This work carries both an academic exploration and an artistic interest. I will incorporate these insights into my future work to develop tactile mappings between music and haptics for all while continue to collaborate with Deaf artists. My experience in this residency also provided me more motivation on co-creating artistic practices and performances with hearing-impaired dancers. I realized how the impact of the new instruments we develop for hearing-impaired individuals can extend to all, including hearing individuals.

Marie has been participating during the whole process, what has her role been?

– Marie was extremely humble but engaging and interested in this process. I tried to include her in several of the design processes as much as possible. She expressed that she never listened to the music with haptic technology before. Her experience, reflections, and feedback has been invaluable in this design and performance.

After she attended the first workshop, she showed interest in trying this new technology and participating in a collaborative artistic creation with dance and music. In the second workshop, we experimented with a vibrotactile feedback for music with two modalities:

(1) in-air vibrations with subwoofers and

(2) on-skin vibrations with a wearable haptic module.

In the third workshops, we worked on a gestural vocabulary and a choreography for her dance and created a mapping between musical gestures and vibrations and dance movements. Between each workshop, a new haptic interface is developed based on her feedback from the previous sessions. Unfortunately, she was not able to attend the last performance session where she as a dancer and I as a musician planned to perform the music and movement choreography that we created in the last workshop due to a close contact case during the omicron surge in December 2021.

I saw her roles as a co-designer throughout process where she actively participated in several design steps, including but not limited to knowledge development, ideation, brainstorming, conceptual design, and developing an artistic practice. Her feedback on musical effects and embodiment of the wearable haptic modules was crucial to the design. We both wished we had more time to further develop and collaborate.  

What is your next step with Felt Sound?

– I consider this project both part of and a continuation of the Felt Sound project. I name this particular project, “Touch, Listen, (Re)Act (TLR)”. In this project, I am focusing on participatory design methods, individual co-design sessions with hearing-impaired artists (specifically movement artists and musicians) and co-creating shared performance practices. My next step is in two directions:

(1) to emphasize the community-engaged aspect of this work and expand my collaborations with more local Deaf artists communities and

(2) develop a framework for hearing-impaired individuals to learn about how sound and music can feel on the body and how they can use this bodily knowledge to create new music.

This work will be published at the conference of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME)’ 22 in late June-early July.

Right now, I am designing new iterations of the haptic modules and reaching out to the local Oakland-based Deaf dance company. I plan to expand this wearable interface design to a larger scale project, including set of wearable electronics clothing for embodied listening but also wearable textile sculptures and interactive costumes. As I move back to Denmark, I will be happy to connect to the dance and inclusive art communities in south Sweden.

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If you want to know more about Doga's work, please visit her webpage.

You can also follow Doga and her work on Instagram.

Photos of Doga and Marie by ShareMusic & Performing Arts. All photos from the final presentation by Gianluca La Bruna.

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