Silent Music - What happened in Panop?

Adib Ghorbani

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

This interdisciplinary project is a musical mime performance that utilizes the mime’s movements to generate sounds in real-time. For this purpose, the performers wear gloves with embedded wireless motion sensors called MUGIC. The receiving data from the sensors generate real-time sounds through a MAX/MSP patch and creates the required music for the performance. Silent Music uses the mime’s body as a musical instrument and creates a particular relationship between musical events and gestures. Panopticon is a type of architecture and a system of control that is designed to observe and punish prisoners. In a panopticon prison, the inmates never know when they are being watched. With a certain observation technique, the prisoners are forced to act like they are always being watched. The video that you are about to hear and see is a scene from my upcoming movie, Silent Music/Musical Mime. This scene along with six others depicts an original story describing the life of a censored artist who is writing a piece about a prison called Panop. Silent Music is a multidisciplinary performance integrating mime, music, and motion sensor technologies. This project is based on the concept of censorship, silence, and silencing. For this scene, I wear hand-worn MUGIC motion sensors. MUGIC tracks the movements of my hand and generates data; the resulting data produces the required music in real-time.

Citation

Adib Ghorbani. 2021. Silent Music - What happened in Panop?. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.21428/92fbeb44.a647b10e [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{nime2021_music_18,
 abstract = {This interdisciplinary project is a musical mime performance that utilizes the mime’s movements to generate sounds in real-time. For this purpose, the performers wear gloves with embedded wireless motion sensors called MUGIC. The receiving data from the sensors generate real-time sounds through a MAX/MSP patch and creates the required music for the performance. Silent Music uses the mime’s body as a musical instrument and creates a particular relationship between musical events and gestures. Panopticon is a type of architecture and a system of control that is designed to observe and punish prisoners. In a panopticon prison, the inmates never know when they are being watched. With a certain observation technique, the prisoners are forced to act like they are always being watched. The video that you are about to hear and see is a scene from my upcoming movie,  Silent Music/Musical Mime. This scene along with six others depicts an original story describing the life of a censored artist who is writing a piece about a prison called Panop. Silent Music is a multidisciplinary performance integrating mime, music, and motion sensor technologies. This project is based on the concept of censorship, silence, and silencing. For this scene, I wear hand-worn MUGIC motion sensors. MUGIC tracks the movements of my hand and generates data; the resulting data produces the required music in real-time.},
 address = {Shanghai, China},
 articleno = {18},
 author = {Adib Ghorbani},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.21428/92fbeb44.a647b10e},
 editor = {Eric Parren and Wei Chen},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 title = {Silent Music - What happened in Panop?},
 track = {Music},
 url = {https://doi.org/10.21428/92fbeb44.a647b10e},
 year = {2021}
}