NIME-03

Tomie Hahn and Curtis Bahn will present "Pikapika" and other recent work in the composition of interactive sonic characters. Pikapika is a character influenced by anime and manga, Japanese pop animation and comics. Pikapika embodies movements from bunraku (puppet theater), a movement vocabulary Tomie studied while learning nihon buyo (Japanese traditional dance) pieces derived from the puppet theater. The concept of the sonic punctuation of Pikapika's movements is drawn directly from the bunraku musical tradition. However, the actual sounds are not drawn from bunraku musical vocabulary. Pikapika dons a new wireless interactive dance system (SSpeaPer, Sensor-Speaker-Performer) created by composer Curtis Bahn. SSpeaPer naturally locates and spatializes electronic sounds to emanate from the speakers mounted on her body. As Pikapika moves, her gestural information is sent by radio to an interactive computer music system. The sounds are then broadcast back to her body, creating a new audio "alias" for her character; a sonic mask. As with all interactive Bahn/Hahn collaborations, the form and texture are under the complete control of Tomie as she dances. Each performance is a unique instantiation resulting from the dancer's "improvisation" with the computer music system.

Tomie Hahn is an Assistant Professor of Performance Ethnology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. Hahn began studying nihon buyo (Japanese traditional performance) at the age of four and received her natori (professional stage title) Samie Tachibana in 1989. She also teaches and performs the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute). Hahn's current research spans a variety of topics from Japanese traditional performing arts, Monster Truck rallies, issues of identity and creative expression of multiracial individuals, and gestural control of interactive media. She has been collaborating with Curtis Bahn for over seventeen years, creating new pieces for the shakuhachi and choreographing contemporary interactive dance pieces.

Curtis Bahn is an Associate Professor of Computer Music and Director of the iEAR Studios in the Integrated Electronic Arts program (iEAR) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University, where his primary teachers were Paul Lansky, Steve Mackey and Paul Koonce. From 1986-1993 he was the Technical Director of the Center for Computer Music of the City University of New York, where he worked and studied with composer Charles Dodge. He has taught at the Columbia University Computer Music Center (CMC), NYU, Princeton and CUNY. Bahn's recent work has led him to build numerous alternative controllers for music and dance performance and an array of multi-channel spherical speakers.