The Embodied Instrument: From Wearable Instruments to the Idealized Form

摘要

Musical performance is dependent both on the physicality of a performance and the sonic results of gestures enacted with a musical instrument. The establishment of intersubjective space between performer and audience is an important process through which phenomenological experiences are shared and a major component in the construction of an embodied performance. An important class of instruments that emphasize performance gestures consists of gestural instruments, of which wearable instruments are a subcategory. Characteristics valued in wearables lie in their ability to alter the relationship of the body to itself through mechanical-somatic exchanges, as well as signaling externally to others through symbolic expression created through the new relationship between the body and technology. Although currently the best attempt at a truly embodied instrument-human interaction, wearables still do not achieve a genuine integration between the music-making body and the instrument, and consequently are still fundamentally disembodied. Wearable gestural instruments serve as a suitable intermediary to an idealized embodied instrument due to their extensive usage of gestural elements while corporeally incorporating an instrument out of present attempts. An ideal embodied instrument is one that fulfills both of these criteria --- that such an instrument 1) is part of the body natively, not merely an afterthought or an addition or a prosthetic; and that 2) possessing such an instrument results in emergent social qualities through interaction among agents also possessing similar instruments.