Benoit Maubrey: Audio Ballerinas
Artist(s):
Title:
- Audio Ballerinas
Exhibition:
Medium:
- Performances with electro-acoustic clothes
Category:
Artist Statement:
My decision in the early 1980s to stop working with pigments and canvas came from a desire to interact directly with public spaces. By building loudspeakers into clothes, I could intervene in any given environment in a temporary and cost-efficient way.
In 1989 the AUDIO BALLERINAS started using a variety of electronic instruments in order to personally interact with their environment. Among others, light sensors that enabled them to produce sounds through the interaction of their movements and the surrounding light. A variety of other electronic instruments (movement sensors, samplers, contact microphones, and radio receivers) allowed them also to individually work with the sounds, surfaces, topographies, and electromagnetic waves of the space around them. The dancers were then collectively choreographed into “audio ballets.” To this date the AUDIO BALLERINAS are still a very active, vibrant and successful performance project.
Technical Information:
Loudspeakers, circuit boards, and electronics in general can be salvaged from modern junk and disguarded toys. My artistic tools are electroacoustic clothes: costumes and suits equipped with loudspeakers, amplifiers, and various surplus electronics parts that allow the individual wearers to react acoustically to their environment. Basically, each person wears one part of a composition: the position of the individual “audio actors” and their movement within a space produces the final composition. The orchestration of the mobile sounds creates the final musical score.
