Exploring the performative semantics of body & listening

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Body & Listening by Peter Eckersall

”..an exploration of how sound and bodies interact – how they can be read, understood and communicate with each other, how they are both instruments and expressive mediums that produce networks of material communication that make up the experience of performance. The interaction of physical gestures and instrumentation in Ampersand work so that both are made to be mutually supporting. Sounds arise from the gestures made by performers and, while bodily movement instigates this process, the tonality of sound and the physical gestures of the musicians playing instruments produce a fluid dynamic that appears to lie somewhere between the performative and the musical registers. By devising sequences of heightened physical, vocal and musical exchange as a form interactive feedback, my impression was that the performance of gesture was reimagined as a medium ‘pushing’ through air in the same way that sound waves transmit as vibrations; sound also appeared to be more solid and material when translated into a physical encounter…. “