Gesture and sound - the polyphony in different dimension

Christine Sun Kim (2015) is a deaf artist who explores the ways of transmitting sound and silence through visual art and composition. As Kim (2015) discusses, the transmission of sound only is a monophonic texture in terms of medium. With gestures and sound, two mediums, transmitting at the same time, it creates a polyphonic texture.


To play an acoustic instrument, movement is a basic criterion to produce a sound, blowing, fiddling, strumming, beating, or even pressing a key, all of which involve movement and motion. For performing music, the gestures project music through a musical instrument, as the medium of sound, the movement transforms to sound. The instruments react to the performer's action with sound.

The movement of body parts composes gestures. Gestures are considered the opposite of postures: gestures are dynamic, and postures are static (Miranda & Wanderley, 2006). The instrumental interaction refers to actions such as grasping, manipulation, and noncontact movements, as well as to general voluntary body movements. Large movement (e.g., arm movement) and small movement (e.g., finger movement) are produced in relation to music parameters. For example, in forte passages, we would expect prominent large movement, deep breath, wildly baton movement; in the fast passage, fast finger movement. Gestures can be divided into effective gestures and accompanist gestures (Miranda & Wanderley,2006). For effective gestures, those gestures that actually produce the sound. For accompanist gestures, the body movements such as shoulder or head movements that indirectly relate to the production of sound.

According to Cambridge (2022) and merriam-webster dictionary (2022), a gesture is more than just a movement of any body part, it can express an idea, sentiments, and feeling. As a part of music expression, accompanist gestures served the purpose, empowering the expressiveness of music. Pure computer-generating music is often criticized as a form of art without emotion, in other words, a computer itself does not carry any emotion. In this case, we can partly explain that due to the lack of gesture or motion case to the problem of inhuman.


Reference:


Cambridge. (2022) Gesture.In dictionary.cambridge.org. Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/zht/%E8%A9%9E%E5%85%B8/%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA%9E-%E6%BC%A2%E8%AA%9E-%E7%B9%81%E9%AB%94/gesture [Accessed January 6, 2022]. 

Kim, C. S. (2015). The enchanting music of sign language. [video] Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/christine_sun_kim_the_enchanting_music_of_sign_language [Accessed January 6, 2022].

Merriam-Webster. (2022). Gesture. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gesture  [Accessed January 6, 2022]. 


Miranda, E. R. & Wanderley, M. M. (2006) New digital musical instruments : control and interaction beyond the keyboard. Middleton, Wis: A-R Editions.




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