Technology
PERFORM WITHOUT BOUNDARIES!
Nona Hendryx challenges traditional performance across the multimedia multiverse. Catch her in a plexiglass Tutu or Body Suit audio system and voice altering 'W.A.V.E Glove' or inside the Virtual Reality landscape of Dream Machine.
WEARABLE HAPTICS
AUDIO BODYSUITS
VIRTUAL REALITY
Dream Machine is a virtual reality journey and music driven adventure game. Players interact with objects, characters, and other players to solve puzzles and discover the story of what happened inside of the Dream Machine. Developed in collaboration with Berklee College of Music.
Ten Duke University students sat on the inaugural Moogfest student board and were responsible for creating their own project for the festival. The students used 360 cameras to film Nona Hendryx's performance from four different perspectives, which they then edited to create a virtual reality installation called "Perspective."
ARTIST STATEMENT
Photo © Marc Baptiste
Performing in my electric tutu that amplifies sound via four built-in speakers and the other technology, I am able to produce and effect sound and lights with movement, creating my choreographed SoundPlays. With prepared and improvised musical composition, unrelated lyrics, random triggered visual images and lights each Audio Tutu performance is unique and unrepeatable. Using instruments, computers, samplers, wireless microphones, I am untethered and the world is my stage! The ability to perform in and out of doors, in unexpected spaces is inspiring and exciting.
TECHNOLOGIES
SOFTWARE:
Audio Software
Video Software
Unity
HARDWARE:
Haptic Hardware
Sound systems
A New Design For Living
Seeking new territory to explore and becoming one of the first women of color to perform in an 'unexpected genre'; Nona's UNTETHERED multimedia performances in her ‘Audio Tutu’, Audio Corset/Bodysuit, or W.A.V.E. Glove (3 wearable audio systems: a Plexiglass skirt with built-in speakers, an audio bustier with push controllers and triggers, and a glove with bend sensors to control vocal effects) was the answer. The Audio Tutu, Audio Bodysuit and W.A.V.E. Glove give Nona the ability to perform and sing whenever and wherever; indoors, outdoors, roof tops, city streets, parks, unimagined places, remotely triggering vocals and visual effects. Closely related to the Performance Art of others like Laurie Anderson or Imogene Heap, Nona, the Afro-futurist and long time Sci-Fi enthusiast and embracer of technology has ventured into another musical world.
An AMBASSADOR FOR ARTISTRY IN MUSIC at BERLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC since 2012
Nona works with staff and students in the Music Ensemble, Music Theatre, Electronic Production and Design Departments one-on-one to develop their creative technological talents.
Eight laptops, two dozen plus musicians, and three hours of genre-defying music in Nona Hendryx's REWIRED.
Read more on Nona Hendryx's performance of Re-Wired with the students of Berklee College of Music.
Check out this interview from Spirit & Flesh Magazine on how Nona Hendryx is helping to advance future artists through technology.
Nona Hendryx & Nick Cave collaborate on THE SOUND OF DREAMING
What is an AUDIO TUTU?
"It’s this plexiglass skirt with an iPod, iPad, speakers and sound processing controls built in. And with it, she performed two songs– “Skindiver” and “Higher Purpose,” the haunting ballad that’s on the soundtrack to Showtime’s Sleeper Cell." - Rob Fields, Bold As Love Magazine
The AUDIO TUTU is an audio sound system built into a plexiglass skirt, designed by Beanoit Maubrey in 2005. The Audio Tutu system allows wireless vocal & musical performance in site specific and non traditional spaces out doors, in doors in forest, on a beach or on city streets.
What is a an AUDIO BODYSUIT?
Audio Bodysuit/Corset
Collaboratively designed Audio Bodysuit with Alayna Hughes and Pier Barbers of Curiosibot
Corset collaboratively designed with Emmett Pailamia of Hammerhead Audio
What is a W.A.V.E. GLOVE?
A W.A.V.E. Glove is a Wearable Audio & Vocal Exciter
WAVE Glove, designed in collaboration with Takahiko Tsuchiya. Takahiko Tsuchiya earned his bachelor's degree in music from Berklee College in Boston and master's degree in music technology from Georgia Tech, where he continues as a doctoral student. His primary research interests are data sonification and analytics, including the development of web-based data-agnostic sonification frameworks, and encoding and decoding of data using musical structures.