The interaction:
In Ephemeral Gumboots , the ‘interface as artwork' functions as a musical instrument – it becomes the physical handles [1] that define and make ‘playable' an otherwise very abstract set of computer music processes. The sensors on the boots are not wireless (mainly because of budget constraints) and hinder the freedom of the dancer to some extent; however, I have also come to appreciate this physical attachment to the machine as a metaphor for boundaries.
Boundaries are the containers or frames that contain us. One such container-parameter is society:
The social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. The physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society… In its role as an image of society the body's main scope is to express the relation of the individual to the group (Douglas1982).
Containers imply tensions. Restrictions cause a longing to be free, yet they shelter us and contain energy. Another container-parameter is time. The faster we move, the thinner the skin of boundaries, the more fragmented (literally – the more frames per second) and multilayered our experience becomes, and, as a result, also our identity.
In order to have form, all things have boundaries. Even art as process is – frame by frame – contained within its historical boundaries. Each moment of our fragmented lives is a symbolic intersection of a myriad diverse particles that make up an incomprehensibly complex n-dimensional plane of possibilities and parallel universes. We are (in each frame) the outcome of a particular moment, and each time we change or transform, we cross a boundary. There are boundaries between private and public; local and global; freedom and entrapment; life and death. For me, the disjointed ‘outside in' rhythm of these crossings of boundaries is what creates the musical identity of Ephemeral Gumboots . As an experience, the work enables the participant to listen through touch, and see through hearing.