Hearing and feeling are bound together in the Italian word 'sentire'. Interdisciplinary project Sentire weaves these senses together using bracelets with sensors that connect movement and contact to sound. The textures, timbres and rhythms of a sound environment are transformed by the interactive system of Sentire based on the distance and tactile encounters between two participants. The algorithm
ic sound environment currently has eight configurations ranging from spacey and atmospheric to percussive and rhythmic, with touch and proximity each transforming the environment differently. During a participatory performance, attendees step out from the circle of spectators, one at a time, to engage with a guiding performer for 6-10 minutes each. In order to intensify the experience, interactive scenarios accompany the more spontaneous movements: for example. sitting, closing the eyes, focusing on specific parts of the body as well as techniques developed in contact improvisation. Sentire goes beyond one-way performance insofar as the participant does not carry out pre-specified actions, but is brought back to what they already are, physically and emotionally. Previous participants reported an intimate connectedness to the other person, to touch, hearing and proprioception, the awareness of the body in space. The empathetic possibilities of touch, in particular, are often unnoticed in our attention-poor world concerned with images and screens. Participants become playfully attuned to their own gestures and somatic rhythms because they directly cause unplanned variations in the sound environment as they unfold within the performance space and in relation to the other participant. The sound environments are designed to immerse the performers smoothly and naturally in the sound while also giving them agency and control over the rhythmic, harmonic and timbral dimensions of the audio output. Each performance becomes, therefore, a unique improvisational event that emerges from the singular somatic states stimulated by the relations to another body, a specific space and the responsive sound environment. Sentire emerged from the MovLab community at art-science space Spektrum in Berlin in 2016, where sound-artist and researcher Marcello Lussana met performer and musician Olga Kozmanidze. In 2018, Pascal Staudt joined the project as a creative coder, instrument developer and sound artist. After beginning with performances, the project has since evolved to encompass workshops, installations, talks, community meetings and conferences. Music therapists have taken it up in their practice and studies, and it is part of Marcello Lussana’s PhD on human perception at the Humboldt University Musicology department. In 2019 the project “Sentire – social interaction through sound feedback” received funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for a 3-year research at Humboldt University Berlin. Sentire has taken part in: ATM Festival (Seoul, South Korea 2019), Eufonia festival (Berlin 2019), Waking life festival (Crato, Portugal 2019), “Creating empathy” exhibition (transmediale) (Berlin 2019), “Die Reihe: Interacting with Body, Electronics and Space” (Berlin 2019), CTM Vorspiel (Berlin 2018 & 2019), Mala inventura festival (Prague 2019), Project space festival (Berlin 2018), Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften (Berlin 2018), Linux Audio Conference (Berlin 2018), Wärmflasche performance art festival (Berlin 2018), Movlab community showcase.
