The embodiment of music/sound within an multimedia performance space

Coming from a background of new music (audio) theatre composition / performance and acousmatics, we examine an ongoing collaboration from the perspective of these disciplines. Documenting the process of exchange at each stage has allowed for a constant analysis of methods used to facilitate our communication and procedure of developing musical collaboration within a larger context of a multimedia performance project - a choreographic installation encompassing dance, video, animation, visual design, and virtual worlds. We will focus on our use of terminologies / languages / systems as tools for research, as well as on the subjective experience of working with live electronics. Meta-technical ideas are explored with regard to the spatial and temporal considerations involved in this kind of process, that is to say the acoustic, the three— dimensional, and the audio-visual relationship: the absence / presence of a sound source, its physicality, its virtuality but also the evolving relationships with the visual elements of the performance. In this case the key sound sources used are the bandoneon and the voice. Combined with a wearable costume that incorporates wired and wireless systems of amplification into its design, plus choreographic movement, the live electronics become, in effect, several other extended instruments in space.