Seminar with sound artist Viola Yip

Abstract

In this talk, I will present and discuss about my electromagnetic feedback dress and composition “Liminal Lines”. Liminal Lines is a live electronic music performance by Viola Yip on her self-made wearable instrument and her body movements. It explores a choreography between sound and movements, through haptics and touch, beyond the traditional notions of techniques and executions.This wearable instrument, in the form of a dress, is made of various audio cables that allows audio signals to pass through. Her body, when wearing the dress, facilitates a wide range of distances, pressures, and speeds through her body movements. These body-and-instrument interactions devise performative relationships between the instrument and the human body, which allow complex sonorities to emerge and modulate over time.

Bio

Viola Yip is an experimental composer, performer, improviser, sound artist and instrument builder. She has been interested in creating new self-built instruments and sound works in the intersection of composition, performance and improvisation, exploring various relationships between materiality, space and our musical bodies in music.

Her instruments and sound performances have been presented in music festivals and venues such as Issue Project Room (NYC), The New School (NYC), Look and Listen Festival (NYC), DiMenna Center (NYC), CCRMA at Stanford University, CNMAT at UC Berkeley, Center for New Music (SF), Constellation (Chicago), Cycling ‘74 Expo, Hong Kong Arts Center (HK), Sonic Arts Research Center at Queen's University Belfast, University of Huddersfield (UK), QO-2 Brussels, Moers Festival, Center for Art and Media (ZKM) Karlsruhe, Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Kunst Station Sankt Peter in Cologne, A L’arme! Festival Berlin, DARA String Festival Berlin, Heroines of Sound Berlin, Akademie der Künste Berlin, Seanaps Festival Leipzig, ZiMMT Leipzig, Festival für Immaterielle Kunst Hamburg, Blurred Edges Festival Hamburg and Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

She is a Ph.D candidate in music at New York University. She received an Honorary Mention from Giga-Hertz-Preis 2021 at ZKM in Karlsruhe, grants such as INITIAL grant from Akademie der Künste, Künstlerhaus Villa Waldberta stipendium in Munich 2021, and KI-stipendium from musikfonds in 2024.