Embodiment: The body in algorithmic sound generation

Abstract

This article deals with the idea and strategy of embodiment in algorithmic sound generation mediated by musical interfaces. Some strategies of integrating the physical body in the context of interactive algorithmic sound synthesis give rise to an extension and immaterialization of the physical body that seems to deviate from ‘embodiment’. In order to discuss ‘embodiment’, different uses of the term and their relations are considered, focusing on the use of ‘embodiment’ in philosophy, engineering and cognitive science. Following the current discourses about embodiment in cognitive science and media theory, the body is regarded neither as internal to consciousness nor as a fully external object of experience. Embodiment in algorithmic sound generation depends on the interplay between the physical body, the data body and sound in which the body becomes both a subject and an object by affecting and being affected by its virtual sound environment and vice versa.

Keywords:

• Media Theory
• Interactive Music Systems
• Human–Computer Interaction
• Embodiment
• Interactionism
• Cognitive Science