From capturing the embodied social experience to music composition: data as mediation
Vilelmini Kalampratsidou, Pandelis Diamantides, Marina Stergiou, Katerina El Raheb, Yannis Ioannidis, Philia Issari, Eugenie Georgaca, Dora Skali, Flora Koliouli, Evangelia Karydi, Panos Giokas, Virginia Vassilakou, Yannis Pappas · 2022
This work presents the first steps of a journey from capturing the embodied social experience to creating contemporary sound art through digital means. In the framework of the Transition to 8 project, residents of the Greek City of Eleusis expressed their feelings and perspectives on the social issues of their community through organized sociodrama sessions. The participants used wearable technology, resembling that of smart-watches, that enables the recording of various bodily data, such as heart rate, temperature, and skin conductance (affiliated with emotional arousal). The data collected are organised and analysed by applying a mixed-methods approach, and shared with artists to be used as inspiration and source material for their artistic productions. In Transition to 8 project we aim to build a platform and methodology that uses data as a means to communicate local social issues and citizen perspectives to an international community of artists. As a proof of concept one sound composition has been created so far, as an artistic piece, to guide this process, while the development of the platform and further experimentation are still an ongoing endeavor.