A Body Knows the Pattern

A Body Knows the Pattern is a new performance piece debuted in London, UK in September 2025, showcasing a composed system mapping movement and muscle tension to different aspects of rhythmic phrase and texture. The work is part of longer-term research on the translation embodied musical knowledge to a digital context, and builds on prior composition work with microtiming and expressive variation, expanding on these ideas in a performance context. Percussive improvisations and samples are shaped, recombined, and placed in dialogue with one another via the body, interspersed with sculpted layers of noise, drone, and field recordings, ultimately describing a sense of dynamic presence in the lived relationship of the body to the world.

This piece is the first performance output from a multi-year research project on gesture-rhythm mapping for expressive subtlety with new music technology. To create this work, I harnessed a glove-based movement sensor along with muscle sensors placed on both arms, using these signals to directly control multiple aspects of the performance. I also used lightweight, publicly accessible machine learning tools to train a gesture-recognition model on some of my most common movements, using this to influence the music as well. Finally, I conducted a detailed analysis of the relationships of my movements to my improvised percussive phrasing, and harnessed this to design intuitive interactions between incoming sensor data and musical output. This resulted in a diversity of programmed relationships between movement and rhythm-related sound, which I could then explore through composition and performance.

For the musical material, I collected samples and performed improvisations on various materials and surfaces from my living space, processing the results to create new sounds, patterns, and textures. Continuing from the lo-fi aesthetics of my prior work, I explored the capacity of the familiar and the imperfect to reflect immediate, intimate, and embodied experience in the world. I built the theme of this performance around the body’s interconnection with its surroundings, and the ways in which it memorizes and reflects patterns and phrases from its lived experience back outward, while also merging these phrases and shaping them via its physiology. The construction of this performance system created a prism through which to research this process in a digital context, while providing a platform for harnessing this embodied knowledge directly in improvised, sample-based electronic music.

The above video presents the resulting composed interactions in succession via semi-improvised performance.

The piece begins with a demonstration of some basic movement-sound interactions, including mapping muscle tension to playback volume and hand movement to sculpt percussive clips and tracks.
(1:38) Each arm controls playback of parallel percussion tracks, varying volume and playback rate. An additional machine learning model (RAVE) enters partway through to provide call-and-response. Additional percussion tracks enter, and arm movements shape various parts of the rhythmic blend while also allowing for silence.
(7:02) A short improvised phrase based on right hand movements triggers cascades of responding phrases, which can be sculpted by body movement but not stopped.
(8:23) Multiple layers of subtle percussive improvisations and textures are shaped and pulled on by numerous detailed mappings from arm movement and tension, creating a shifting, meditative “web.”
(11:18) Muscle tension shapes the playback of a looped drone file, until a custom-trained machine learning model begins interpreting my gestures to change the mix of a bank of pre-composed textures.
(15:39) I employ direct mappings to control the playback rate and downbeat of percussion tracks, while shaping layers of harsh noise via tension.
(19:57) A combination of direct mappings and machine learning shapes a lighter balance of rhythmic textures and drones, allowing for more delicate interactions, approaching silence.

Deeper discussion of the system’s construction is forthcoming in further academic papers. This piece will continue in performance rotation until early 2026 (watch social media for gig announcements).

An additional variant of this work “The Body Knows the Room” was presented at the APT:Thresholds gallery exhibition in London, UK, focusing on the more meditative and intimate aspects of the performance system, its relationship to personal domestic spaces, and the potential for combining the composed system with live percussive improvisation.