Moving cage: Vibration, sonification and the quanta of time

Abstract

Dear John is an experimental choreomusical work that reinterprets Cage's works while advancing his ideas of sound as sonic events and embodied choreography. In this episodic work, improvised movement unfolds to a soundscape of defamiliarized instruments, sound devices and sonicities of macro- and micro-movements. The correspondence and (in)congruence between dance movements and music's kinetic energy become the means to examine a politics of the body and sound, of music on movement. Additionally, in this ‘auditory architecture’ the quanta of time, its relations and (lack of) unity are exposed. This article then examines the intersubjective interplay of movement and music, body and sonicity; it considers the resonance of the performing body as intermaterial vibration and how this invites a sonic politics of relational possibility. The article will then also investigate the ways in which the interaction of motion and music, movement and stillness engenders experiences of time's indeterminacy and elasticity.