BodyMouth
BodyMouth answers the question: what if your whole body was a mouth? The instrument combines elements of dance, performance, and composition using a series of sensors attached that measure how various parts of the body are moving. That data is then mapped onto values in a vocal synthesizer in real time using custom software. As a result, the instrument isn’t just producing sound, it’s producing speech, “literally turning the body into a mouth,” said Kat Mustatea, the artist behind BodyMouth. The performers’ bodies become the instrument. In other words, as they dance, they’re also singing.
“We studied how the tongue, oral cavity, lips, and larynx all
go into speech production and then created a mapping of those variables to the rest of the body,” Mustatea said. “The connectivity between
body movement and speech synthesis is a series of equations,
essentially, which map between the geometries involved in movement of the
body, to the geometries involved in the parts of the mouth that produce
speech.”
You can even use BodyMouth to produce real words once you get really good at it; cut to 1:29 in the video above to see it yourself. It makes for a surprisingly musical effect that creates the possibility for brand new genres of artistic expression.
Correction, January 20th, 11:38 a.m.: A previous version of this article erroneously said the BodyMouth uses MIDI. We’ve updated the article with more information from the artist.
