WAVE(S) is a garment for performative dancers, that adds to the visual performance of the dancer by creating sound based on their movements. The sleeves of the garment contain normal, conductive, and resistive yarn, which enable the sensing of how stretched each sleeve is. This data is then transformed into three different sound profiles (bass drone, strings, and electronic percussion) and played live through external speakers. The green sleeve controls the pitch of the instrument sound, the pink sleeve how a predetermined effect is applied to the sound. This enables new opportunities for expressive dance within a performance: individually or collaboratively, and across the visual and auditory domain.

A long-time fascination of mine is that of translating motion into music. During my exchange semester at Aalto University in Finland, I had the opportunity to explore this further in a design course focused on wearables, fashion, and textiles. Working from a more material perspective than usual was key in this process and fueled the development of a smart stretch-sensing textile based on industrial knitting practice. This involved a more iterative, sample-based approach to design I was not familiar with before, as well as working in an interdisciplinary team with textile & fashion students.

Pictures by Eeva Suutari.