Son et Culinaire is an interactive audio-visual performance, merging sound, dance and culinary processes. The project brings to life the performative & ritual aspects of a meal’s production in a performance environment, breathing new life into everyday actions and behaviours.

 

The sound of cooking is usually ignored and disregarded as a ‘by-product’ of a domestic ritual, but when isolated and ‘framed’ it can be termed as an emergent soundscape, with its own tonal complexities and rhythms. Son et Culinaire creates a novel audiovisual space for such unheard and un-noticed sonic particularities of differing cooking methods. The project brings to life the techniques and sounds of a meal’s production in a specific environment and translates it into a sonic-driven performance.

The process focuses on capturing the sonic output of a cooks actions, translating it into a base for a live audio visual dance performance. The performance creates a visual space of the cooks motions in real-time, resulting in a performative feedback loop for an audiovisual improvisation. Two performers participate in this interactive system, controlling and influencing each other, generating a novel dance performance with a unique aesthetic. Different performers and different dishes will go on to generate new creative outputs.Concept sketch of dancing with  “Stiring Space”. (credited to Jiaona Hu)Concept sketch of dancing with “Boiling Space”. (credited to Jiaona Hu)Interacting with boiling space.

Inner cybernetic system of the logic of cooking methods, dancer’s gestures, sound parameters, and dynamic spaces.

Sound softwares ,contact microphone and gesture sensors.The sound schematic of the dancer using different gestures to manipulate sound.  The visual schematic of the dancer using different gestures to changing visual spatial experience. Chef is collaborating with dancer. ( Chef: Fei Han) Interacting with shaking space.