Music, Movement, Machines

Sarah Fdili Alaoui is a Reader at the Creative Computing Institute at the University of the Arts London and also a dancer and choreographer. She conducts research in human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer science with a focus on dance, movement, and technology. Prior to her position in London, Sarah was Associate Professor in the ex)situ research group at LISN-Université Paris-Saclay. She supervised my postdoctoral work there from 2022 to 2024, and together we created the dance/music/AI work For Patricia. We talk about Sarah's background as a dancer and engineer, and how these areas coalesced into her current and future interdisciplinary work, which cover dance technology, research through design, responsible AI, decolonization of dance technology and research, and more. For more information about the episode, visit johnnyvenom.com/podcast.

In this episode, I connect with Alex Tibbitts, a.k.a. "The Bionic Harpist". A longtime Montrealer currently residing in Mexico City, Alex is a classically trained harpist whose practice over the last several years has evolved into contemporary electroacoustic and electronic music. Alex and I are longtime collaborators, with an ongoing research-creation project involving analysis of gesture in harp performance and the design of bespoke digital musical interfaces that attach to her harp, which she uses in her live performances. In our conversation, we recap the research we have done together and track Alex's evolution from classical to the avant-garde. We discuss some of the key collaborators that Alex is working with to bring her live performances and recorded music to life. Alex's debut solo album "Impressions" drops November 28th, and the single "Night of Violet" is out now. Find Alex online at linktr.ee/the.bionic.harpist

For the inaugural episode, I converse with a good friend and former colleague from the ex)situ research group at the Université Paris-Saclay. Tove is an interdisciplinary researcher working across the fields of human-computer interaction, music and dance technology, and design research. In our conversation Tove gives an overview of her past and recent work, and delves into some of the theoretical underpinnings and future directions of her research that spans music, dance and computer science.