Iris Garrelfs and Jenn Kirby will present their work, Embodied Dialogues, at ICMC 2025
Embodied Dialogues: an improvised duet between Sensor Dress and voice
Embodied Dialogues is a collaboration-in-progress between Jenn Kirby and Iris Garrelfs, exploring the intersection of wearable technology, voice, and improvised performance. Central to the project is Kirby’s Sensor Dress, a motion and touch-sensitive wearable instrument, paired with Garrelfs’ unamplified, extended vocal improvisation. The Sensor Dress generates and processes sound shaped by the performer’s movement. Garrelfs activates the dress while moving through the audience and improvising with extended vocal techniques, fostering an intimate and spatially aware performance experience. This collaboration engages with postdigital aesthetics, emphasizing the fluidity, unpredictability and materiality of sound-making. Contributing to ongoing conversations within digital musical instruments (DMIs), embodiment and gendered technology, Embodied Dialogues values identity, agency, and entanglement in human-object relationships, and explores how wearables can expand embodied improvised performance through emergent interactions between voice, movement, technology and environment.