Dani Ploeger: Sounds Come From Things. Toward Critical Performance Technologies

Despite the variety of digital performance technologies developed over the past two decades, both digital performance practices and the substantial body of writing in the field have mainly been focused on formalist aesthetic interests, and discourses around technological innovation. This tendency is especially apparent in sound based practices, where performance technologies are usually conceptualized as novelty musical instruments. Thus, these practices tend to approach digital performance devices as more or less transparent mediums for the transmission of the performer’s ‘expression’. In response, I propose a cultural critical approach, which focuses on the historical, social and political contexts of the digital artefacts involved. In this approach, sound may be conceptualized as a reference to the technologies that generate it (and the cultural texts associated with these) or as a signifier to subcultural phenomena associated with specific musical idioms.
 

Dani Ploeger – ELECTRODE (2011)

performance installation (anal electrode, EMG sensor, video projection, loudspeakers, packaging material)

An AnuformR anal electrode connected to a modified Peritone EMG sensor registers the activity of my sphincter muscle. AnuformR and Peritone are medical consumer devices for the treatment of incontinence problems. I fake the orgasm of an anonymous subject who took part in an experiment into the nature of the male orgasm in 1980. I attempt to replicate the subject’s sphincter muscle contraction pattern, which was registered during masturbation and orgasm in the experiment. I repeatedly perform the same pattern. The data is projected onto a screen in the form of graphs and is used for digital sound synthesis.
 

Dani Ploeger – ELECTRODE (2011)

performance installation (anal electrode, EMG sensor, video projection, loudspeakers, packaging material)

An AnuformR anal electrode connected to a modified Peritone EMG sensor registers the activity of my sphincter muscle. AnuformR and Peritone are medical consumer devices for the treatment of incontinence problems. I fake the orgasm of an anonymous subject who took part in an experiment into the nature of the male orgasm in 1980. I attempt to replicate the subject’s sphincter muscle contraction pattern, which was registered during masturbation and orgasm in the experiment. I repeatedly perform the same pattern. The data is projected onto a screen in the form of graphs and is used for digital sound synthesis.