Recording engineer, musician and new Studio resident Tristan Powell introduced us to Bodyoki – a gestural system that changes the way we move to music. Software to manipulate music is already widely available as well as numerous games that sense a player’s movement or voice and scores their ability to mimic an avatar on a screen.  Bodyoki is a new type of music manipulation, which uses body language to manipulate the parts within a song. Here are five things I learned from Tristan’s Lunchtime Talk:

1. We all use gestures to communicate; the same gesture can mean different things in different contexts. Bodyoki’s gesture recognition system allows a dancer to access and control different parts of a song with their body.

2. With Bodyoki a dancer has the ability to manipulate the elements (stems) of a song comprising the vocals, rhythm, instrumentation and a fourth special stem that can be programmed as required.  The system enables gestures combined with movement in different directions to perform functions. For example if the dancer briefly holds their arms above their head the vocal stem will be activated and once activated the dancer can move freely up, down, back and forth affecting the stem in different ways. Moving up and down filters out the chosen stem while backwards and forwards filters out all the other stems. Additional gestures apply different manipulative functions to the stems and the dancer can choose to turn the manipulation on or off at will. 


3. Tristan plans to develop a range of different products containing the core technology to provide an alternative way for people to interact with music using body language. One of these products is a dance platform for nightclubs and festivals enabling users to show off their dance moves. The dancer will feel the audio manipulation through embedded transducers giving tactile and aural feedback as they manipulate the music and the Dj will be able to audition and broadcast the dancer’s manipulation in their set. 

4. Dancers will connect to Bodyoki hardware with an app, which will charge the dancer each time they wish to connect to the system and dance using Boyoki. This monetised system will enable Tristan to pay an instant royalty direct to record labels of their song being manipulated through interactive dancing. This new system offers an alternative model to the traditional royalty collection agencies (such as PRS), which only pay royalties twice a year. 

5. Bodyoki is an experience driven by body movement with an ambition to add value to our interaction with music.  On average, an American spends nearly $1,100 on coffee per year, but only $50 on music. The art form has seen purchase revenue streams drop in recent years, and with the rise of platforms such as Spotify music has become a ubiquitous commodity. Bodyoki offers a new way to place an expressive value on our interaction with music through dance.