A wearable-technology performance project in which two players trigger sounds by touching patches on specially designed Soul Suits, that are linked to a computer.
The suits trigger preloaded sound samples from a set of body patches. They also live-record samples onto a given patch by holding it down and speaking into a microphone. The purpose built software allows gaming functions as well as more literal sound effects.
See our gallery for images of the suits. The look might be described as a space suit designed by Jules Verne, or a Victorian diving bell crossed with a futurist superhero outfit. We have also recently been experimenting with new materials and aesthetics – check back soon for photos of our new creations.
The players hands complete an electronic circuit when they touch the patches, the information is translated into data, and this is interpreted by the computer to trigger samples and activate games. We can complete the circuit with anything conductive, for instance the “electric spoons” which allow the audience to play us like a xylophone.
Initially, the idea was to wear a suit of sounds - a Soul suit, a Jazz suit, a Hiphop suit... the name Soul Suit stuck. As a shorthand we often refer to them as just “The Suits”.
Tan leather, organza, copper plate, brass studs. There are no wires in the suit as the organza - a traditional dress making material - is metallic and conducts electricity.
Nathaniel Slade built the first prototype and continued to do wiring, making and Max/MSP programming throughout. Ian Cambell built the hardware for the mark II suits.
Aste Amundsen did the visual design and much of the making for the present suits. See also Soul Suit Evolution.
Aste Amundsen did the visual design and much of the making for the present suits. See also Soul Suit Evolution.
The first Soul Suit was a final year project on Nathaniel's Physics and Music course in Edinburgh. He did a simple hack of a midi keyboard, wired it to a boiler suit, put the intro of Get Off by Prince onto the crotch patch - and the rest is history! The current incarnation of the suit, and the Sonic Sideshow Staging, came about in the merging of Nathaniel’s particular brand of art-tech musicianship with Aste’s carny outlook and Theatre design Background.
We have two different strands of performance: either as a staged event where we plug the rig into a PA system, or as a walkabout show where we don headgear containing lights and loudspeakers and mingle with the crowd. The piece is themed as an audience-participative circus sideshow with retro-futurist visuals. It sits at the intersection between fine art, karaoke, and musical performance.
Everywhere from squat parties to The Tate Modern!
Gigs to date include...the V&A Late evenings at the Victoria and Albert museum; The Tate Modern with House of Fairytales, three spectacular Invisible Circus events at the Bridewell police station, Bristol; the opening of The Hanger circus training centre in Woolwich, east London; Mutate Britain - a retrospective art show by the Mutoid Waste Company; London's steam-punk club night extravaganza White Mischief.. We've also done walk-about and/or stage routines at the Paradise Gardens, Glastonbury, Glade, Bestival and Big Chill festivals to name a few. Check our homepage for up-coming performance dates.
Gigs to date include...the V&A Late evenings at the Victoria and Albert museum; The Tate Modern with House of Fairytales, three spectacular Invisible Circus events at the Bridewell police station, Bristol; the opening of The Hanger circus training centre in Woolwich, east London; Mutate Britain - a retrospective art show by the Mutoid Waste Company; London's steam-punk club night extravaganza White Mischief.. We've also done walk-about and/or stage routines at the Paradise Gardens, Glastonbury, Glade, Bestival and Big Chill festivals to name a few. Check our homepage for up-coming performance dates.
The Amundsen and Slade Sonic Sideshow. Whilst the name was still in flux it has been referred to as "The Sonic Soul Suit Spectacular!" in more hyperbolas moments, and "The Sonic Soul Suit Tournament" when the format was a bit more adversarial.
We pre-load sets of sounds onto the suits, and then embellish these with noises recorded live from the audience members; once the sounds are on the suits we use them to perform short pieces which might be musical, dramatic or narrative. The direction we take depends on the setting: if we are doing walkabout, the show will be more interactive; we collect a lot of sounds and have the audience members play the suits using electronic spoons - as if we were a human xylophone; if we're doing a stage piece, we might perform a musical number or a fight sequence, and utilise far less audience interaction. If we want to create something more adversarial we sometimes put two audience members in the suits, record fighting noises, stage a theatrical fight over backing music and then declare a winner.
The suits are very easy to stage. For a stationary show we need a PA to plug into (4 channels: 2 jacks, 2 XLRs) and stage lighting. Wireless headset mics make things a lot more fluid, but are not essential. For walkabout we need nothing - except perhaps a socket to re-charge batteries.
To start with we just wanted to make a more interesting interface.
This rose from a sense that the human is often the poorer partner in the meeting of human and technology - our physicality deemed less important than a series of quite boring design and marketing conventions (mice, keyboards, midi pianos etc). Technology usage is often aligned with the intellect, divorced from physicality and spatial sense - but working from the assumption that intellect and physicality are intertwined, we felt that if you make mouse and keyboard "click click" type movements, you'll express “click click” type ideas.
This rose from a sense that the human is often the poorer partner in the meeting of human and technology - our physicality deemed less important than a series of quite boring design and marketing conventions (mice, keyboards, midi pianos etc). Technology usage is often aligned with the intellect, divorced from physicality and spatial sense - but working from the assumption that intellect and physicality are intertwined, we felt that if you make mouse and keyboard "click click" type movements, you'll express “click click” type ideas.
We want to create an augmented - as opposed to virtual - reality in which interaction is felt between people, and technology provides extra-human characteristics for the people to play with. In a theatrical sense the suits are magical objects - they provide a person with 'super-powers' within their normal interactions, rather than a creating a virtual image of that person on a screen.
The computer programming is non-prescriptive in that it provokes an imaginative response rather than funnelling the user into the exact structure envisaged by the programmer. The system also employs the universality of that response to overcome the divide between the layman and expert user.
The project is highly inter-disciplinary. This approach is taken in the hope of shaking up notions of technology usage, for example, by looking at them through the prism of retro-futurism.
The computer programming is non-prescriptive in that it provokes an imaginative response rather than funnelling the user into the exact structure envisaged by the programmer. The system also employs the universality of that response to overcome the divide between the layman and expert user.
The project is highly inter-disciplinary. This approach is taken in the hope of shaking up notions of technology usage, for example, by looking at them through the prism of retro-futurism.
