Liminal Lines (2022)

Liminal Lines is a live embodied electronic music performance by Viola Yip on her self-made wearable instrument and her body movements. It explores a choreography between sound and movements, beyond the traditional notions of techniques and executions.

 

This wearable instrument, in the form of a dress, is made of two long audio cables that allow audio signals to pass through. Her body, when wearing the dress, facilitates a wide range of distances, pressures, and speeds in the feedback loop between the electromagnetic pickups on her hands and the electromagnetic fields on her dress. When folding the dress, the non-insulated cables facilitate various electromagnetic fields to overlap and modulate, which serves as the sound-making basis of the work. 

 

On one hand, these body-and-instrument interactions devise performative relationships between the instrument and the human body, which allow complex sonorities to emerge and modulate over time. On the other hand, the performance demonstrates the permeable relationship between the human and machine bodies, which body and machine continuously co-constitute one another. 

 

In this piece, the performer's body serves as a central axis to manipulate different foldings of the dress while the two electromagnetic microphones on my hands transduce various combinations of the electromagnetic fields across the dress. My bodily actions unfold the cybernetic field of inputs and outputs, demonstrating how the non-linear relationships between materials of the dress, electromagnetic field, haptics, embodiment and listening are interweaved and eventually become understandable through sound. 

 

 

Performance History:

 

Second version

11.02.2026 Akademie für zeitgenössische Musik, Hochschule Luzern

09.11.2025 REM festival, curated by Projektgruppe Neue 

07.11.2025 HANGAR, Barcelona 

14.03.2025 New and Newest Festival, ARTER Museum, Istanbul  

05.09.2024 Berlin Solo Improv Festival, Acker Stadt Palast, Berlin

18.06.2024 Goethe Institut Sweden

01.06.2024 NODES festival, Akademie der Künste Berlin

09.04.2024 Sonorities Festival, Belfast

12.03.2024 Monk Space, Los Angeles, California

09.03.2024 The Lab, San Francisco, California

01.03.2024 Line Upon Line Festival, Austin, Texas

28.02.2024 Tritriangle, Chicago

23.02.2024 Entropy Stereo Performance Space, Detroit. Michigan

22.02.2024 The Red Room, Baltimore

20.02.2024 Carnegie Hill Concerts, New York City

10.02.2024 STOPOVER, Alte Münze, Berlin

04.11.2023 In Front Festival, Aachen

16.06.2023 ON-NOEIS Party, ON Neue Musik Köln

03.06.2023 Duo with Noa Evens on saxophone, Splendor Amsterdam

30.05.2023 Duo with Noa Evens on saxophone, LOFT Köln

28.05.2023 Duo with Noa Evens on saxophone, Moers Festival

24.05.2023 Hochschule für Musik Detmold

17.05.2023 Hybrid Music Lab, Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden

11.03.2023 Spatial Works and Immersive Music Series, ZIMMT Leipzig

** commission to develop a 32-channel spatial audio for the dress

17.02.2023 Electric Spring, University of Huddersfield, UK
                 

First version

Nov 12, 2022  ARD Hörspieltage 2022, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM), Karlsruhe.
 

Sept 11, 2022 Yes festival, Uferstudio, Berlin
 

Nov 03, 2022 Sounding, Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln