Sandghost dance

The Arabic term jinn means “invisible beings.” The jinn are sentient beings who are composed from subtle matter. Before Islam, they were worshiped as gods, as tutelary deities, or as spiritual protectors not only in the Arabian Peninsula but also in neighboring areas…. In Qu’ran… there is mention that [the jinn] are created from ‘scorching winds’ and ‘a smokeless fire,’ and it is also said that they are like humans in that they are rational beings formed of nations 

Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia (Ed. Josef Meri), 2006, p.420

The concept of Jinn in Arab culture is used as a metaphor for addressing the question of the musicality inherent in human bodily movement. Movement sonification in musical ways has been one of my main interests when working with dance.

Instead, different perspectives for perceiving the relationship between bodily movement and its inherent musicality are presented in two distinct ways in these videos: (1) in Jinn by removing the body from a video in which the sound and the trace left by the movement remain as the witnesses of this relationship; and (2), in Sandghost dance, by presenting a synthetic rendering of the movement performed by the dancer in the form of a graphical particle system that gets sonified also synthetically. As the body gets progressively dematerialized, the relationship between movement and its musicality becomes increasingly more apparent and clear.

Sandghost dance

Director: Kirk Woolford

Choreography & Dance: Nella Turkki

Flutes: Cristina Ioan

Motion Capture & Rendering: Kirk Woolford

Sound Recording: João Menezes

Music: Carlos Guedes