Between our smartphones, Fitbits, and other wearable sensors, we have tons of opportunity to capture how we move during the day. So it’s not surprising that some people opt to capture the data when they have sex. But as far as I know, only one person has made music from it.
That’s the newest project from sound artist Rory Viner: he and his partner attached motion-sensitive electronic sensors to their arms, legs and waists and went to town. Each sensor represented a different note, and they piped the resulting sound back into the room to act as a sort of mood music.
Or, as Brian Merchant reports at Motherboard, anti-mood music.
“I thought I would be closer to the person but the effect was the opposite,” he wrote me. “I had previously thought that this feedback loop would create a greater sympatico or feelings of connectedness, but the experience itself was quite different.”
“Rather than collapsing distance,” he continued, “in fact, this created a distance that interfered with the emotional immediacy of the event, creating a sort of depersonalized effect.”
Or, in simpler terms, they just weren’t as into it as they thought they would be.
You can hear the results for yourself:
Image from Rory Viner