On your work from home to work you are suddenly surprised by a “roving chorus of 10 women dressed in high visibility clothing and carrying megaphones”, singing strange songs and moving around the unsuspecting passers-by. 

That is what happens when you encounter Urban Devas, a project by New Zealand’s sonic artist Phil Dadson in collaboration with choreographer Carol Brown. This guerilla performance was created for Living Room 2010 - “A Week of Goodness”, in Auckland. I would love to be surprised by their voices. 

Wouldn't it be wonderful to cruise the beautiful Swedish landscape, stop for a while to stretch your legs and then hear the screeching sound of Harvest, combined with the surreal image of a well dressed church choir playing the soil like it's a record.

Harvest is a performance "for terrafon, traditional music ensemble and cropland", created by the people behind Bacterial Orchestra, Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke. Only this time there are no electronics involved, only old iron, the soil of Uppland and human power. We listen to what the earth has to say.

Update on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 12:31 by Hugo Verweij

Olle Cornéer sent me an email to tell me there actually are electronics involved. Namely a loudspeaker and amplifier in the cone. The signal is even running through a computer for some eq as well as recording the direct signal. Thank you Olle!

While we're having a look at ways of using the human body to control music, this is a project that should not be missed: WeAreWaves, created by Sebastián Gonzalez and Javier Chávarri, involves the human body in creating sound. The performer isn't influencing existing music. Rather, he is creating waveforms, using his body to influence the timbre of the sound.

The silhouette of the body is registered by a camera and this shape becomes the actual wave form. By moving around you change the wave form and the timbre of the sound. An interesting experiment. In this interactive installation we are all waves. 

Are you curious what you sound like? You can find out at the Sonar festival in Barcelona this week, where the WeAreWaves installation can be experienced.

Creating an interesting experience using sensors to control image and sound in a performance isn’t the easiest thing to do. You don’t want it to look like Mickey Mouse, and you still want the interaction between the performer and the sound/visuals to be clearly visible.

Oscillare, a project by a group called Electronic Performers is an interesting attempt to use a dancers’ movement to control sound and visuals without becoming too cheesy. The movements are analysed using accelerometers and gyroscopes, and Max/MSP/Jitter software is used to process the incoming data. The sounds we hear come from an Access Virus TI synthesizer. 

You can see this interactive multimedia performance at the Sonar festival, which starts today.