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Laetitia Sonami, What Happened III-Now, 2025 (app 20-25 min)
Voice, live electronics, Codecell sensor, Max-MSP, the lady’s ball
Based on a text by Melody Sumner Carnahan, this piece was first created in 1980 for radio broadcast, it was later performed live with an analog synth I had built and later performed with the lady’s glove in the nineties. This newest version is transformed again by the most recent media which acts as a mirror reflecting times’ attitudes and expectations. While this new version follows the same arc as previous versions, from a simple life story disintegrating into abstraction, the spaces performed vary and incorporate models of my voice (Rave), a new body sensor controlling machine learning algorithms (RapidMax) and the lady’s ball.
The lady’s ball. The most recent and simplest instrument I could think of. It guides and affects the resolution of my gestures.
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Laetitia Sonami, the lady’s glove – archival footage, film, 2025 (10 min) – compiled by Renetta Sitoy
Excerpts from the nineties and early twenties of performances with the lady’s glove, including an interview demonstrating its workings.
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Laetitia Sonami, a Song for two Mothers, 2023 (app 22-30 min)
Live electronics, Max-MSP and the Spring Spyre *
While the original intention for a Song for two Mothers started as a sounding of silenced spaces, it became a crossing (“une traversée”) of concentric layers towards an anchored space. These concentric layers are devoid of spatial or temporal directions, each is governed by a particular sonic behavior dictated by the training systems and models I have prepared for each layer (Fiebrink’s Machine Learning software Wekinator, Rapidmax and IRCAM’s Darbouka Rave model). For instance, the first layers use variations of a “catch-and-release” method I designed specifically for this instrument. The method allows for some unpredictability and chaotic, organic behaviors. These behaviors become more restrictive as I move towards a grounded, melancholic space.
* The Spring Spyre. Once I decided to “retire” the lady’s glove in 2011, I started conceiving of the Spring Spyre to incorporate machine learning algorithms in a somewhat unstable system. Three thin springs are attached to audio pickups mounted on the metal ring. The audio features extracted when rubbing, touching, striking the springs are used to train the machine learning models which in turn control the synthesis in real time. We never actually hear the springs.
About
Laetitia Sonami:
Laetitia Sonami’s visionary contributions have expanded the boundaries of sound and technology over the course of several decades. Since the late 1980s, Sonami has demonstrated a deep engagement with gesture-based performance, real-time sound synthesis, interactive systems, and embodied interfaces, establishing herself as a central figure in the development of sensor-driven musical performance and experimental electronic composition.
Sonami created several unique instruments for live performance. In 1991 she devised her first lady’s glove. It became her primary instrument for the next 25 years at which point she devised the Spring Spyre which applies Machine Learning to real time control of audio synthesis. The most recent lady’s ball(s) is the most minimal instrument she can imagine.
Sonami’s work bridges the technological, the mechanical and the uncanny, exploring the fragile terrain where body, memory, language, and machine intersect. Her practice articulates a critical approach to technology — eschewing dominant paradigms of control and mastery in favor of embodied knowledge, contingency and unpredictability.
Sonami has collaborated with video artists and musicians, such as Paul DeMarinis, SUE-C, James Fei, Zeena Parkins and David Wessel. She has exhibited and performed at major international festivals and venues and has mentored and inspired many young artists with her approach to sound and technology as spaces of curious inquiry.
In 2025 Sonami received the Giga-Herz Lifetime Achievement award.
Black Truffle recently released an LP of two recent works and Lovely Music just released a double CD of earlier works.
Cost: FREE