Yoshe is a musician, dancer, and academic. She completed an MPhil in music at the University of Cambridge specialising in online subcultures, which has informed her ongoing research into cyberfeminist activism. Having performed from a young age in dance and music, her current work as a practitioner uses groundbreaking motion sensor technology to bring together these two art forms. She is passionate about the application of this technology in breaking down formal and ableist barriers in music making.
Yoshe has performed around the world as a travelling busker and is a co-founding member of the Northampton Arts Lab. When not dancing or making music, she dabbles in neo-expressionist painting and writing science fiction.
Performance – Cyberfeminist Reimaginings
Yoshe (2022) Cyberfeminist Reimaginings: The Transformative Power of Motion Sensor Music Technology [Performance]
This performance will explore the imaginative nature of the magician, and the power of spectacle in breaking out of tradition and making way for new modes of being. Through electronic music and contemporary dance, I will envisage new conceptions of the body with a focus on confronting and subverting the male gaze.
Using motion sensor technology through Imogen Heap’s MiMu gloves, I conceptualise the body as a wand – and in a musical sense, as an instrument. Through this convergence of the physical, spiritual, and virtual, I set out to explore a cyberfeminist reimagining of the body’s relationship to dance, and the possibility of transcendence that this technology offers us. As the body is transformed, so too is our relationship to the creative process, as we are enabled to move beyond traditional instrumentation and the compositional restrictions this can present. This fundamentally mystical method of performance further plays on ideas of trickery and magic, as sound is spellbindingly and invisibly controlled through the air and movement.
Drawing inspiration musically from a range of artists including Ladytron, Nine Inch Nails, Robyn, and Steve Reich, I seek to find space sonically between pop and the avant garde. This is set against visual projections that incorporate data art with elements from nineties cyberfeminism and contemporary explorations of the body in online spaces. This audiovisual performance will be introduced with an outline of motion sensor music and its potential in dismantling current modes of composition, as well as ableist barriers in music performance.