ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I propose breathing as an emotional bridge for transmitting presence in telematic sonic performance. I draw from the experience of the research project INTIMAL: Interfaces for Relational Listening, conducted between 2017 and 2019, which prototyped an embodied physical-virtual interactive system for relational listening to be used in telematic sonic performance in the context of human migration. The system addressed the body movements of walking and rotation to navigate oral archives, as in search for place. It also explored the transmission and sonification of breathing data as a way to augment a sense of presence between people, across distant locations. INTIMAL was informed and tested by nine Colombian migrant women in a telematic improvisatory sonic performance, in which they explored their Deep Listening experiences of their migratory journeys. Here I bring excerpts of spoken word and sonification from the performance to the light of Julia Kristeva’s concept of chora, to suggest that the sonification of breathing data can become an alternative materiality for telepresence – from pre-verbal to egoless – that locates improvisers within an interstitial sensorial space which is at once intimate and primal.
