Exploration of Figure Skating and Figure Skating Movement as Expressive Musical Interface
About
Before becoming a composer, I was a figure skater for several years as a child and teen. When I returned to figure skating as an adult, I recognised the potential for joining these two worlds. This started with a proposal for a motion tracking project, in which the movements of a figure skater would be tracked and translated into data that could manipulate, generate, or modify sound in some way. Beginning in late 2024, myself and others on the team began to explore the possibilities of this system and develop the project into something on a longer term. Here I will post some of our experiments, explorations, and artistic results.
If you have an interest in this project or want to collaborate in some way, please write me at alyssa.aska@gmail.com
First experiment and exploration of figure skating as expressive musical interface, December 2024-January 2025
The following video contains our earliest experiments, having me wear an M5StickC PLUS2 attached to my boot and performing various movements. This data was taken to see what was possible, but I experimented with some of the possibilities of how the raw data could be used for musical reasons. The data and video were both recorded during the tests, and I synchronised them and played them back to send MIDI messages to my Viscount Cantorum Duo e-organ. I created a Max patch that scaled the data and applied it to MIDI parameters I decided on for musical reasons, and then generated several layers of audio using this process.
Rittberger Etude (2025) for fixed media
I got the idea after creating the first video to explore more this concept of presenting the documentation of this project in an artistic way. Our next experiments involved recording very targeted moves to attempt to train the software to recognise different types of movements. This piece was created using the video and data recorded when we were training the software for the Rittberger, or loop jump. I performed only three discrete movements in this video, a loop/Rittberger, a pivot, and a waltz jump (there are loops in combination but the movement of the jump is still the same). I used not only the data, but also videos of us training the data, and combined this with audio generated in a similar way to the first video. In this case, I also used the identification of movements to trigger the layers I generated, so that the audio and video would correspond. Since both are aesthetically modified, the 1:1 correspondence of movement to sound is obscured, however.
Spin (2025) for fixed media
I created a second work using a similar procedure to Rittberger Etude. I use the term Artistic Documentation to describe these works and the process of taking documentation of my research process and modifying it for aesthetic reasons. This work focused on spins, and using the separated axes of the gyroscope to modify the sound and create several layers. Since I am wearing the M5stick on one boot, the data is different depending on which foot I spin on. It is also different based on my spin position, since the free leg is at a different angle and position in every spin.
Using the sound of figure skating
I have also been very interested in integrating the sound of movement on ice in musical composition, here is the first exploration of this, where I took a 3 second clip of sound from a figure skating program to create an electroacoustic composition using only that sound. Future compositions include works for voice and ice sounds that explore the boundaries between movement, sound, and transformation.
Artistic collaborations
I am also open to working on artistic or show programs of a collaborative nature, either individually or as part of a larger whole. If you are interested in a larger collaboration project, check out our arts organisation Zeitschleife Verein, which is dedicated to platforming and presenting beautiful events that break the boundaries of epoch, discipline, and community.
Acknowledgments and collaborators
Special thanks to my collaborators Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Matej Silecky, and software and hardware developers Martin Ritter and Jeffrey E. Boyd