For this event presented as part of Melbourne Design Week over three nights, several artists will present their new works on the AirSticks 2.0; the latest in a string of revolutionary musical instruments designed at Monash University’s SensiLab that allow musicians and dancers to trigger and manipulate sounds and visuals through body movement. Each performer brings their own unique physicality to the works and in doing so help re-invent, re-design and re-imagine our connection between music and gesture.

Five new works will premiere across three evenings of a rotating line up. Dancer, poet and advocate of disability inclusion, Melinda Smith, will perform an intimate movement piece inspired by her own text. Emerging sound artist Alessio Dilettoso will conduct and perform Ciaran Frame‘s composition on Robbie Avenaim‘s robotic percussion ensemble, aka ‘SARPS.’ Dancer Amanda Betlehem’s performance will be an experiment in sharing space and time with sound in a performance context with a minimalist approach. Croatian musician and new media artist Lucija Ivsic will rework and remix her single ‘Power’ through hand gestures. And percussionist and inventor of the AirSticks, Alon Ilsar, will conjure polyrhythmic pulses out of thin air. Artist Sam Trolland will also display his interactive visualisations embodying the performers movements and sounds. Each evening will close with a short meeting of artists in the form of a QandA.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.