Acclaimed French hip-hop composer and choreographer Franck II Louise will present a talk and demonstration at MIT tonight titled, "Konnecting Souls: Hip Hop and New Technologies," at 7 in Kresge Little Theater.
Set to premiere in Paris at the end of October, "Konnecting Souls" transforms dancers into musical instruments using motion sensors.
A pioneer of the French hip-hop scene, Louise has composed music for some of France's most prestigious hip-hop companies and is co-writer of the film "Un Kif �� l'Op̩ra."
In 2003, he began working with new technologies through the Konnecting Souls research project. In his latest work, dancers are fitted with sensors linked to a musical interface so that they can compose the music of the show in real time and become, in effect, instruments. The event is part of a series, "Hip-Pop in French: Contemporary Theater, Film, Dance, Comics and Graphic Arts," sponsored by MIT foreign languages and literatures section, the MIT Contemporary French Studies Fund, and the MIT Center for Bilingual/Bicultural Studies. For more information, call x3-4771.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 4, 2006 (download PDF).
