BODYMOUTH
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE A VOICE?
ABOUT
BodyMouth is a computational sound-movement instrument created by Kat Mustatea that turns the body into an organ for speech. Wearing sensors on various body parts, a dancer sounds out words phoneme-by-phoneme by performing specific gestures in sequence—as if the body is quite literally turned into a mouth.
The geometries involved in speech production, including the tongue, oral cavity, lips, and larynx, are mapped in real time via custom software to precise spatial data from several trackers worn by the performer. The result is a mesmerizing blend of dance and language: a form of speaking outside of the mouth that discombobulates language, breath, and bodies in exciting new ways.
What does it mean to have a voice?
***now casting new dancers for 2025 (audition details)
AWARDS
Finalist | Guthman Prize 2024
Finalist | Lumen Prize 2024 Interactive Immersive Award
SELECTED Press
“[BodyMouth] creates the possibility for brand new genres of artistic expression.”—Gizmodo
“Through the thoughtful and intentional creation of this tool, the body ultimately becomes political through the lens of identifying the specific needs of one's body, and therefore, a person's accessibility.”
—Sophie Sagan Gutherz, “Gender, Disability, Transmedia, and Balkan Folklore,” HowlRound
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kat Mustatea is a transmedia playwright and artist who experiments with language, live performance, the computational uncanny, and Balkan aesthetics of the absurd, to unsettle and reconfigure what it means to be human in the digital age.
Mustatea is currently developing augmented languages that express impossible states of transformation and hybridity; most recently, she worked with augmented AI text generators to explore the sonic and meaning effects of specific constraints on language.