This performance piece was just sent to me from Miya Masaoka called LED KIMONO. Thanks for sending it in Miya! It’s a beautiful performance piece based on the historical context of Kimono wearing traditions.

In college, Miya studied with Gagaku master Suenobu Togi Sensei, which played a big part in influencing this project. Here’s how she describes her experience: “I learned that in gagaku music, one wears kimonos as they did in the Heian Dynasty – loosely flowing and without the restrictive wide Obi belt around the waste. I thought it was interesting how the style of kimono was reflected in the musical attitudes of the performers of traditional Japanese music over the last few hundred years.

The LED KIMONO PROJECT is a new light/sound instrument/costume. [It] consists of a single handmade sleeve, embroidered with 444 LED’s (light emitting diodes that respond to musical and physical conditions and act at times as a low-resolution monitor interpreting live video. The images represented on the sleeve, derived from traditional kimono patterns, are responsive to and mapped to specified parameters of sound. My mother’s family for centuries dyed kimono fabric in the river in Kurume, Japan. These patterns are based on traditional Kurume patterns.” (Miya)

The LED KIMONO will also be presented at the New York Electronic Festival, and Siggraph in Yokohama, Japan 2009.

Image from ecouterre