Vos van der Noordt is a Dutch-born musician, performer and artist. During Stukafest Utrecht he displays his self-build instrument, Move Surround, to the gathered audience in the student room. ‘With the Move Surround, a device that makes music through movement, I can really connect with the audience.’
‘With your right arm, you control the speed of the note you are playing. With your left arm you control the pitch of the note. If you move forward with your body, the note is played in its purest form. When you move backwards, more reverb is added. Moving your body to the left or to the right, adds or subtracts beats to the composition. All right enough talking, who wants to try?’ says musician Vos van der Noordt
The student room Vos van der Noordt is performing in is comfortable and cozy. All the furniture has been removed, apart from some scattered pillows and a couch. The bed is elevated from the floor and people are sitting on it, their feet dangling from the edge. Van der Noordt it sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, with his keyboard, laptop and singing bowl surrounding him. The ten people gathered in the room, most of them students, are watching him eagerly to find out what is going to happen.
‘Hello and welcome to all of you’, Vos says and the start of the performance. ‘What you see here before you is my own build instrument, the Move Surround. The black beam you see is a kind of sensor which tracks movements you make. Each movement is connected to a particular sound. So while you dance, the Move Surround makes a musical composition.
The gathered audience share some uncertain gazes. No one really wants to come forward. After a while Didi, a woman who came to the performance all by herself, steps up. ‘If no one is willing, I will do it,’ she says. She stands before the beam and it starts making sounds. As she starts to dance, her eyes begin to glow and an enthusiastic smile can be seen across her face. She graciously moves around the room and the composition fills the space with sounds of violins, piano’s and synthesizers.
During Didi’s performance, Vos starts to play along. He adds even more sounds and instruments to the composition. He looks at the movements Didi makes and adds layers of music that fit perfectly with the way Didi moves. The music sounds grandiose and has hints to music made by Hans Zimmer. When finished Didi says: ‘that felt really liberating. I felt like a real artist and when Vos started to play along I really felt a connection.’ That is exactly why Vos built the Move Surround he explains.
‘I build this project as a part of my graduation project. From a young age I have been very interested in music, captured by how it can bring people together. When studying at art school, I also picked up some engineering skills. With these skills I could combine some of my favourite instruments in the Move Surround. This way I could play them all together at the same time. It gave me an inexhaustible source of creativity and also a solution to a problem I came across during my studies.’
‘When I performed before I invented the Move Surround, I always felt a distance between the audience and myself. I was standing on a stage and the audience was at a distance. I did not feel connected to the people I was performing for. With the Move Surround I can really connect with my spectators, I can react to their movements and make great compositions together. Without the Move Surround I would not be able to do that.’
‘I think art is all about connecting with the people that are watching and listening. With every performance I meet new people and those new people give me inspiration for new compositions which I will play in the future. Every peformance is unique, I don’t record them. I learn with every performance. The people that have used the Move Surround always leave with a feeling of gratitude and happiness. I think that is a beautiful thing.’
