Besides being an active musician, Alec also creates the music and sound design for dance and theatre performances, conceptual interactive installations, and short films and documentaries.

Curious about using new media in the process, he tries to use technical innovations to convey more profoundly the inherent poetry of live performative works.

By using Movesense sensors on a dancer’s body like the hands, arms or legs, directly connected to the iPad or computer via bluetooth, the dancer can control different musical parameters like volume, pitch, tempo and timbre. The performance also becomes a sonic experience as the sound has a direct relationship to what the eye is witnessing. Using a camera for tracking facial and body movement, and translating this movement into Midi data, can contribute to a vivid multi-sensory experience. When using this technology, small eye movements can induce musical patterns, change the filter in a synthesiser or start drum patterns. Also people with disabilities can use these ideas to help create artistic work. Technology has the power to be super inclusive.

For Synaptic Body’s project Inner-actions, we use real-time biometric feedback, namely data of the brainwaves of the performer, to control both visuals and sound.

SYNAPTIC BODY

SYNAPTIC BODY is an innovative artistic collective formed by Alec Ilyine and Lucía Sombras (Lucía Callén). Their work explores the intersection of ART, NATURE, and TECHNOLOGY, focusing on how movement, the body, and sound can redefine our understanding of consciousness and perception in a technologically advanced world. By blending dance, live sound design, and real-time biometric feedback, they create immersive experiences that challenge traditional forms of interaction between performer and audience. Lucía’s deep knowledge of Butoh dance, combined with her background in neurobiology, provides the conceptual foundation for the Synaptic Butoh methodology, which aims to unlock the complex relationship between body, mind, and environment. Alec’s expertise in sound design brings these concepts to life through immersive soundscapes that interact dynamically with the performer’s movement and physiological data. Together, they aim to create performances that not only engage the audience on a sensory level but also provoke a deeper reflection on the integration of human and technological experiences.

Website Synaptic Butoh

My little abc.

My little abc.

(Artificial Bird Cage)

A little space in paradise
where you are the birds
and I am the cage.

DECALL – by Cie El Caracol

is a dance performance about the psychological and fysical problems associated with noise pollution. The soundtrack is made entirely of sounds recorded in the city of Brussels, transformed into a poetic sonic landscape for a masked dance piece that grows out of a big plastic bubble, or how dirt can be beautiful.

Sweet tech…

Trying out the genious Musikraken app, where you can use facial and body movements to control musical parameters through use of the camera

Trying sensors on the fingers of the right hand, 1 on the thumb and 2 on the index and middle finger, so I could control external sounds with the movement of the fingers. A completely improvised session with movement and shadow play…