RAKS System

The Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing (RAKS) System is a wireless modular sensor interface designed specifically for the movement vocabulary of belly dance. It was developed with composer and belly dancer Aurie Hsu.

Technical Specifications:

• Arduino Lilypad
• Xbee wireless network
• Flex sensor
• Accelerometer (ADXL203 +/-1.5g )
• Finger cymbal switches
• 2xAA power supply
• NeoPixel LED Rings

Arduino code and Max files may be found on GitHub

Compositions for the RAKS system by Kemper and Hsu:

• Teka-Mori
• shadows no. 6
• shadows no. 5

Papers about the RAKS system by Kemper and Hsu:

Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper, “Kinesonic Composition as Choreographed Sound: Composing Gesture in Sensor-Based Music” in Proceedings of the 2015 International Computer Music Conference (University of North Texas, Denton, TX, 2015).

Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper. “Kinesonic Approaches to Mapping Movement and Music with the Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing (RAKS) System.” In Proceedings of the 2015 International Workshop on Movement and Computing (Vancouver, BC, 2015): 45-47. doi: 10.1145/2790994.2791020.

Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper, “shadows No. 4: Belly Dance and Interactive Electroacoustic Musical Performance.” in Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2010). doi: 10.1145/1753846.1753929