Resonant Body is a practice-based research project investigating the relationships between sound, vibration, bodily resonance, touch, sensory perception, and material form. The project began with an inquiry into how vibration can influence the creation and transformation of organic and inorganic forms and developed into an embodied investigation of how sound produced by the human voice may resonate within and between human bodies.

​

The research was developed through a series of phenomenological, sensory, material, and technological experiments. Initial field investigations explored vibration and its effects on natural and material phenomena, including water, sand, sound, textiles, and the human body. These explorations subsequently led to experiments using speakers, oscilloscopes, piezoelectric elements, microphones, and a custom-built stethoscope contact microphone to investigate how vibration could be detected, recorded, measured, visualised, and experienced through the body.

​

The later experiments focused on vocal resonance and examined whether the vocalisation of one person could generate a detectable vibrational response in another person's body, as well as how a person's own voice might resonate through different parts of their body. Different body locations, vocal sounds, frequencies, and bodily positions were investigated. A custom-built dual-microphone system was developed to distinguish, as far as possible, between airborne sound and vibration transmitted through bodily contact. Frequency-domain analysis and amplitude normalisation were subsequently employed to investigate the relative vibrational response of the body to different vocal frequencies.

​

The research positions the body not simply as an object of observation but as an active sensing, resonating, and relational entity. Through a phenomenological perspective, the body is understood as a lived body through which sound, vibration, touch, movement, material, and environment are experienced. The concept of the body schema provides a further framework for understanding the body as an integrated system of perception and action rather than a collection of separate anatomical parts. The project also established an early conceptual foundation for understanding technology as a relational medium. The microphone, stethoscope, speaker, and textile were not considered only as technical instruments or material objects; they became mediators between invisible phenomena and embodied experience. This perspective subsequently contributed to the development of my current research into relational technology, responsive materials, and the possibility of technology and textiles functioning as relational companions that support sensory awareness, emotional experience, and care.

​

The significance of this research extends beyond the original experiments. The questions and methods developed through Resonant Body have continued to influence my later projects, Post Tangible-E-motion and Sound of Touch. While the early research investigated how sound could become physically perceptible through bodily vibration, Post Tangible-E-motion extends this inquiry towards the emotional, experiential, and mnemonic traces that remain after a tangible encounter. Sound of Touch, meanwhile, develops the reciprocal relationship between sound and touch by exploring how touch can be translated into sound and how sound can be experienced as a tactile and embodied phenomenon.

 

Together, these projects represent an ongoing trajectory from sound to vibration, vibration to touch, touch to embodiment, embodiment to relationality, and relationality towards care. The research therefore moves from investigating physical resonance within and between bodies towards a broader investigation of how bodies, materials, technologies, emotions, and environments can resonate with one another.