#Me Too - Gravity

Abstract

#Me Too - Gravity is one of a number of musical compositions that responds to the 2017/2018 digital #Me Too campaign and the events that unfolded around the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The work explores the experiences and emotions of the victims. Many victims struggle to process their experiences and feel pressured by expectations on how they should behave once they are victims. Some women find comfort in solidarity and through displaying this solidarity by wearing black as many women in Hollywood were seen doing while others find this behaviour uncomfortable and alienating. The lyrics of this work portray those sentiments and intend to convey a range of these emotive states. <br/> #Me Too - Gravity is the first of a set of performance collaborations of two female artists Hewitt and Mainsbridge. Both artists work with gestural movement detection systems to devise musical performances for voice, electronics and the body. Hewitt works with her eMic and wearable controllers that detect arm and hand movements, while Mainsbridge has designed a system that detects whole body motion via the Kinect gaming controller. The #Me Too content provided powerful inspiration for two female artists to work with. The artists were interested in gender related content particularly given the collaboration itself being between two women working with technology which is historically a non-traditional field of practice for women.