About the Project

DoppelTone is a digital tool for the creation of sound-choreography in a spatialized audio field. It was designed to augment existing accessibility technologies for live performance such as audio description. It is WCAG compliant to Level AA making it compatible with accessibility technologies like screen readers and magnifiers. As a web application, it is compatible with all mainstream browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. It is currently only operational on laptops and PC’s.

DoppelTone was created because barriers continue to exist for dancers, performance makers, and audiences living with vision loss. Despite its rich perceptive nature, dance is often presented as a visual form, and audio description doesn’t always address its untranslatable aspects. We want to change that by expressing dance as spatialized sound.

DoppelTone also draws inspiration from technology applications in dance, such as LifeForms, used to discover new ways of moving by choreographer Merce Cunningham, or the website Motionbank by William Forsythe that transforms choreography into digital visualizations.

DoppelTone continues these transdisciplinary approaches, expanding on the possibilities for how one might engage with movement and performance. It enables users to both document existing dances, or create new ones, as spatialized sound pathways. The listener may “visualize” the dancer moving around their head and track their sonic movements. It is like a video camera for the ear.

Any sound files can be used, and can be created using the basic audio recording app on most devices. No fancy or expansive microphones are required.

DoppelTone Workshop Props

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The DoppelTone project addresses the underrepresentation of dance artists living with vision loss within the professional sector, and their education and access to digital tools that cultivate new creative work. In addition, it is a digital tool for anyone interested in sound dance. This raises the status of accessibility tools by bringing them into the centre of creative processes, at the inception point of new creative work. This approach advances what dance can do and how it can be expressed beyond the visual field.

DoppelTone was created by choreographer and dance artist Andrea Spaziani from 2019-2023 with Ted Ludzik and the development team at Mikutech (London, Ontario), accessibility consultants from the CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind) Mahadeo Sukhai, Kathy Beitz, Ramya Amuthan, Chyvonne Emile-Bray and Terry Bray, tech and QA consultants Meighan Duffin, Paul Pethick and Matt Miller, arts and accessibility professionals Jenn Goodwin, Devon Healey and Nate Bitton, and the invaluable participation of community members including Rozina Issani, Christine Malec, Kamini Rodhan, Mohammad Waliul Islam, Julia Figueiredo, George Quarcoo, Julia Male, Kate Nankervis, Kiran Hacker, Matt Smith, Chuckie Sachdev, Yuzhi Yan, and Fran Chudnoff.

These activities were made possible by generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategies Fund and Strategic Innovation Fund.