DAP Synth is an audiovisual installation that explores gesture as a space-making act, drawing from gestures of black expressive culture. Visualized is the dynamic interaction of the dap as a spatial environment that performs the negotiation of 'what is home?'. Using machine learning and computer vision gestures performed by two participants augment the space around them represented as a fractal dimension.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT0kYLeKgl0

Dap Synth draws from the often-overlooked origins of the dap a nonverbal friendly gesture between two participants rooted in African American expression. During a time of social turbulence, African American soldiers serving in the Vietnam war devised the DAP a system of gestures that expressed solidarity among each other. Often navigating spaces where they were othered, the DAP functioned to extend to find home within each other. Making space within space, the DAP is a form of black spatial praxis

With the dap as an act of space making, then the various gestures function as speech a dialogue exchange between two participants collaboratively generating what that space is. The DAP was - and to a degree still is - a performance of the negotiation of 'what home is'. Using machine learning to map a DAP interaction, DAP Synth seeks to generate and visualize this 'home' space.

Dap Synth is an examination of the dap gesture as black spatial praxis, linking body and gesture to space-making. Dap Synth is born out of my investigation into the underpinnings of black music performance practices such a Kinectic Orality. In Kinectic Orality music and the body facture as speech qualities. Dap gestures are a dialogue between participants that generates the space.