What was Performance Sonification?

Performance Sonification (now dissolved) was a company founded by Michael Barkasi to explore how sonification could be used to train explosive sport movements in elite athletes. We tried to push the boundary of motor learning and human performance by working at the cutting edge of neuroscience, psychophysics, sport engineering, and introspective phenomenology. Our vision saw audition (hearing) as an information channel that can be used to bypass the limits of natural proprioception to improve bodily awareness, putting athletes in better contact with their bodies. Through a collaboration with Harris Lab at York University in Toronto, we prototyped, researched, and tested lightweight wearable sensor systems that converted motion into sound with the aim of improving motion control and sport performance.