speaks | Laetitia Sonami

Laetitia Sonami in conversation with Jennifer Walshe: What Now?

Laetitia Sonami’s visionary contributions have expanded the boundaries of sound and technology over the course of several decades. Since the late 1980s, Sonami has demonstrated a deep engagement with gesture-based performance, real-time sound synthesis, interactive systems, and embodied interfaces, establishing herself as a central figure in the development of sensor-driven musical performance and experimental electronic composition.

Sonami created several unique instruments for live performance. In 1991 she devised her first lady’s glove. It became her primary instrument for the next 25 years at which point she devised the Spring Spyre which applies Machine Learning to real time control of audio synthesis. The most recent lady’s ball(s) is the most minimal instrument she can imagine.

Sonami’s work bridges the technological, the mechanical and the uncanny, exploring the fragile terrain where body, memory, language, and machine intersect. Her practice articulates a critical approach to technology — eschewing dominant paradigms of control and mastery in favor of embodied knowledge, contingency and unpredictability.

Sonami has collaborated with video artists and musicians, such as Paul DeMarinis, SUE-C, James Fei, Zeena Parkins and David Wessel. She has exhibited and performed at major international festivals and venues and has mentored and inspired many young artists with her approach to sound and technology as spaces of curious inquiry.

In 2025 Sonami received the Giga-Herz Lifetime Achievement award. Black Truffle recently released an LP of two recent works and Lovely Music just released a double CD of earlier works.