Sensing and mapping for interactive performance

This paper describes a trans-domain mapping (TDM) framework for translating meaningful activities from one creative domain onto another. The multi-disciplinary framework is designed to facilitate an intuitive and non-intrusive interactive multimedia performance interface that offers the users or performers real-time control of multimedia events using their physical movements. It is intended to be a highly dynamic real-time performance tool, sensing and tracking activities and changes, in order to provide interactive multimedia performances. From a straightforward definition of the TDM framework, this paper reports several implementations and multi-disciplinary collaborative projects using the proposed framework, including a motion and colour-sensitive system, a sensor-based system for triggering musical events, and a distributed multimedia server for audio mapping of a real-time face tracker, and discusses different aspects of mapping strategies in their context. Plausible future directions, developments and exploration with the proposed framework, including stage augmenta tion, virtual and augmented reality, which involve sensing and mapping of physical and non-physical changes onto multimedia control events, are discussed

Gesture-Controlled Interaction with Aesthetic Information Sonification

Information representation in augmented and virtual reality systems, and social physical (building) spaces can enhance the efficacy of interacting with and assimilating abstract, non-visual data. Sanification is the process of automatically generated real time information representation. There is a gap in our implementation and knowledge of auditory display systems used to enhance interaction in virtual and augmented reality. This paper addresses that gap by examining methodologies for mapping socio-spatial data to spatialised sanification manipulated with gestural controllers. This is a system of interactive knowledge representation that completes the human integration loop, enabling the user to interact with and manipulate data using 3D spatial gesture and 3D auditory display. Benefits include 1) added immersion in an augmented or virtual reality interface; 2) auditory display avoids visual overload in visually-saturated processes such as designing, evacuation in emergencies, flying aircraft; computer gaming; and 3) bi-modal or auditory representation, due to its time-based character, facilitates cognition of complex information

The integrated sound, space and movement environment : The uses of analogue and digital technologies to correlate topographical and gestural movement with sound

This thesis investigates correlations between auditory parameters and parameters associated with movement in a sensitised space. The research examines those aspects of sound that form correspondences with movement, force or position of a body or bodies in a space sensitised by devices for acquiring gestural or topographical data. A wide range of digital technologies are scrutinised to establish what the most effective technologies are in order to achieve detailed and accurate information about movement in a given space, and the methods and procedures for analysis, transposition and synthesis into sound. The thesis describes pertinent work in the field from the last 20 years, the issues that have been raised in those works and issues raised by my work in the area. The thesis draws conclusions that point to further development of an integrated model of a space that is sensitised to movement, and responds in sound in such a way that it can be appreciated by performers and audiences. The artistic and research practices that are cited, are principally from the areas of danceand- technology, sound installation and alternative gestural controllers for musical applications

Rich Contacts: Corpus-Based Convolution of Audio Contact Gestures for Enhanced Musical Expression

We propose ways of enriching the timbral potential of gestural sonic material captured via piezo or contact microphones, through latency-free convolution of the microphone signal with grains from a sound corpus. This creates a new way to combine the sonic richness of large sound corpora, easily accessible via navigation through a timbral descriptor space, with the intuitive gestural interaction with a surface, captured by any contact microphone. We use convolution to excite the grains from the corpus via the microphone input, capturing the contact interaction sounds, which allows articulation of the corpus by hitting, scratching, or strumming a surface with various parts of the hands or objects. We also show how changes of grains have to be carefully handled, how one can smoothly interpolate between neighbouring grains, and finally evaluate the system against previous attempts

Gesture cutting through textual complexity: Towards a tool for online gestural analysis and control of complex piano notation processing

International audienceThis project introduces a recently developed prototype for real-time processing and control of complex piano notation through the pianist’s gesture. The tool materializes an embodied cognition-influenced paradigm of interaction of pianists with complex notation (embodied or corporeal navigation), drawing from latest developments in the computer music fields of musical representation (augmented and interactive musical scores via INScore) and of multimodal interaction (Gesture Follower). Gestural, video, audio and MIDI data are appropriately mapped on the musical score, turning it into a personalized, dynamic, multimodal tablature. This tablature may be used for efficient learning, performance and archiving, with potential applications in pedagogy, composition, improvisation and score following. The underlying metaphor for such a tool is that instrumentalists touch or cut through notational complexity using performative gestures, as much as they touch their own keyboards. Their action on the instrument forms integral part of their understanding, which can be represented as a gestural processing of the notation. Next to the already mentioned applications, new perspectives in piano performance of post-1945 complex notation and in musicology (‘performative turn’), as well as the emerging field of ‘embodied and extended cognition’, are indispensable for this project

Processing of symbolic music notation via multimodal performance data: Brian Ferneyhough's Lemma-Icon-Epigram for solo piano, phase 1

In the "Performance Notes" to his formidable solo piano work Lemma-Icon-Epigram, British composer Brian Ferneyhough proposes a top-down learning strategy: Its first phase would consist in an "overview of gestural patterning", before delving into the notorious rhythmic intricacies of this most complex notation. In the current paper, we propose a methodology for inferring such patterning from multimodal performance data. In particular, we have a) conducted qualitative analysis of the correlations between the performance data -an audio recording, 12-axis acceleration and gyroscope signals captured by inertial sensors, kinect video and MIDI- and the implicit annotation of pitch during a 'sight-reading' performance; b) observed and documented the correspondence between patterns in the gestural signals and patterns in the score annotations and c) produced joint tablature-like representations, which inscribe the gestural patterning back into the notation, while reducing the pitch material by 70-80% of the original. In addition, we have incorporated this representation in videos and interactive multimodal tablatures using the INScore. Our work is drawing from recent studies in the fields of gesture modeling and interaction. It is extending the authors' previous work on an embodied model of navigation of complex notation and on an application for offline and real-time gestural control of complex notation by the name GesTCom. Future prospects include the probabilistic modeling of gesture-to-notation mappings, towards the design of interactive systems which learn along with the performer while cutting through textual complexity

Sketching sound with voice and gesture

Voice and gestures are natural sketching tools that can be exploited to communicate sonic interactions. In product and interaction design, sounds should be included in the early stages of the design process. Scientists of human motion have shown that auditory stimuli are important in the performance of difficult tasks and can elicit anticipatory postural adjustments in athletes. These findings justify the attention given to sound in interaction design for gaming, especially in action and sports games that afford the development of levels of virtuosity. The sonic manifestations of objects can be designed by acting on their mechanical qualities and by augmenting the objects with synthetic and responsive sound

Composing Music for Acoustic Instruments and Electronics Mediated Through the Application of Microsound

This project seeks to extend, through a portfolio of compositions, the use of microsound to mixed works incorporating acoustic instrument and electronics. Issues relating to the notation of microsound when used with acoustic instruments are explored and the adoption of a clear and intuitive system of graphical notation is proposed. The design of the performance environment for the electroacoustic part is discussed and different models for the control of the electronics are considered. Issues relating to structure and form when applied to compositions that mix note-based material with texture-based material are also considered. A framework based on a pure sound/noise continuum, used in conjunction with a hierarchy of gestural archetypes, is adopted as a possible solution to the challenges of structuring mixed compositions. Gestural and textural relationships between different parts of the compositions are also explored and the use of extended instrumental techniques to create continua between the acoustic and the electroacoustic is adopted. The role of aleatoric techniques and improvisation in both the acoustic and the electroacoustic parts are explored through adoption of an interactive performance environment incorporating a pitch-tracking algorithm. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of real time recording and processing of the electronic part when compared with live processing of pre-existing sound-files are discussed

Sketching sound with voice and gesture

Insights: In product and interaction design, sounds should be included in the early stages of the design process. Voice and gestures are natural sketching tools that we can exploit to communicate sonic interactions

Musical instrument mapping design with Echo State Networks

Echo State Networks (ESNs), a form of recurrent neural network developed in the field of Reservoir Computing, show significant potential for use as a tool in the design of mappings for digital musical instruments. They have, however, seldom been used in this area, so this paper explores their possible applications. This project contributes a new open source library, which was developed to allow ESNs to run in the Pure Data dataflow environment. Several use cases were explored, focusing on addressing current issues in mapping research. ESNs were found to work successfully in scenarios of pattern classification, multiparametric control, explorative mapping and the design of nonlinearities and uncontrol. 'Un-trained' behaviours are proposed, as augmentations to the conventional reservoir system that allow the player to introduce potentially interesting non-linearities and uncontrol into the reservoir. Interactive evolution style controls are proposed as strategies to help design these behaviours, which are otherwise dependent on arbitrary values and coarse global controls. A study on sound classification showed that ESNs could reliably differentiate between two drum sounds, and also generalise to other similar input. Following evaluation of the use cases, heuristics are proposed to aid the use of ESNs in computer music scenarios