A voice interface for sound generators: adaptive and automatic mapping of gestures to sound

Sound generators and synthesis engines expose a large set of parameters, allowing run-time timbre morphing and exploration of sonic space. However, control over these high-dimensional interfaces is constrained by the physical limitations of performers. In this paper we propose the exploitation of vocal gesture as an extension or alternative to traditional physical controllers. The approach uses dynamic aspects of vocal sound to control variations in the timbre of the synthesized sound. The mapping from vocal to synthesis parameters is automatically adapted to information extracted from vocal examples as well as to the relationship between parameters and timbre within the synthesizer. The mapping strategy aims to maximize the breadth of the explorable perceptual sonic space over a set of the synthesizer\u27s real-valued parameters, indirectly driven by the voice-controlled interface

Spectromorphology and spatiomorphology of sound shapes: Audio-rate AEP and DBAP panning of spectra

Explorations of a new mapping strategy for spectral spatial-isation demonstrate a concise and flexible control of both spatiomorphology and spectromorphology. With the crea-tion of customized software by the author for audio-rate histograms, spectral processing function smoothing, spec-tral centroid width modulation, audio-rate distance-based amplitude panning, audio-rate ambisonic equivalent pan-ning, a growing library of audio trajectory functions, and an assortment of spectral transformation functions, this article tries to explain the rationale of this process

Rethinking Interaction: Identity and Agency in the Performance of “Interactive” Electronic Music

This document investigates interaction between human performers and various interactive technologies in the performance of interactive electronic and computer music. Specifically, it observes how the identity and agency of the interactive technology is experienced and perceived by the human performer. First, a close examination of George Lewis’ creation of and performance with his own historic interactive electronic and computer works reveals his disposition of interaction as improvisation. This disposition is contextualized within then contemporary social and political issues related to African American experimental musicians as well as an emerging culture of electronic and computer musicians concerned with interactivity. Second, an auto-ethnographic study reveals a contemporary performers perspective via the author’s own direct interactive experience with electronic and computer systems. These experiences were documented and analyzed using Actor Network Theory, Critical Technical Practice, theories of Embodiment and Embodied Cognition, Lewis’s conceptions of improvisation, as well as Tracy McMullen’s theory of the Improvisative. Analyses from both studies revealed that when and how performers chose to “other” interactive technologies significantly influenced their actions. The implications of this are discussed in terms of identity formation both within performances of interactive electronic music and interactive technologies generally

3D (embodied) projection mapping and sensing bodies : a study in interactive dance performance

This dissertation identifies the synergies between physical and virtual environments when designing for immersive experiences in interactive dance performances. The integration of virtual information in physical space is transforming our interactions and experiences with the world. By using the body and creative expression as the interface between real and virtual worlds, dance performance creates a privileged framework to research and design interactive mixed reality environments and immersive augmented architectures. The research is primarily situated in the fields of visual art and interaction design. It combines performance with transdisciplinary fields and intertwines practice with theory. The theoretical and conceptual implications involved in designing and experiencing immersive hybrid environments are analyzed using the reality–virtuality continuum. These theories helped frame the ways augmented reality architectures are achieved through the integration of dance performance with digital software and reception displays. They also helped identify the main artistic affordances and restrictions in the design of augmented reality and augmented virtuality environments for live performance. These pervasive media architectures were materialized in three field experiments, the live dance performances. Each performance was created in three different stages of conception, design and production. The first stage was to “digitize” the performer’s movement and brain activity to the virtual environment and our system. This was accomplished through the use of depth sensor cameras, 3D motion capture, and brain computer interfaces. The second stage was the creation of the computational architecture and software that aggregates the connections and mapping between the physical body and the spatial dynamics of the virtual environment. This process created real-time interactions between the performer’s behavior and motion and the real-time generative computer 3D graphics. Finally, the third stage consisted of the output modality: 3D projector based augmentation techniques were adopted in order to overlay the virtual environment onto physical space. This thesis proposes and lays out theoretical, technical, and artistic frameworks between 3D digital environments and moving bodies in dance performance. By sensing the body and the brain with the 3D virtual environments, new layers of augmentation and interactions are established, and ultimately this generates mixed reality environments for embodied improvisational self-expression.Radio-Television-Fil

Soma: live performance where congruent musical, visual, and proprioceptive stimuli fuse to form a combined aesthetic narrative

Artists and scientists have long had an interest in the relationship between music and visual art. Today, many occupy themselves with correlated animation and music, called 'visual music'. Established tools and paradigms for performing live visual music however, have several limitations: Virtually no user interface exists, with an expressivity comparable to live musical performance. Mappings between music and visuals are typically reduced to the music‘s beat and amplitude being statically associated to the visuals, disallowing close audiovisual congruence, tension and release, and suspended expectation in narratives. Collaborative performance, common in other live art, is mostly absent due to technical limitations. Preparing or improvising performances is complicated, often requiring software development. This thesis addresses these, through a transdisciplinary integration of findings from several research areas, detailing the resulting ideas, and their implementation in a novel system: Musical instruments are used as the primary control data source, accurately encoding all musical gestures of each performer. The advanced embodied knowledge musicians have of their instruments, allows increased expressivity, the full control data bandwidth allows high mapping complexity, while musicians‘ collaborative performance familiarity may translate to visual music performance. The conduct of Mutable Mapping, gradually creating, destroying and altering mappings, may allow for a narrative in mapping during performance. The art form of Soma, in which correlated auditory, visual and proprioceptive stimulus form a combined narrative, builds on knowledge that performers and audiences are more engaged in performance requiring advanced motor knowledge, and when congruent percepts across modalities coincide. Preparing and improvising is simplified, through re-adapting the Processing programming language for artists to behave as a plug-in API, thus encapsulating complexity in modules, which may be dynamically layered during performance. Design research methodology is employed during development and evaluation, while introducing the additional viewpoint of ethnography during evaluation, engaging musicians, audience and visuals performers

Subtlety and detail in digital musical instrument design

PhD thesisSubtlety and detail are fundamental to what makes musical instruments special, and worth dedicating a life’s practice to, for designer, maker, player and listener alike. While instruments are recognised and classified by form, it is the nuances of individual instruments that constitute their power to say what could not be said any other way. Digital musical instruments (DMI) have long been criticised as lacking expressive depth, but technology of sufficient fidelity now exists, which raises compelling questions. What can contemporary DMI designers learn from heritage practices about mastering subtlety and detail? What forms does this mastery take, and how can it be elucidated, compared and shared? Using DMI design tools, kits and activities as probes, this thesis addresses these questions from the perspectives of design, embodiment and craft. In a preliminary study, violin luthiers were asked about subtlety and detail in their practice and culture. The outcomes suggested that subtle details originate in the tacit and embodied realms, which are facilitated to develop by specific contexts, environments and materials. In the first study, attendees of a DMI research conference participated in a workshop reflecting on subtlety and detail. Attendees were divided into groups and explored the physical details of a DMI design kit, in an activity book ended by discussion. Responses focused on re-interpretations of instrumental identity, suggesting that the provided context motivated in the opposite direction to the original brief. In the second study, the same kit was deployed with single rather than co-located groups of digital luthiers, modifying instead the sound of the instrument via a Pure Data patch, and responses focused less on instrumental identity and more on gesture-sound mapping strategies. Provocatively, neither studies resulted in sustained focus on details, motivating a novel DMI probe and activity for individuals. In the third study, digital and traditional instrument makers, musicians and other creatives, were invited to handcraft the resonance models of a digital tuned percussion instrument using sculpting clay, responding to constrained briefs. Participants’ backgrounds deeply influenced their responses, and distinctive themes emerged related to aesthetics, tacit and embodied knowledge, and algorithmic pattern. This thesis introduces a scale-based ontology of DMI design, dividing detail into macro, meso and micro levels. Focusing on the micro scale, a series of reflections and suggestions are provided based on the investigations, for how DMI design practitioners, technologists and researchers can illuminate this domain, for the benefit of subtle and detailed digital musical expression