Planar Refrains

My practice explores phenomenal poetic truths that exist in fissures between the sensual and physical qualities of material constructs. Magnifying this confounding interspace, my work activates specific instruments within mutable, relational systems of installation, movement, and documentation. The tools I fabricate function within variable orientations and are implemented as both physical barriers and thresholds into alternate, virtual domains. Intersecting fragments of sound and moving image build a nexus of superimposed spatialities, while material constructions are enveloped in ephemeral intensities. Within this compounded environment, both mind and body are charged as active sites through which durational, contemplative experiences can pass. Reverberation, the ghostly refrain of a sound calling back to our ears from a distant plane, can intensify our emotional experience of place. My project Planar Refrains utilizes four electro-mechanical reverb plates, analog audio filters designed to simulate expansive acoustic arenas. Historically these devices have provided emotive voicings to popular studio recordings, dislocating the performer from the commercial studio and into a simulated reverberant territory of mythic proportions. The material resonance of steel is used to filter a recorded signal, shaping the sound of a human performance into something more transformative, a sound embodying otherworldly dynamics. In subverting the designed utility of reverb plates, I am exploring their value as active surfaces extending across different spatial realities. The background of ephemeral sonic residue is collapsed into the foreground, a filter becomes sculpture, and this sculpture becomes an instrument in an evolving soundscape

Methodological considerations concerning manual annotation of musical audio in function of algorithm development

In research on musical audio-mining, annotated music databases are needed which allow the development of computational tools that extract from the musical audiostream the kind of high-level content that users can deal with in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) contexts. The notion of musical content, and therefore the notion of annotation, is ill-defined, however, both in the syntactic and semantic sense. As a consequence, annotation has been approached from a variety of perspectives (but mainly linguistic-symbolic oriented), and a general methodology is lacking. This paper is a step towards the definition of a general framework for manual annotation of musical audio in function of a computational approach to musical audio-mining that is based on algorithms that learn from annotated data. 1

Design Strategies for Playful Technologies to Support Light-intensity Physical Activity in the Workplace

Moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity has an established preventative role in obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. However recent evidence suggests that sitting time affects health negatively independent of whether adults meet prescribed physical activity guidelines. Since many of us spend long hours daily sitting in front of a host of electronic screens, this is cause for concern. In this paper, we describe a set of three prototype digital games created for encouraging light-intensity physical activity during short breaks at work. The design of these kinds of games is a complex process that must consider motivation strategies, interaction methodology, usability and ludic aspects. We present design guidelines for technologies that encourage physical activity in the workplace that we derived from a user evaluation using the prototypes. Although the design guidelines can be seen as general principles, we conclude that they have to be considered differently for different workplace cultures and workspaces. Our study was conducted with users who have some experience playing casual games on their mobile devices and were able and willing to increase their physical activity.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. Video: http://living.media.mit.edu/projects/see-saw

New urban Soundscapes: Angklung Buskers in Yogyakarta

Caratterizzati da una costante sovrapposizione di stimoli acustici di diversa natura, i paesaggi sonori delle realtà metro- politane contemporanee sono entità composite di difficile interpretazione. Entro questi contesti, tuttavia, la produzione di musica dal vivo ha senza dubbio un ruolo cruciale nella costruzione degli spazi sonori pubblici e dell’immaginario acustico ad essi associato. Nel presente articolo sono presentati alcuni risultati di una ricerca svolta a Yogyakarta (Giava, Indonesia) su un particolare fenomeno di musica di strada, le angklung bands: gruppi di musicisti di strada che si guadagna- no da vivere esibendosi quotidianamente negli spazi più trafficati della città. Applicando il metodo etnografico dell’osservazione partecipante, è stata documentata l’attività di questi musicisti, indagandone storie di vita, prassi performative e repertori, considerando la complessità del feno- meno e il suo rapporto “osmotico” con l’ambiente urbano Yogyanese. Descrivendo questo specifico caso di studio, si cercherà di dimostrare come una pratica musicale apparentemente marginale possa avere una funzione importante nella costruzione di una realtà acustica metropolitana, sino a divenirne un’impronta sonora. Il saggio è corredato da esempi video che illustrano la pratica musicale in analisi e consentono di valutarne l’impatto sul paesaggio sonoro circostante.Being characterized by a constant overlapping of different kinds of acoustic stimuli, contemporary metropolitan soundscapes are composite entities that are rather difficult to interpret. Within these contexts however, the production of live music undoubtedly has a crucial role in the construction of sonic public spaces and of the acoustic ideas and concepts that are associated with them. This paper presents some results of a research conducted in Yogyakarta (Java, Indonesia) regarding a particular kind of street music, i.e. the angklung bands: groups of buskers who make a living by performing every day in the most crowded spaces of the city. By applying the ethnographic method of participant observation, the activity of these musicians was documented, together with their life stories, repertoires and performative practices. In addition, the complexity of the phenomenon and its “osmotic” relationship with the Yogyanese urban context was carefully considered. This specific case study is utilized in order to show how an apparently marginal musical practice has had a significant function in the construction of a metropolitan acoustic environment, to the extent of becoming one of its soundmarks. This paper is accompanied by several video examples, which illustrate how the musical practice analyzed is conducted and make it possible to evaluate its impact on the surrounding soundscape

Music Maker – A Camera-based Music Making Tool for Physical Rehabilitation

The therapeutic effects of playing music are being recognized increasingly in the field of rehabilitation medicine. People with physical disabilities, however, often do not have the motor dexterity needed to play an instrument. We developed a camera-based human-computer interface called "Music Maker" to provide such people with a means to make music by performing therapeutic exercises. Music Maker uses computer vision techniques to convert the movements of a patient's body part, for example, a finger, hand, or foot, into musical and visual feedback using the open software platform EyesWeb. It can be adjusted to a patient's particular therapeutic needs and provides quantitative tools for monitoring the recovery process and assessing therapeutic outcomes. We tested the potential of Music Maker as a rehabilitation tool with six subjects who responded to or created music in various movement exercises. In these proof-of-concept experiments, Music Maker has performed reliably and shown its promise as a therapeutic device.National Science Foundation (IIS-0308213, IIS-039009, IIS-0093367, P200A01031, EIA-0202067 to M.B.); National Institutes of Health (DC-03663 to E.S.); Boston University (Dudley Allen Sargent Research Fund (to A.L.)

Development of an Augmented Reality musical instrument

Nowadays, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are concepts of which people are becoming more and more aware of due to their application to the video-game industry (speceially in the case of VR). Such raise is partly due to a decrease in costs of Head Mounted Displays, which are consequently becoming more and more accessible to the public and developers worldwide. All of these novelties, along with the frenetic development of Information Technologies applied to essentially, all markets; have also made digital artists and manufacturers aware of the never-ending interaction possibilities these paradigms provide and a variety of systems have appeared, which offer innovative creative capabilities. Due to the personal interest of the author in music and the technologies surrounding its creation by digital means, this document covers the application of the Virtuality- Reality-Continuum (VR and AR) paradigms to the field of interfaces for the musical expression. More precisely, it covers the development of an electronic drumset which integrates Arduino-compatible hardware with a 3D visualisation application (developed based on Unity) to create a complete functioning instrument musical instrument, The system presented along the document attempts to leverage three-dimensional visual feedback with tangible interaction based on hitting, which is directly translated to sound and visuals in the sound generation application. Furthermore, the present paper provides a notably deep study of multiple technologies and areas that are ultimately applied to the target system itself. Hardware concerns, time requirements, approaches to the creation of NIMEs (New Interfaces for Musical Expression), Virtual Musical Instrument (VMI) design, musical-data transmission protocols (MIDI and OSC) and 3D modelling constitute the fundamental topics discussed along the document. At the end of this paper, conclusions reflect on the difficulties found along the project, the unfulfilled objectives and all deviations from the initial concept that the project suffered during the development process. Besides, future work paths will be listed and depicted briefly and personal comments will be included as well as humble pieces of advice targeted at readers interested in facing an ambitious project on their own.En la actualidad, los conceptos de Realidad Aumentada (AR) y Realidad Virtual (VR) son cada vez más conocidos por la gente de a pie, debido en gran parte a su aplicación al ámbito de los videojuegos, donde el desarollo para dispositivos HMDs está en auge. Esta popularidad se debe en gran parte al abaratamiento de este tipo de dispositivos, los cuales son cada vez más accesibles al público y a los desarrolladores de todo el mundo. Todas estas novedades sumadas al frenético desarrollo de la industria de IT han llamado la atención de artistas y empresas que han visto en estos paradigmas (VR and AR) una oportunidad para proporcionar nuevas e ilimitadas formas de interacción y creación de arte en alguna de sus formas. Debido al interés personal del autor de este TFG en la música y las tecnologías que posiblitan la creación musical por medios digitales, este documento explora la aplicación de los paradigmas del Virtuality-Reality Continuum de Milgram (AR y VR) al ámbito de las interfaces para la creación musical. Concretamente, este TFG detalla el desarrollo de una batería electrónica, la cual combina una interfaz tangible creada con hardware compatible con Arduino con una aplicación de generación de sonidos y visualización, desarrollada utilizando Unity como base. Este sistema persigue lograr una interacción natural por parte del usuario por medio de integrar el hardware en unas baquetas, las cuales permiten detectar golpes a cualquier tipo de superficie y convierten estos en mensajes MIDI que son utilizados por el sistema generador de sonido para proporcionar feedback al usuario (tanto visual como auditivo); por tanto, este sistema se distingue por abogar por una interacción que permita golpear físicamente objetos (e.g. una cama), mientras que otros sistemas similates basan su modo de interacción en “air-drumming”. Además, este sistema busca solventar algunos de los inconvenientes principales asociados a los baterías y su normalmente conflictivo instrumento, como es el caso de las limitaciones de espacio, la falta de flexibilidad en cuanto a los sonidos que pueden ser generados y el elevado coste del equipo. Por otro lado, este documento pormenoriza diversos aspectos relacionados con el sistema descrito en cuestión, proporcionando al lector una completa panorámica de sistemas similares al propuesto. Asimismo, se describen los aspectos más importantes en relación al desarrollo del TFG, como es el caso de protocolos de transmisión de información musical (MIDI y OSC), algoritmos de control, guías de diseño para interfaces de creación musical (NIMEs) y modelado 3D. Se incluye un íntegro proceso de Ingeniería de Software para mantener la formalidad y tratar de garantizar un desarrollo más organizado y se discute la metodología utilizada para este proceso. Por último, este documento reflexiona sobre las dificultades encontradas, se enumeran posibilidades de Trabajo Futuro y se finaliza con algunas conclusiones personales derivadas de este trabajo de investigación.Ingeniería Informátic

The State of the Guitar in Kathmandu

The thriving guitar scene in Kathmandu is not well known outside of the country, and particularly not in the West. It has also not been the topic of much recent scholarship. It has been assumed that for Nepalis the guitar, as a foreign instrument, represents freedom and modernity; but, is this true, and what else might it signify to Nepali guitarists themselves? This article gives an overview of the history of the guitar in Kathmandu by drawing on both published scholarship and interviews conducted by the authors with twelve prominent Nepalese guitarists and guitar educators to establish the current state and future outlook of the guitar in Nepal. Findings suggest that, in addition to freedom and modernity, the guitar is connected with individualism, and is becoming naturalized and less foreign than it used to be