Sonic Art & Sound Design- P22 pptx

This means that it can easily be set to provide information about gesture from the basic image and this can then interact with the rest of the system.. Once programmed, it will often be

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on a computer and have software readily

available It follows from this that devices

of this nature are normally the first port

of call since they offer ‘plug and play’ use

If, however, our needs are more complex,

say in three dimensions, we may need to

consider devices that are far more

complex and may require specially written

software However, some established

systems allow a very useful degree of

flexibility but remain reasonably

user-friendly For example, the EyeCon system

uses a webcam to capture a video image

and track specified parts This means that

it can easily be set to provide information

about gesture from the basic image and

this can then interact with the rest of

the system

Sometimes, despite the wide range of

off-the-shelf products, we are simply

unable to acquire the technology that we

need in ready-made form This is not a

cause for despair, nor should it necessarily

imply a need to rethink the approach

being taken If the technology we need

does not exist, it can be surprisingly easy

to make it ourselves Here we enter into

the newly defined realm of physical

computing This considers novel ways of

getting information into and out of

computers, extending them beyond the

INTERACTIVITY

14 It is beyond the scope of this book

to provide more than a brief outline of this subject Interested readers should refer to Physical Computing by Dan O’Sullivan & Tom Igoe (Thomson Course Technology PTR, Boston MA, 2004) for a more comprehensive exploration of the subject in both theory and practice.

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possibilities offered by traditional interfaces and controllers

There are many forms of transducer that can be easily acquired (obvious examples might include infrared movement sensors and burglar alarm pressure mats) or we may even wish to go further still and build our own Whatever we decide to use, the trick is to find an effective way of taking the information provided by the sensor and translating it into a form that our computer finds digestible

One of the most versatile ways to do this

is the so-called ‘microcontroller’ module

These are small-scale computers in their own right and connect to the main computer by the USB or serial ports They can accept input from almost anything that can provide an on/off or variable voltage signal The microcontroller needs

to be programmed but this is a reasonably simple operation using software running

on the main computer Once programmed,

it will often be able to function by itself although more complex systems may still need the power of the host computer to undertake more demanding tasks such as sound generation or transformation

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PROCESS AND PRACTICE

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Interactive software

Pre-eminent in this field is David Ziccarelli’s well-established programme MAX Named after computer music pioneer Max Matthews, MAX was originally developed to work with MIDI data from electronic instruments This is a simple, low-bandwidth form of digital data and can easily be manipulated by even a low-power computer MAX allowed users

to investigate ways of transforming this data that were not permitted by commercial sequencing or utility software and rapidly became the software of choice for experimental work in this area

Subsequently, MAX has been extended to include the generation and transformation

of sound and, by the appearance of another extension, to embrace video information as well Currently, MAX can operate upon almost any form of data that can be input into a computer making

it ideal for cross-media work and it may

be controlled by almost any type of input, including from the microcontrollers previously mentioned

MAX is, of course, not the only such system; others include Pure Data and jMax All have the same basic intention:

to provide a flexible and configurable set

of operational modules that can be connected in an almost infinite variety of ways to create a system that may be directly interactive or may perhaps be more self-sufficient in that it can operate

by itself in accordance with a set of

rules that it is given beforehand15or,

as is often the case, a combination of both approaches

Let’s look at a particular example and the different ways in which it can be made to work:

The brief is to develop an interactive environment in which a dancer controls the generation and playing of sounds by moving within a space We need to find ways of registering the position and movements of the dancer, using this information to control the sound generation, actually generating the sound itself and arranging for it to be played at the right time and place Here are three different solutions:

Some years ago, this project was undertaken by covering the dance floor with a grid of burglar alarm pressure mats Each of these was wired back to a cannibalised computer keyboard so that treading on one mat was the same as typing, say ’A’, on another mat, letter ‘B’ etc Each key would then trigger the playback of a particular sampled sound This was a simple, cheap and

straightforward approach, although perhaps a little limited

A second approach was to use a microcontroller chip instead of the keyboard This presented the data to the

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INTERACTIVITY

15 Depending on the detailed form this takes, such systems are known as rule-based, generative or algorithmic systems They may use internally created structures or may adopt mathematical processes such as the Fibonacci Series or aspects of complexity and chaos theory.

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computer in a different form but worked

in much the same way save that the

computer was left with rather more power

to spare which allowed it to respond in a

more complex manner Now it would

consider the history of the movements and

try to predict where it expected the

dancer to go next According to its

conclusion, it would then send the sound

out via a different loudspeaker This

solution required additional hardware

and a somewhat more sophisticated level

of programming

A third approach was to use a video

camera to track the motion of the dancer

directly and to derive the controlling

information from the image that it

captured The ability to do this

consistently and reliably is a relatively

recent development and still demands

quite substantial computing power over

and above that used for the sound side of

the operation This system had the

advantage of physical simplicity (the

interface was just a webcam) and gave

visual feedback to the performer, thus

increasing the degree of interactivity It

also provided the possibility of extension

to multiple performers who could be

distinguished by the colour of costume

This solution was immensely complex in

terms of programming and pushed the

capacity of even a fast modern computer

to its limits

Summary

We have seen that interactivity in sonic art may take a wide variety of forms and that, while it is by no means an inevitable aspect of such works, it presents

opportunities that can often be too good

to resist The temptation always exists to push the limits of what is technically possible but this carries the caveat that what can be cajoled to work in the safety

of the studio may fail completely when assembled in a typical exhibition space

Something that works briefly or erratically is useless in such a situation:

nothing looks worse in an exhibition than a blank screen or sounds worse than a silent loudspeaker In the case

of interactive works, accessibility, simplicity and reliability are essential aspects of success

Job no : 76098 Title : The Fundamentals Of Sonic Art Client : AVA

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A major purpose of most art is its public presentation Some artists argue that it is

this that distinguishes the work of professionals from amateurs Some go further

and hold that art only comes into existence when presented to an audience – that it

can only be validated by exhibition or performance This is especially true for sonic

art for several possible reasons: interactivity (a significant aspect of many works)

requires participation, a substantial number of sonic artists have a background in

some form of performance and, by its very nature, sound tends to be an almost

unavoidably public medium This brings with it a set of issues that the artist has to

deal with when presenting work Sonic art is not easy to present or curate by the

criteria and approaches of traditional forms: it has its own unique qualities that

require attention In this section, we will consider some of these issues and ways in

which they may be addressed.

Realisation and Presentation

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