Michael Ang

I just finished Perry Cook’s paper Principles for Designing Computer Music Controllers. The principles that really struck me were “smart instruments are often not smart” and “make a piece, not an instrument or a controller”.

A performance instrument should have a clear mapping between the performer’s gestures and the sound (or result) produced. The mapping doesn’t have to be static, but it at least has to be predictable. This is based on the idea that the performer is the one creating the work using the instrument/system as a tool. The mapping must allow the performer’s intent to be expressed in the final work or else the performer becomes less creator and more casual participant. You can still have an interactive instrument (where the rules or mappings change) but if the instrument is mostly deterministic in the short term it allows for greater expression. If an instrument has a reliable mapping, the performer can focus on their musical expression instead of the instrument.

Here are the full set of principles:

Some Human/Artistic Principles
1) Programmability is a curse
2) Smart instruments are often not smart
3) Copying an instrument is dumb, leveraging expert technique is smart
4) Some players have spare bandwidth, some do not
5) Make a piece, not an instrument or controller
6) Instant music, subtlety later

Some Technological Principles
7) MIDI = Miracle, Industry Designed, (In)adequate
Batteries, Die (a command, not an observation)
9) Wires are not that bad (compared to wireless)

Some Other Principles
10) New algorithms suggest new controllers
11) New controllers suggest new algorithms
12) Existing instruments suggest new controllers
13) Everyday objects suggest amusing controllers

The first blog post from the ITP/Dance collaboration is up. It has videos of the dancers improvising with video pieces that Leif and I did. Leif’s is used in Time and Hands, and mine is used in the Subway videos. We’re still very alpha at this stage, but even from this second meeting it’s clear that this will be a great collaboration.

Our final piece will deal with the theme of The City and ideas like compression/decompression, crowds, public/private space and so on. What’s great is that everyone is approaching it with the goal of making everything integrated with the theme (no eye candy for eye candy’s sake, and choreography done in coordination with the technology). We techies set up our video toys, the dancers improvised and Chrisanty got all of us to participate in some dance exercises. Pollie has wonderfully volunteered to document and the videos of work in progress will help us keep up the momentum that’s already building.

Work is progressing well on the Xylobots (a set of robotic xylophones we’re building for a show at the National Gallery of Art). Here are two quick pics. A lot of the work is comprised of small repetitive tasks (e.g. cutting ~140 vinyl spacers, sanding them to the correct length, then deburring them). Luckily there are a lot of hands available and things are moving quickly. It’s nice to be working in a real shop. Where I used to think that the Madagascar Institute shop was really small (compared to say, NIMBY), now that I’m back in the East Village and using the ITP shop it seems positively gigantic.

I just ordered Machine Shop Essentials from Metal Arts Press on the recommendation of Mikes. The stuff he does always amazes me.

For the first assignment in Scientific Visualization we are taking pictures around Manhattan and manually geocoding them on a map. Then we will use an existing 3D model of the city (built from satellite photos and by hand) and create a walkthrough that incorporates our pictures with the 3D model (we’re using Maya and Virtools).

Here are my pictures of my walk to school. Mostly shot from the hip. Should be interesting to map these into a virtual 3D space.

My classes for this semester are pretty blockbuster. It’s going to be busy, busy, busy, but that’s just how I like it. Here’s what made the final cut:

• Living Art with the incomparable Todd Holoubek. This is basically a combination of generative art and physical computing. And it’s taught by Todd. Basically this will r0×0r.
• New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) with Gideon D’Arcangelo and Jamie Allen. This course deals with creating new interfaces/instruments for musical performance. I’ve always been interested in building audio/video systems that allow for interactive performance, and this should be a nice fit with Live Image Processing and my work with LEMUR.
• Live Image Processing and Performance with Luke DuBois. Luke helped write Jitter. Max/MSP/Jitter rulez. I’m starting to love Max for rapid prototyping. While working on Smash Your Computer (sorry, no link yet) last semester I hacked up a Max patch to graph the data coming from my accelerometer/PIC board. Definitely helped for debugging, and took a ridiculously short amount of time.
• Personal Expression and Wearable Technologies with Despina Papadopoulos. I’m more interested in portable than wearable tech, but this looks like it will be a great class.
• Internship with LEMUR and Eric Singer. Because my course load isn’t already insane enough, I’ve decided to intern with LEMUR over in Brooklyn and help them build and design musical robots. The current task is to build a robotic xylophone orchestra for a three-week show at the National Gallery of Art in DC. I love working in the shop, and it’s time to learn the mill and really learn some CAD!
• Building the new collaboration between ITP students and NYU dance students. Our video projects need people in front of them who use their bodies, and their bodies need some tech to amplify them. Thus is born the grass roots collaboration that builds upon my insane schedule. We plan to do a series of experiments then shoot for a final polished performance (my vote is for 2-3 weeks before finals). After seeing 16 [R]evolutions and dancers working with my video pieces, I just have to do this.

UPDATE: I dropped Wearables in favour of Materials and Building Strategies. It fits better with the physical computing work I’m doing with my other classes. I definitely will need to combine projects for some of my classes in order to survive.

Just saw Troika Ranch’s performance of 16 [R]evolutions. Good stuff indeed. I’m kind of a dance newbie, but I definitely appreciated the interplay of dancers, video and music. The story generally traces the arc of the discovery of technology, descent into intellectualism and recovery of some of our primal nature.

There were some moments of fantastic synergy between the dancers and the video, particularly when the projector was used as a light source to illuminate the dancers.

The video tracking is done using Eyes Web processing the input of a DV cam with IR filter. Eyes Web talks to Isadora using Open Sound Control. The tracking was really spot on. At times a line was drawn up the middle of each of the dancers’ backs, and it was perfectly centered. Also there was a ribbon effect where a single dancer’s gestures in terms of hands and legs were mapped to a ribbon created in 3D space. The effects for the most part directly supported the story (apparently there were some other candy-rific effects that weren’t used because they didn’t integrate as well).

Definitely some food for thought as I collaborate with the students from the Tisch Dance department.

On Sunday I attended a meeting of students from ITP and the dance department that want to collaborate on a dance/video performance. The best part was when some of the ITP geeks put up their interactive video projects for the dancers to play with. I put up my vblocks project that I wrote in C++/OpenGL as well my simple zelog and temporal echo patches from visualJockey (more info on patches coming soon). Where us ITP kids would normally just do the sensor dance (arm waving) the dancers jumped right in and used their whole bodies as well as interacting with each other and playing with time and motion.

This kind of collaboration is what it’s really all about. The techies need more human input, and the humans need more tech! Good things are in the pipe.