The Computational Design Lab at Carnegie Mellon University has an interesting archive of current and previous projects. One that particularly caught my eye was Bach Blocks. A physical tangible instrument to encourage children to create orginal music. Rhythms and harmonys are created by placing the blocks in different patterns. The colour of the blocks is used to identify the pitch and the size of the block determines the beat length.
ASSIST allows a user to sketch a mechanical system and run the simulation.
Interesting project from Marc Nonnenmacher which uses Daphnia organisms to control the sound output. The organisms are placed in a small Gadgetry with water and viewed under a microscope. LEDs are used to control the movement of the animal, swimming on one side results in the corresponding LED to turn off and an LED on the opposite side of the Gadgety to turn on. The Daphnia are light-sensitive and move towards the source.
A new VST plugin by Niall Moody called Brush Strokes is an audiovisual instrument. It uses two oscillators, their waveforms determined by scanning the x and y-axis positions of the mouse position. Louder sounds are generated by larger gestures and when there is no movement there is no sound. The VST and a processing applet (both with source code) can be found at Niall’s ndcplugs website.
Eight part series made by Jacques Peretti from 2001, looking at cult electronic instruments and how they have influenced modern music.
Here are the links to each episode:
[1 - AKAI]
[2 - TR808]
[3 - TB303]
[4 - Simmons Drums]
[5 - Fairlight]
[6 - DX7]
[7 - Vocoder]
[8 - MiniMoog]
Found via post at kvr.
Composition on the Table, is a project by Toshio Iwai from 1999 which consists of four tables which present the user with different tangible interfaces including switches, dials, turntables and sliding boards. The interaction with these produces sound and also updates computer visualisations which are projected onto the table surfaces. One of the objectives of the project is to create a Mixed Reality environment allowing a multi-user and collaborative system to create sounds and visuals.
Combining visual art with spatial sound, Liquid Media generates liquid images & liquid sounds which are controlled via a MIDI keyboard and a multimedia system.
BlipTronic3000 is an audiovisual installation that plays sound depending on the location of user controlled ‘pucks’ and small autonomous robots. The ‘pucks’ and robots have red & blue lights on them, which attract projected green software agents towards them. Sound is generated in realtime when the green agents pass through the red & blue attractor lights.
A webcam is used to detect the position of the blue and red lights and a projector is used to display the green software agents. The system uses OpenGL, OSC, processing, STK and v3ga’s blob-detection toolkit.
A drawing system allowing users to draw and then interact with their own drawing. livePic uses a brush and pallet, users can change the colour of the brush by touching the colour of their choice in the pallet. Multiple users can draw and interact together.
Created by Ramon Schreuder i_AM is an interactive audiovisual media installation. The project was a result of research and collaboration with industrial designers, djs, music producers, vjs, animators and software developers. Users interact with objects to create audio and visuals in real-time. The system uses the opensource reacTIVision software developed for the reacTable project.
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