This piece allows multiple users to explore an invisible landscape using orientable physical tokens. Each user holds a wooden Egg containing sensors that track position and orientation. As users move through the space, the Egg will reveal and conceal various aspects of the sonic terrain. Position will be mapped relative to a set of composed "waypoints" that constitute different moments or arrangements in the song of the space. The multiple-user model allows for many modulations upon relatively few waypoints. An Egg's orientation will modulate sonic parameters local to each waypoint, so that while actions are repeatable, they are not consistent across the space—for example, if you are in or around Bass Garden, changes in orientation might have a different result (say, a change in synthesizer LFO) than when the same Egg is up in the Melody Mountains.
XBee 2.5 ZNET Coordinator API module to receive orientation data from each Egg
Laptop and sound system
Control / Mapping Software
Processing sketch conditions raw incoming data and performs position calculations
Ableton Live 7 receives Processing data and generates/modulates audio
Conceptual Walkthrough
My practice explores the modalities and metaphors surrounding the relationship of a body-in-space to an audio source. Here, my interest lies in placing a group in a context that causes them to think carefully about their relationship in space, and how to modulate that relationship; such explorations are rewarded with a compelling and richly responsive audio output.
A compass is an object that transforms an invisible phenomenon into information about one's immediate physical environment. It is a point of intersection between the virtual, conceptual space of geomagnetism and the physically-perceivable world. In AUDIO ORIENTEERING, I have abstracted the symbolic function of a compass and inverted the physical/virtual relationship. Each Egg functions not only as a token whose position in the room maps isomorphically onto another, invisible space, but also as a point of inflection around which these real and imaginary spaces may pivot. Here the metaphor of an audio terrain becomes useful—whereas a song is a one-dimensional progression from beginning to end, AUDIO ORIENTEERING presents a multidimensional map of sonic elements upon which its users are free to improvise and explore.
While not an instrument in and of itself, this interface is a new mode of interaction between a participant and the space's music, complicating the relationship between composition and remix: each user's trajectory through the space endlessly reconfigures a complete-but-asynchronous original composition.
I have removed the Technical Notes from this page, and instead offer the more contemporary NIME 2009 submission as a summary of such remarks.
Next Steps
One tantalizing but expensive direction in which this project could expand is with the addition of a GPS module—being able to sound design all of Somerville, for example, is an extremely attractive prospect. Of course, audio generation would have to be handled in a manner local to each Egg, but this opens many new and interesting doors (for example, the ability to exchange samples or mappings over PAN, or even to collaborate with other explorers in the area). An older project of mine was stalking the same battleship, so to speak, and I imagine that eventually they will meet and mate.
