A Project: Musical performance affected by physical interaction

[knots]

Hi,

I have started research in the last few days, trying to prepare to begin creating hardware and software that can intuitively receive information about physical interactions within audience members and use this information as variables to affect live music. Given my lack of experience using MIDI, feedback before I begin, and with what my focus should be on learning would be amazing, as I am a total novice, but extremely excited to learn.

The idea is based upon a piece of performance art created by Lucky Dragons, wherein a carrier signal is given to an audience member, who touches the people around him or her, holding a hand, touching an arm, passing the signal on, and using that person as a resistor. The changes in this signal are then converted to digital information interpreted by a computer, and processed through some kind of software to be stacked upon each other based upon the changes made by the number of people carrying the signal, and the nature of their contact. hanging in pitch and volume based upon the subtleties of that signal. I am not sure of his methods in doing this, but it is mostly the idea I am interested in adapting. There is documentation on his project, it's really very good, I highly recommend it:

http://www.notthisorthat.com/lucky_dragons.html

To take this information given by a carrier signal, and have it act as a form of effect upon a live instrument is, again, what I am interested in creating. If the subtle variables in physical interaction can be preserved in their digital interpretation, and translated by a computer to be say, a change the computer's sampling rate of the instrument, or a command to apply a live edit on the instrument (chop it and screw it!), what sort of data would be necessary to deal with? Would a specific sensor be necessary to convert signal resistance into midi data, or could the raw data sent out by an analog to digital converter be interpreted by a Max/MSP patch or something, and translated to MIDI commands defined by that patch? Simply put, is a special midi controller necessary for the physical data to be usable for this application, or is the development of it's interpretation through software where I should concentrate?

Thanks a lot for any feedback, and if you could correct any of my errors in describing this, that would be great too.

Neal

[SLP]

you description somehow reminds me of Audiocommander's "Kontaktstation" .

you may want to search youtube on that, it's a nice thing  ;)

[audiocommander]

Hi Neil,

I received your contact request, but thought it would be nicer to answer here, in case anyone else is interested, too.

In principle this is very easy; though my approach is differing from the Lucky Dragons example:

While they are using the human body as a simple resistor that is connected to a (fabric) circuit, this is kind of a human circuit bending. In contrast, I am using the skin as a resistance-based sensor. So I am just measuring the voltage and am producing a MIDI signal by that. This signal gets then translated to music by software synths.

As I am working with sensors for quite some time now, I developed the ACSensorizer, which can create Notes or Controllers from any type of connected sensor with quite good control over the connected sensors. Any resistance or voltage-out based sensor can be connected, as long as it does not output more than 5Vs. If it's less, no problem, the Sensorizer can interpolate and scale the input values to a reasonable value.

All plans and software are released; and to my knowledge, this is the cheapest but most versatile sensorBox currently available.

Nevertheless, you should first experiment with the voltage ranges you can get out of skin contact; I don't suppose it's possible to chain a whole audience, because the connection is always as good as the weakest link ;)

I agree to the young manbeing interviewed, who stated that it's best usable for less than five people. This is also my experience. Esp. if there are lots of other sounds, people that aren't musicians (ie trained to hear different instruments) have difficulties detecting their interactions they make.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

Best,

Michael

[knots]

Thank you very much for your reply, it is very helpful to know that it is possible to have that signal interpreted as midi data and assigned to commands. The length of the signal chain probably won't cause much of a problem assigned. But, I think I am lacking some really fundamental knowledge about what software is necessary to learn and manipulate in order to interpret and reassign those MIDI commands once they are being properly received by your sensor interface, or something like it, because it would be undefined data. Is building the ACsensorizer is biting off more than I can chew, being a novice? If taken slowly and step by step with assistance from these forums, I feel as if I could construct it.. does that seem reasonable? Finally, I'm curious as to what a MIDI sensor that gauges resistance looks like; I'm have trouble finding any examples.

Thanks again!

[audiocommander]

Hi,

I don't know if that's biting off more than you can chew, because I don't know you at all. If you're patient, willing to learn or really keen on getting this to work, chances are very likely that you will succeed.

If you're tending to give up early and/or hate soldering irons, I would think it over ;D

it's really hard to tell, sometimes it works out of the box, sometimes even I am making a (soldering) error that drives me mad. The general building requirements for the ACSensorizer are relatively low compared to other projects, because you just need to solder one Core, one LCD, one DIN and maybe an Interface.

I could help you with special questions and am interested on feedback from users; but my time is too short to provide general assistance in soldering or step-by-step instructions ;)

But from what I know this forum is really friendly (and it seems you are too :)), so the question would rather be: what have you to loose if you just try it?

If you're still interested then I'd suggest to proceed like this:

About general start:

Check out the Introduction page on the Wiki:

http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=introduction_to_ucapps.de

then look up ucApps.de and concentrate on MBHP-modules

- Core

- DIN

- LCD

- Bankstick

There's a small step-by-step building instruction list on the ACSensorizer Doku;

I don't know if you have already seen that:

http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=acsensorizer_04#step-by-step_building_instructions

About the resistance-question:

check out the Wiki, there's a sensor page that should contain a link to a forum entry that describes the general principle of how to make a sensor out of a resistor ;)

Best,

Michael