-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 10:00:53PM +0200, Robin Gareus wrote: > > >> I guess the air-guitar will have a a good chance for a come-back once > >> laptops are out of style ;) > > > > There are people developing sensors for the hands/fingers that can read > > motion in three dimensions and map that to software controllers, to > > produce a playable air-guitar. ;-) > > sensors are too complicated. gnu-air-guitar just needs a v4l camera to > recognize famous metal-guitarists poses! > > seriously, I've only seen *one* outstanding performance: a japanese > pantomime guy telling a sci-fi stories with Max/DSP. - he had 3 sensors: > - distance between hands ( 1 dimension) > - acceleration sensor on each hand. (possibly 2 or 3 D. each) > - foot-panel (to switch scenes, start/stop, used rarely) > > he toggled modes by quickly shaking one of his hands. Most environments > had pitch on hand-rotation and speed/volume on the hand-distance or a > derivative thereof. - the story was prepared, but improvised. > > the setup was simple, but it allowed him to both: act freely and have a > subtle control over the sound environment. and most important: it was a > convincing instrument and soundscapes. the audience could make a > connection between his action and the sound . with ~100ms latency ;) - > about 1 years ago ! > > > IMO, laptops, computer keyboards, etc, are very thin and unexpressive > > replacements for the rich interfaces that we know as real musical > > instruments - guitars, violins, horns, etc. Human hands and fingers, > > human breath control, have been developed and refined for thousands of > > years. Computer user interfaces have a long ways to do to develop that > > degree of expressiveness. > > One can use a classical instrument to interface to a computer! - If s.o. > want to make a "glove" to play violin: nice experiment. go and build a > vibrating block to simulate the neck/ear feeling first. > About 15 years I caught some interesting electronic/experimental music shows when I was living in Los Angeles, of which I was reminded just now by the topic(s) at hand. One was at a "Virtual Reality Cafe" (remember those?) that featured all kinds of electronic experimentation performances (it was basically a warehouse with a coffee bar, digital art on the walls, a small stage, and an ISDN link... ooh, high-tech for 1992!). The performer/developer/inventor/composer was using gloves as a controller. It was a cross between a musical performance and a mime act. He had the gloves hooked up to a sampler of some kind. He was wearing "virtual reality" goggles so he could see what he was doing, and IIRC some representation of what he was seeing was also projected onto a screen so the audience could see. His performance consisted of him "feeling" around on a shelf, and "touching" various short samples (around 1 second) to hear what they were. When he found one he liked, he would "grab" the sound, and "pull" it off of the shelf with his hands, then walk with it to bring it out onto an open area of the stage, and, uh, manipulate the sound. He'd turn it over, move it up and down, spin it around, and the timbre, repetition rate, speed, effects, pan, volume, etc, would all change. Then when he got it the way he wanted it, he'd "leave" it there in the air, and go back to the shelf and feel around and grab another sound, pull it off the "shelf", and do more manipulations on it. Then he'd go back and adjust the ones he'd already pulled out. It was a completely engaging and fascinating show, watching and listening to this guy with tinfoil gloves on and VR goggles, walking around a stage and doing pantomime with sounds. His interface was kind of like a Reactable without the Table. I'd imagine something like this might be possible using the Reactable codebase and v4l. Another show was held in what I think must have been a church or union hall basement. It was barely promoted; I came upon it almost by accident. We walked into the room to find it packed with a large "scene" of noise enthusiasts, most of whom seemed to know each other. There were 3 or 4 performers (I don't remember exactly) armed with DAT units, tape recorders, and samplers. And they issued a disclaimer about ear damage and asked anyone with epilepsy to please leave. And then the noise started. Harsh, industrial, arhythmic, practically white noise. Layers and layers and layers of it, as one then another tape machine was started up to add more noise. And the performers and audience sat there... meditating. At the time I was mostly into jazz, and had enjoyed enough avante-garde honking car-crash jazz to appreciate noise, but this was a whole new level. The tape-deck-jockeys sat there with beatific grins, spacing out. The audience soon ended up in a similar state. The noise had blended together into such an all-encompassing, seamless, overwhelming, shifting whole, that was so loud and so overpowering that the overall feeling became as still as silence. The noise had become so loud that it was like quiet. It was a very unusual feeling. When the show was over we were completely disoriented. - -ken -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGE+F8e8HF+6xeOIcRAmIcAJ4t2UCJ39ZgOkS4B+PJOQqxswpR9ACg950d QQSTLrOc+5wDP6DI/DDq1LU= =AfpJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user
