Initial ideas

The following project is set to make music through the use of physical activity rather than the traditional musical instrument setup. This blog helps to show the development of the ideas and project that I am undertaking and coincides as part of a module called 'Integrated Practice' during my final year at the University of Brighton for the 'BA(Hons) Creative Music Production' course.

The purpose of the module is to combine traditional musical theories and practices with another medium such as video. This can be in any format and previous choices have included sound design for film/ radio, inventions and concepts with future technology and art installations.

 Research into art installations was a good starting point for research into ideas. However, several ideas came to light from the get go, one of which, I have decided to stick with.

The first idea that came to mind was to create a marble run (similar to the one below in figure 1.) either out of existing pieces or constructing a marble run out of wood and other materials. Within the marble run there would be pressure pads built in so that when the marble is let go and slides down the marble run it hits the pad and triggers a signal which is received by a computer. In turn, the signal would be converted into sounds and musical notes via Logic Pro or Pure Data.

The aim of the project would have been to produce an interactive art installation which could also potentially be used in a children's learning environment to aid education on music and sound.

 

(Figure 1.)

The second idea that came to mind was to utilise the human body and its actions to create music through the use of medical sensors such as EMG sensors. The EMG sensors would be placed on the muscles to register muscular movement. In addition, heart rate and perspiration monitors would have been used to take readings and use the outputted signals. The signals would have then been converted into musical sounds/ notes via Pure Data or Logic Pro after being processed through Arduino circuit boards.

This concept however, was dismissed due to the fact that I wanted to go into a high level of depth with this project and would not be able to do so in this module in comparison to the 'Major Project' module. Therefore, the Major project for my final year is the Human Body sensor project. The theory behind this project was to create personal soundtracks for people when they are working out and to hear their workout instead of just seeing figures and graphs on a screen which is the trend at the moment.

The idea was inspired by Japanese artist, Daito Manabe (http://www.daito.ws/en/#1) and the Old Spice advert which starred fitness guru and actor, Terry Crews: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ15vCGuvH0

The final idea is the idea that I have chosen to develop and is the project that I am undertaking.

The concept is an art installation that utilises video cameras and Pure Data. A patch would be designed in Pure Data so that the video camera attached to the computer would be recognised. The signal from the camera would then been analysed within the patch to obtain the RGBA data (Red, Green, Blue and Alpha.) This data, depending on the the numerical values that were outputted, would be associated with different sounds and musical elements that would be used to great an ambient/ avant-garde style piece of music.

The aim would be to have different people walking in front of the camera to set off the musical alterations from the originally programmed sounds. The time of day and lighting, people's clothing, hair colour etc would all have an affect on the characteristics so the sounds that would be coming from the speakers at that time, would be unique and individual.