Sound Sites!The Dreamlab website is superb. Featured here is the interactive multi-sensory installation The Portal. The installation by Dickinson Prentiss offers interactive laser light and digital audio and the opportunity for a group of participants to shape the installation through a cooperative effort. The participants pull on cords attached to a large Lycra Spandex fabric structure, 28 feet in diameter. The physical structure shapeshifts as the matrix of interactive technologies restructure the sound and light. The changes become predictive, though no less startling and unique once a person learns the 'play' parameters of the installation. Control becomes a group effort as other people are 'playing' at the same time. It seems
that the
programmed play parameters and the extent of 'practice'
that one has
with the installation and other collaborators would
be a key issue to
producing work of any depth, though the website
also touches on the
'community' aspect of the installation. Judging by the pictures at the site the installation looks like tremendous entertainment, especially for the non-musician. With suggested diatonicism as the basis for sound and with untrained large group input, don't expect a Beethoven quartet to pop out of the sound system. But with a good programmer, terrific samples and a group of skilled musicians working together... who knows? As with any new performance medium it will take time for the work and the performers' skills to develop. Meanwhile the site is worth the visit for the graphics alone. Enjoy.
http://www.primenet.com/~dreamlab/Portal.html |
Maybe this is a cyber-variant
of a kind of
improvised 'chamber music' in that sense, only now
with computer
controlled laser light and sculptural elements
added. Suggested sound
program material is the digitally sampled
or synthesized human voice
across a diatonic (white-note only)
three octave range. The tones are
triggered by any of twenty-four
sensors through the MIDI protocol
(Musical Instrument Digital
Interface - a standard computer/music
protocol). Sound progam
material may alternately be other polyphonic
sampled or synthesized
sounds or text, and of the programmer's
choosing.