BIPMAT
or an
alive sound scape
Davy grégoire
Artist,
greg@spinzero.org
Abstract
The
sciences and technologies enable us to simulate and think about the matter idea.
Small things like proteins, particles or photons, wich are not animal nor
vegetal nor mineral, but something between or both of them, exite our
imagination. Because they represent the smallest things that constitute all
configurations in the world, it might be exiting to evolving in a context
supporting the fortuitous appearance of an event. So, as far as we can push the
matter idea, the purpose consists here to play with a digital sound matter for
build a scape where the musical phenomena stem from behaviorals things.
This paper briefly presents Bipmat as
musical interface with a series of objects wich consitute the differents levels
of the musical process. The first part describes a stable manner to build a
composition while the last part presents autonomous behaviors where things
agree according to their moods.
1.Introduction
Bipmat is
a musical interface using graphical elements as sound units. Little objects
like particles and rings can be connected, controlled or left on their own way.
Others one like ‘Black core’ or ‘Combo’ are used to articulate or swing musical
topologies. Although we can't predict exactly what gona be happened,
everythings following rules system based on space properties, linkable
hierarchies, fortuitous meetings of things.
Consequently,
user should evolving or be totally lost in something like a self-organisation
system, where objects are modulate on differents levels. The interactivity with
graphical objects bring us to make the musical relation between time and space,
despite sometimes behaviors give strange distorsions that escape from our
understanding. Anyway, there’s different manner of approching the interface :
1. User
write and control all the musical process
2. User
initialized some objects on the scene, then let them going on, according their
mood.
3 User
mix those possibilities
2. Objects
fig 1
Above we can see three levels of musical a
construction. After generate some particles in space we can connect them to
build a sequence wich became an object called Ring. Sequences can be also
connected to each other as chain of rings, called Combo.
Those objects run in a hierarchical way
and as each stage, structures of higher order and new functions appear,
resulting from the interactions between the products of the preceding stage. In
this manner each stage of a composition reveals the latent potentialities of
the former levels. This approch point at the possibility to use musical
interface as navigable partition [1] but in the same time, we know that is
difficult to talk about music here. To give the possibility to create a musical
architecture with 3D topologies might be not so easy to manipulate and it’s
becoming much harder to think about the resulting structure if you introduce
physical forces.
2.1 Particle
fig 2
A
particle is a first object of a manipulation. As sound unit, it contains
sound’s properties like envelop and granulation but many other ones like color,
memory, spin, charge, activation mods...etc The schem below shows differents
particle's states that can be combined together.
fig 3
Sound
granulation is here one of the most interesting property. It is current technic
used in sound synthesis and could be done in many differents ways. What we
are trying here is to fit sound
modulation in space motions. At the
begining, user have to set a sound grain through anchors wich represent the
loop points. The idea is to record a serie of grains before let them come up
through behaviors.
fig 4
Above we
have two anchors (A,C) defining the grain (B) of sound’s particle.
2.2 Ring
Ring is
for particles what protein is for amino acids, a functional structure. When
particles are connected together they start to fold up on themselves before
playing the sequence. Ring represents a simple sequence of notes, structured
according space axis (vertical: tonalities, horizontal: rythm). Ring’s
properties enable it to evolve in a linear or random way. Hazard is allways
inclusive [2], depending of the quantity of informations stored in object.
fig 5
.Above we
see a ring on activity. The ground circle allow user to drag, set the pitch
range or the beat of the sequence. In
addition, particles like rings could be connected together.
2.3 Combo
The combo
is the last level of a controlable composition. It is a simple connection
between rings and its length define the lap of time before playing the next
sequence.
fig 6
2.4 Black core
This
object is not a sound unit, but it have the particularity to attract any
particle crossing its area. This little bigger particle have a huge mass that
make it quite stable. Like the core of an atom it make other particles looping
and pitching arround its. When the particle velocity is to high, it’s get out
of the back core’s field.
fig 7
2.5
Agrega
This is the ultimate and may be the most
interesting behavior of Bipmat. User should not thinking to write or articulate
any sequences but investigate space so as possible points of meeting. Because
ours objects hide a little project, when user let particles in their mood, they tend to be incorporated
spontaneously. At this point, let says that particle is aware of the
surrounding and it can choose a neighbor to meet. Consequently, a structure
should merge from the fluctuations of the system. Here ‘musicals’ sequences
appear like an unpredicable wave crossing some part of the structure. So this
metastable sequence is continously redefined by new connections and inner
reconfigurations (beat path).
fig 8
3. Interactions
Actually user should select an object
before setting it with the mouse and the keyboard. This is a quite restrictive
and we are looking on midi extensions...
4. Mapping
The sound system of Bipmat run like a
simple sequencer. Sound’s effects are made by the Fluidsynth synthetiser [3]. Because
what we see should be what we hear, effects like pitch, vibrato, chorus or
sound granulation will depends on space motions and object’s behaviors. In many cases the distance between
objects and the altitude modulate the sound. At least sound’s effect are based
on space properties and object’s memory.
5.Conclusion
This project have technicals limitations,
behaviors and navigation must be optimized. But the sound system work and
there’s enough possibility to see something emerging.
References
[1] R.Cahen Enigmes project (http://projetenigmes.free.fr/wiki) 2006
[2] J.Monod, Le
hasard et la nécessité, 1970
[3] Fluidsynth , A.Schmitt (http://www.fluidsynth.org )2006
[4] H.V.Lier, Les fomrations aminoïdes (www.anthropogenie.be) 2003