After the meeting at VRU 25/11/2008

Today’s meeting was very helpful. I was able to formulate my aims for this composition-project in a clearer and more directional way. As I’ve mention previously in my Blog the main purpose for this project is to involve the audience in a way that they will transform and interact with the music in a live performance. Furthermore is the idea and fact that audiences can influence the performance consciously and subconsciously. In the first section of my programming with Max/MSP I am using cameras to track the colour from the audience and therefore a consciously interaction. I’ve decided to drop out this part completely since the other two parts are quite complicated. Also another reasons for dropping out is the fact that since I was going to use cameras I had to do some tests to see how the cameras will act in a performance situation. How far away can the camera track colour. How the lights in the performance affect the colour. Am I going to use LEDs or mobile phones from the audience? All these are questions that will produce even more questions if they are answered. Even if the tests are done the final outcome, from the section one, was going to be unstable and would crucially influence negatively the other two sections. It occur to me, after the meeting, that what I was trying to do in section one with the cameras, was to track the position of the particular colour within the frame of the camera. This all could work in a much simpler manner. I will track the amount of colour (Red, Green, Blue) within the frame of the camera. I will need to do some test as well, if I am going to include this, but with this it might work in a more secure way.

The next video shows how the, abandon for now, idea of colour tracking works. It works fine with only one colour received form the camera. When are two colours, in this case two red sources, it automatically connect the lines from the outer X to the outer Y. Watch the cursors at the right video. Imagine this in a group of audience of 20 people. The incoming data would be very unstable.





Knowing that the first section is not included, I will have to do a few modification to to the second part to be completed as a compositional piece. I will add another Wii as the master Wii or in musical terms a conductor. I will conduct the other four Wiis with the master Wii. The button in the masters Wii will act as a gate for the effects on Live Ableton. I am working on this modification and I don’t know the actual outcome of this process. Hopefully I will be able to control the final musical outcome from the Master Wii . I am still working on the third section. I am waiting from the base player and the saxophone player to let me know if they can do the performance.