Sound Organization and Spatialization with John Conway's Game of Life, 2004

Abstract:
Cellular Automata processes serve as complex, yet largely predictable means of organizing elements of timbre, time, and spatial positioning in a musical composition. Due to its wide familiarity in popular science and its use in computer science education, John Conway's famous Game of Life cellular automaton was selected as the algorithmic basis for the composition of Species, a new work for eight-channel tape. All musical aspects of Species were integrated technically and conceptually by Octoconway, the composer's software adaptation of Conway's Game of Life rule set. In this paper, a few of the musically and technically interesting processes used in the development and composition of Species will be discussed.

Computer Composition: similar tools, diverse musics, 2003

Douglas Geers and Michael Berkowski

Abstract:
Computers play an increasingly great part in the composition, production, and performance of a number of different types of music. We will examine the roles played by available software and hardware tools in shaping the various genres of music composed with computers. In particular, we shall explore the widely diverse ways in which different musicians make use of a particular tool and how that tool’s design affects its usage. How is a new technology disseminated in the form of a composer’s tool? What tools fulfill the needs of many different musical genres, and what tools are designed to meet the specific needs of only one genre? Do preprogrammed, or “out-of-box” features affect a musician’s creativity? Is it possible for one specific tool or group of similar tools to influence an entire musical genre?

Presented at the Electronic Music Midwest 2003 conference, Kansas City, MO

The Haptic Ensemble;
wearable devices for realtime computer music performance, 2003.

Abstract:
The Haptic Ensemble involves the design and construction of several wearable devices for control over parameters of realtime computer music synthesis, as well as the development of appropriate interface software in the Pd and Max-MSP programming environments to integrate devices with commercial music software and hardware. The Haptic Ensemble was funded through Graduate Research Partnership Program grant awarded by the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts.

Designing and building several pairs of flex-sensitive gloves became the primary focus of the project. These gloves utilize flex-sensitive variable resistors to send control voltages into a voltage to MIDI converter. From there, the data may be used in its raw MIDI format to control a MIDI synthesizer, or sent instead to a computer where the data stream may be further manipulated and utilized for control over real time music synthesis.




The control voltage to MIDI converters (based upon the kit by Paia Electronics were adapted allow for relatively easy connectivity to any electrical sensor or variable resistor. They can easily be used with pressure sensors, mercury switches, photoresistors, or simply rotary potentiometers to name just a few.



In addition to constructing the hardware, several multi-purpose software interfaces were developed in the Max/MSP graphic programming language. These interfaces provide simple integration into other Max/MSP programs and basic data manipulation to simplify the system's functionality for other composers and users at the University of Minnesota.