Kinect
Projects and works devloped and designed for the Kinect
Monomyth
Monomyth is a piece where I felt I could finaly achieve a large scale sense of gestural sound control, with the bonus of an ensemble performance. This piece transforms the Kinect into a MIDI controller, allowing notes to be triggered by touching a specific point in a three-dimensional space.
The interaction here between a performer and these hovering sounds is one of intrigue and mysticism. Though using the Kinect as a MIDI controller creates an effective illusion of interacting with spatialized sounds, this method of gestural sound control remains a stepping stone toward a larger goal of finding an even more interactive setting between sound and performer.
The patch provided needs other components to function. One is a program to convert Kinect data into OSC data, and the other is to route the OSC data to specified addresses which can be in turn designated within the max patch. The patch then transmits MIDI data to a specific location. The patch allows for each sound to have an x, y, z coordinate, a size, and a MIDI pitch, velocity, and channel.
Pillars
Pillars is very similar to Monomyth, differing in that it is performed over a concrete piece (download link above). Previous version of the concrete piece were proving to be to busy and convoluted to mesh well with the Kinect performance overlay. The solution was a thinner texture. Pillars employs important historical quotes relevant to the design of the piece.
Important to the emotion and overall concept of the piece were the lower frequencies. In the provided performance, a performer used a MIDI controller to create rhythmic disruptions in nearly inaudible subtones (though octaves were provided for recording purposes, as well as for making the piece accessible to all listeners).
A better performance would involve a form of gestural control over the subtones, rather than a MIDI controller.