Aman Amun

Increasing the interactivity of my performance has been a growing concern of mine so I spent some time last month designing a version of my performance which can also serve as a viewer-driven installation which I figured I’d share.

The gist of the project is that the user is given the ability to draw a sequence on a sampler (most likely the munome), and then by wearing a special waistbelt their movements are translated into meaningful information which drives the playback of that sequence.  The waistbelt contains an iPod touch which I use as the network-able, rechargeable, accelerometer which tracks the movement of the participant.  I can track the length of time a waistbelt is checked out to a participant and give them a vibration to indicate that their time is up when should return it to the checkout station for the next person to use.

By distributing several of these waistbelts (each assigned to a different sound) into a space, several audience members can collaborate to form more rich and complex compositions through their own rhythmic movement.  In the soundtrack, dance begets music, not the other way around.

In order to make this piece happen I’ve also been writing an iPhone / iPod application which generates a score based upon the movements of an individual running the application in their pocket.  I’ll throw up the video I made demonstrating this in the next month or two when my video editing skills have increased a smidge.

This is documentation for an interactive-art piece I call the munome which I am using as the backbone of the Aman Amun performance.

It is meant to be a conceptual exploration of taking something that is open source (the monome) and making it even more flexible and open. The monome itself is only a grid of buttons, but this very simplicity also opens up room for almost endless functionality. For this piece I have virtualized this instrument in Max-Msp and added ways to dynamically control it both functionally and visually.

Note that this is only a small fraction of what the Aman Amun performance entails, but it illustrates some of the other ideas I am actively experimenting with. The performance seeks to explore the gradiated region that sits between “live performance,” “djing” and “vjing.” The monome is clearly an instrument, but the use of pre-recorded samples is very reminiscent of the practice of Djing rather than live performance. The active control of the visual display enters the realm of Vjing, but the visual information (as you will see more clearly in future documentation) is largely controlled by the music itself.

Technical Details:
The Munome is running MLR and tr256 alongside Reason for the drums sounds. I am using Johnney Lee’s Wii Whiteboard to take the performance from behind the computer screen and place it out in front of the viewer.

I apologize for the video, audio, and performance quality. Expect more of all of the above in future documentation when time and equipment permits it. Thanks to midimeek, stretta, tehn, and the others of the monome community for helping make this possible. Thanks to Eric Marty and the others of the ARTX Dept. @ UGA for help with equipment and technical details. More to come.

http://www.amanamun.com
http://www.monome.org
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/project…
http://www.cycling74.com/