Laptop orchestras, robotic drummers, singing machines, and musical kitchenware: learning programming, algorithms, user interface design, and science through the arts

Abstract

With advances in algorithms for sound synthesis and processing, combined with inexpensive computational hardware and sensors, we can now easily build new types of musical instruments, and other real-time interactive expressive devices. These new instruments can leverage and extend the expertise of virtuoso performers, expand the palette of sounds available to composers, and encourage new ideas and participation from the young or the musically untrained. These new expressive devices can be expansions of traditional musical instruments, whimsical objects made by augmenting everyday nonmusical objects, or entirely new paradigms for making and controlling sound and graphics. Wired and wireless networking can provide opportunities, yet pose significant challenges, for new forms of group or orchestral expression. This talk will look at a variety of new devices, projects, and ensembles created over the last decade or so at Princeton, Stanford, Cal Arts, and elsewhere. Particular emphasis will be given how these have been used to engage students in projects outside of their discipline of focus, whether it be teaching engineering students about music, sound, and user-interface design, or teaching music and art majors about programming, algorithms, networking, and other hard-core computer science topics. Lots of audio/video examples, as well as actual live demonstratons, will be presented.