Tests

Pre-Prototyping 1

Working in the night to fix and test dot-matrix printers…

How does a parallel port works…







1. The Hardware Issue

There are different ways to connect a Dot-Matrix Printer to a computer and as far as I am concerned mainly are:

- Parallel Port (LPT) aka Centronics (pioneering American manufacturer of computer printers)
- SCSI Port (SCSI)

After my research and the consultancies I had with several engineers specialised in informatics and electronics the best choise appeared to be the first one, i.e. the parallel port.

The main issue is that there is no available board for public market able to expand the parallel ports of a pc to the actual number of printers I’m aiming to use (my idea is to divide them into 3 groups, of 2 or 3 printers each, according to my on orchestra composition studies and to the practical doability of the final performance).

Thus, there are two choices:

- Building a handmade Parallel Port multiplier
- Using a powered USB Hub

I decided to go on with second option for it is faster and easier to achieve. The only element in reason of which I was perplex, was the possibility that a parallel to parallel connection has a pin to pin correspondence while the USB to parallel connection obviously not.

I thought this might be a problem but it eventually appeared not to be, and anyway it was the sole option I had. The HUB ports will be therefore connected to all the printers (and later if everything is working to the 56K modems too) via USB to parallel adaptors.

2. The Software Issue

The other real issue is how to control all those devices in perfect synch and here comes in the software issue: for it to work properly the system must have not even some milliseconds of latency, and this is quite a big deal.

I analysed with a couple of engineers the solution after checking some forums online: in particular, I proposed what Paul Slocum did with his external interface in order to interact straight to the printer via firmware (but that was hardcore hacking apparently and was working only with one printer at a time, meaning that I would need to craft 6 or 9 of such a device, which is not a realistic solution actually).

This implies that I will need a computer, a pc is more flexible, and will have to bypass the operating system, Windows is a problematic platform. In other words, I cannot send to print files via Windows for its non adequate nor computable buffer (impossible to get a synch).

A programming language would be needed to bypass Windows. As far as I am concerned, the possible languages to be used for this are the following:

- DOS
- Pascal
- C
- Visual Basic

This part obviously needs a series of tests, and it is not my field really, so I am teaming up with the excellent engineer Fabrizio Barbarino. Probably we will go either for Visual Basic or C to control how to send data from the PC to the right pins of the parallel port.

In the meantime, I am doing some more testing on what kind of music compositions to perform and how to divide them but also thinking at the worst case scenario.
The only option I have is to do a systematic work of sampling of the different notes (corresponding to printed letters/numbers/symbols) of each printer and modem to then create a live performance using a piece of software such as Cubase or Ableton Live.

The Orchestra

An orchestra is an instrumental ensemble which tipically performs classical music and usually includes a fairly large number of strings, woodwind sections, brass and possibly a percussion section as well.

A small-size orchestra – about 50 players or fewer – is called a “chamber orchestra”, and it is characterised by each instrument playing its own part of the composition.

A full-size orchestra – about 100 players – can be either called a “symphony orchestra” or “philharmonic orchestra”.
The difference between the two is that players of a symphony orchestra are taken on through a competition while players of a philharmonic orchestra are its founders. This means that those prefixes don’t indicate any strict difference in either the instrumental constitution or role of the orchestra.
A symphony orchestra usually has about 80-100 musicians on its roster, but the actual number of musicians employed in a particular performance may vary according to the work being played and the size of the venue.

In the ancient Greek theatre the orchestra was the area between the stage and the tiers, reserved for the dancing chorus and musicians. The orchestra grew by accretion throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, but changed very little in composition during the course of the 20th century.

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Composition of a full-size orchestra

What I’ll have to achieve with performair is to simplify this composition by reducing the elements of the orchestra and replacing them with office devices..

Theoretical References 5

Orchestra – an iPhone application
by Voon

If this application was really interacting with the user movements – which is what I want to achieve with performair (on a bigger scale of course) – that would be stunning, I guess.. there you go, I found another iPhone application that does it actually, it’s called “Bravo Gustavo”.

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Bravo Gustavo
by Hello Agency

Hello, an interactive design agency, just launched a new iPhone application for the LA Philarmonic Orchestra called Bravo Gustavo. It’s part of a larger campaign promoting the LA Phil’s new conductor, Gustavo Dudamel. The application allows you to choose a piece of music by the LA Phil and then conduct in real time using the accelerometer to adjust tempo. If you are shy you can tap the screen instead.

Basically if the user conducts fast the orchestra will play fast, the other way round if he was to play slow. Much better than the Orchestra application by Voon, but not yet what I was looking for. I’m aiming to find a piece of software (not really an iPhone app) where according to the user’s gesture the orchestra plays in a peculiar way, not just fast or slow.. I’ll keep searching..

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A couple of musical projects from Ars Electronica 2009:

Knock! Music Program (Device Art)
by Novmichi Tosa

a very basic idea which could then get more and more complicated. However, everything can still be simply reduced to ones and zeros..

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Quartet
by Jeff Lieberman, Dan Paluska, Absolut V+S

here the interaction is pushed to another level, quite amazing the result.

Theoretical References 4

Harmonic 313 – Quadrant 3
by Mark Pritchard

This is the ending track of an amazing album called “When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence”, which is actually the debut full-length of Mark Pritchard behind the moniker Harmonic 313.

Aesthetically speaking, this composition of machine-made audio samples sounds amazing. The ethic of my work is slightly different of course. Nonetheless, aesthetics should have their importance: the better performair sounds the easier is to communicate the idea within the piece.

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Dialtones @ Ars Electronica 2001
by Golan Levin, Gregory Shakar, Scott Gibbons,
Yasmin Sohrawardy, Joris Gruber, Erich Semlak,
Gunther Schmidl, and Joerg Lehner

Dialtones (A Telesymphony) is a large-scale concert performance whose sounds are wholly produced through the carefully choreographed ringing of the audience’s own mobile phones. Before the concert, participants register their mobile phone numbers at a series of web terminals; in exchange, new ringtone melodies are automatically transmitted to their phones, and their seating assignment tickets are generated. During the concert, the audience’s phones are dialed up by live performers, using custom software which permits as many as 60 phones to ring simultaneously. Because the exact location and tone of each participant’s mobile phone is known in advance, the Dialtones concert is able to present a diverse range of unprecedented sonic phenomena and musically interesting structures, such as waves of polyphony which cascade across the audience. Dialtones was presented at the Ars Electronica Festival in September 2001, and at the Swiss National Exposition in May and June of 2002.

This is not so far from what I have in mind with performair..

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Pogo-phonic
by Gil Kuno

Pogo-phonic is the rethinking of the pogo stick as an instrument in sound composition. The pogo stick triggers sound samples such that the pogo-ers also become the complicit composers of an improvised audio composition.

A nice examples of different usage of an object, even though here the object still performs its function on top of which another function is added.

Theoretical References 3

Dot Matrix Synth 3.0
Article by Paul Socum

The user presses buttons on an attached control interface to play different notes. As the printer is played, it’s also printing a set of images that are programmed into the printer’s EPROM with the software.

The printer creates sound from the print head firing pins against the paper and the vibration of the stepper motor driving the print head back and forth. To generate different notes, the software adjusts the frequency of the printing process. Higher pitches tend to come from the firing of the pins against the paper, and lower pitches come from the rattle of driving the stepper motor.

The external eight-button interface plugs into the printer’s font cartridge port. Each button has an assigned pitch, and pressing multiple buttons simultaneously activates the arpeggiator that quickly cycles through the notes you are holding down. The software also has the ability to run without the button interface, using the three buttons on the printer’s front panel instead.

There is interaction between the images and music. The image dithering patterns fluctuate depending on what notes are played, and the music’s volume and rhythmic patterns change depending on the pattern in the current horizontal section of the image. The printer can store about three pages of black and white images which print in order and then repeat.

I also have an alternative version of this printer that automatically plays programmed sequences and is used in my music and live performance.

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Dot Matrix Printers
rhytmic session

music by Younnat

music by Sue Harding

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Barcode Scanners
playing music…

or reading data…

this is heading a bit too far, but it’s still interesting in terms of art expression: doing art with devices that have been designed to perform another task..

Theoretical References 2

Another concrete example of brilliant “misusage” of devices. In this case the Electronical/Experimental duo Matmos captures sound from medical machineries and surgery operations: the article below explains the intention behind their music research.

Matmos – A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure
Article by Margaret Schwartz

Since their self-titled debut in 1997, Matmos has been making both the most intelligent and the most listenable electronica around. Their genius lies in substituting “natural” sound (the most outrageous example being a recording of crayfish synapses snapping) for the genre’s usual substrate of computer generated sound. What you end up with is nature transformed — the elimination of all but the source code in a by turns urgent and danceable collage.

Matmos cemented their reputation with 1998′s The West, in which the San Francisco duo tweaked and molded the sounds of avant-twang bands such as The Radar Brothers, Acetone and Papa M into some sort of retro-futurist hootenanny. The West caused writers at The Wire to hemmhorage pages of gushing ink and as a result Matmos have spent the last couple of years doing what all “made” duos should do: recording with Björk and playing sets at Paris’s surreal pantheon to institutionalized innovation, the Centre Pompidou.

Not to be typecast, core members Drew Daniel and m.c. Schmidt (no, his initials really are m.c.!) have taken their penchant for the organic into the slurping and cracking realm of plastic surgery. The result is appropriately horrifying, all the more so since this record is so darn fun to listen to.

Let’s be clear: this is not “found” sound, in which our egghead heroes (one of whom is pursuing a Ph.D. at Berkeley in addition to his side project changing the face of electronic music) record the sounds of, say, “The Operation Channel” on public access. Daniel and Schmidt actually negotiated with California plastic surgeons to gain access to and recording privileges in the operating room. Can you imagine going in for liposuction and encountering an awkward man in scrubs and glasses holding a mike? Apparently the vain and insecure were more than willing to let Daniel hold the mike up to their nose as the doctor broke and shaved the brittle bones, and were equally eager to proffer their cottage-cheese-like fannies as Matmos memorialized the liposuction swoosh of liquid fat evacuating its rightfully earned home. Anything in the name of art.

Once properly mixed and Matmotized, however, the sounds are an alternately atmospheric and toe-tapping soundscape without any immediately recognizable trace of their icky roots. I actually listened to this record a few times through without knowing the source: I thought I recognized a cicada, and I thought the sucking noises were made by someone’s mouth. I found certain tracks soothingly organic, compared, for example, with Autechre’s mathematical chatter. And they are that, but it really changed the way I felt to realize where the sounds were coming from: the mind substitutes all sorts of horrifying scenes from the already-horrifying landscape of technology-assisted beauty, of plastic barbie bodies and malleable flesh.

The album starts with an infectious beat of snips and squishy swooshes, underscored by moody synthesizer and punctuated by more atmospheric sections, which feature what sound like real drums and guitar, plus human voices saying “now I know why it fits,” and finishing with a cryptic “and so on.” This is the liposuction song, cleverly titled “lipostudio . . . and so on”. (Incidentally, Matmos’ website offers a complete list of all source sounds for the “detail oriented.”) From here we move on through laser eye surgery (“l.a.s.i.k,” with all the high pitched hiss and fuzz we might imagine), hearing aids (“spondee”), acupuncture (“ur tchun tan tse qi”), rat cages (“for felix (and all the rats)”, apparently dedicated to the couple’s pet), human skulls (“momento mori”) and nose jobs (“caliifornia rhinoplasty”).

Most exciting to these ears were “spondee”, “ur tchun tan tse qi” (how is anyone ever going to pronounce that??) and “california rhinoplasty.” The last features the clips and cracks of several different nose job operations to create a chillingly mobile beat, and is probably the most obvious candidate for Number One Gross Out — not recommended for the squeamish (though if you don’t tell them what they’re hearing they’ll be bopping around the dance floor). “Ur tchun tan tse qi” is the acupuncture song, apparently constructed from a device which measures the electrical response of the skin at the different pressure points. This is the song I found the most soothing. The different spikes and blips are laid out over an unshakable bassline, and the electrical response does truly at one point sound just like the high midsummer drone of cicadas, creating an atmosphere at once uncanny and wistful.

Finally, “spondee” features a certified audiologist reading different words, such as “oatmeal” or “bathtub”, each examples of spondees, which for those of you who may have forgotten your high school poetics are words whose two syllables get equal emphasis. After each word comes a sound that might or might not be a “real” reference to the sound named — “railroad” is followed by what sounds like the clang of a railroad crossing; “sunshine” evokes a witty cock crowing, and “oatmeal” drips and gushes in a way that we can only hope is truly related to the gray foodstuff and is not in fact the drooling of some other, more nefarious substance.

Which is why “spondee” seems so perfectly to express what’s going on with Matmos’ plan to both undermine and dominate the senses: it may be organic, but with these guys in charge you’ll be dancing to the sound of bones cracking in no time. Your ears belong to them, so take firm hold of your gag reflex and dive in.

Theoretical References 1

The main figure I am relating to in order to describe a theoretical background for performair is Lozano-Hemmer. His works exemplify how the two worlds of interaction design and installation art are not antipodes, but can merge and give life to incredibly simple but absolutely striking ideas. Ideally, this is the quality I would like to achieve with performair.

Lozano-Hemmer plays with the affordance – i.e. the physical characteristics of objects which suggest their function(s) – by reinventing it: everyday use objects come to new life and surprise the user/spectator for their “natural” behaviour. Every work is more that a mere installation, is pure poetry. Another relevant aspect within the pieces is how he works on the mapping, meaning the relationship between user controls and installation responses.

I selected among many three installations that I had the chance to see and interact with at the Mexican Pavillion during Art Biennale 2008 in Venice.

Wavefunction

Pulse Room

Frequency and Volume

Project Focusing

0. Aim
Performair is both a collaborative audio-visual performance and an interactive installation. It takes place by “misusing” traditional office devices – printers, fax machines, 56K modems, photocopiers, scanners etc. – originally designed to perform other functions, to play together as elements of an unconventional orchestra.

1. Name
Performair

2. Function
Performair allows users to direct an audio-visual performance of non-conventional instruments.

3. Mood
Intriguing, engaging, entertaining.

4. Users
The potential users are almost everybody. There is no age range nor any particular competence to have in order to interact with performair.

5. Other Stakeholders
Musicians (professionals and amateurs), theatres, multimedia festivals, museums, galleries.

6. Contexs of Use
The hardware used would be office devices – printers, fax machines, 56K modems, photocopiers, scanners etc. – as performing instruments and either a body tracking or a controller-based system.

Ideally the “natural” context for the project would be a design studio. However, since performair is an interactive installation which involves a performance, it could take place at a theatre or a multimedia festival, in a museum or a gallery.
In reason of the “misusage” of devices, it is also possible to decontextualise those devices and place them elsewhere: the theoretical stance behind the actions of denaturation/re-invention and decontextualisation is exactly the same.

7. Implementation
The central design challenge would be finding a natural and efficient “modus” of interaction between the user and the orchestra. Truly, the gestures and their detection would play a key role within the project.

8. Areas of Ignorance
Mostly the programming part of the project is not yet to be clear. The main issue would be how to make the users interact with the devices.

Motion Tracking
To detect the body motion Max/Msp (which I have some experience with) or EyesWeb could be used and then be interfaced with a microcontroller like Arduino to send imputs to the devices and control them.

Remote Control
A controller such as the Wiimote could be hacked in order to send imputs to Arduino and control the devices.

Accellerometers
Instead of using a wireless controller, only the accellerometers would be more than enough to send imputs to Arduino and control the devices.

9. Criteria for Success
There is something more about interaction than designing new things. Most of the time what appears to be a genial idea for us has been thought already by someone else.

Being a conscious designer to me means contributing to make this world a better place. To produce more “new” flaming cars (with old and conventional technology to please lobbies) than the actual market demands, to open everywhere tens of websites, blogs or accounts without even using them, to design unnecessary and valueless things is not design is simply pollution.

In my opinion, the design of new interactions includes the capability of re-using objects, tools and devices in original ways, so as to make the most of their potential. This would be the main criterion performair should satisfy, and obviously being engaging and entertaining at the same time.

To use old-fashioned devices for entertaining people, instead of trowing them away while they still work, might seem a naïve idea. Nonetheless, this idea has a meaning and a value; without it there would have been no “ready-made”, no Achille Castiglioni nor Bruno Munari.

listenAIR

Pacemaker
by Tonium
Pacemaker website

Amazing device, not really what I had in mind but something close to it..

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The Sound of Light @ Futuresonic 2006
by Toshio Iwai

All these are amazing projects, but the idea of listening to light is the most relevant to what I’m researching on..

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Toshio Iwai @ Ars Electronica 2006
Conference on Audio-Visual Interfaces

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Sonic Bed @ Ars Electronica 2006
by Kaffe Matthews
Sonic Bed website

The Sonic Bed is a purpose built portable venue which plays music that moves for the prone bodies of an audience, who can come lie in the bed alone or together.

It is a sonic and social experiment exploring our perception of sound, presenting an oversized bed as a polished wooden tank with steps to climb up to get in it. Visitors are invited to remove their shoes and come lie on and enjoy specially constructed pieces moving up and down and around their bodies. Subtle, dynamic, at times beyond hearing, Sonic Bed plays music to feel rather than just listen to.

Sonic Bed is also an instrument, to be played by anyone who is interested as well as commissioned composers to make pieces for it using the specially developed software interface, built by and being developed in collaboration with David Muth through our research.

This interface enables the maker to literally draw and record sounds through the 12 channel sound system hidden under the mattress and side panels whilst lying in it ; meaning that 12 independent sources of sound can be playing and moving independently at any one time.

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Save YourSelf!!! @ Ars Electronica 2007
by Hideyuki Hando, Tomofumi Yoshida, Junji Watanabe

The artists developed a novel sensation interface using galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS). The vestibular system is stimulated by weak current through the electrodes, placed behind the ears. GVS causes lateral virtual acceleration toward the anode, which shifts the sense of balance. The GVS interface can induce lateral walking diverging from intended straight line.

Based on this GVS interface technology, they produced an artwork on the subject of wavering identity in the modern society. In the artwork, the compact display is floating on the water.

An acceleration sensor is integrated into the display, and the obtained data is sent to the GVS interface. GVS is presented according to the data form the sensor. Any kind of vibration of the display disturbs the balance of the wearers. When the display falls over, they feel big swaying sensation. This GVS interaction makes them feel truly connected to the display. They keep on walking, while holding the tank of water. This artwork is intended to observe and hold your wavering identity (the display on the water) from the outer perspective.

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3D Sound Engine @ Flash on the Beach 08
by James Paterson + Amit Pitaru

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Thummer
by Jim Plamondon
Thummer website

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midiGun
midiGun website

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