Kevin Schlei

NIME Proceedings Online – Paper Available

Kevin — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:47:17 +0000

The folks at NIME have uploaded the full NIME++ 2010 proceedings. Here is the permanent link: http://www.educ.dab.uts.edu.au/nime/PROCEEDINGS/

The direct link to my paper is here: ‘Relationship-Based Instrument Mapping of Multi-Point Data Streams Using a Trackpad Interface.’

I’m always happy to hear comments and feedback. You can see (old) videos of the instruments described in the paper on my Vimeo page.

There were some notable presentations and projects I’d like to link to from here. Alvaro Cassinelli presented a tracking system that follows the curvature of any drawn or sensed object with a laser, as described in the paper ’scoreLight: playing with a human-sized laser pick-up.’ Demo video here.

Ajay Kapur presented his work in organizing a cross-departmental approach to building a robotic orchestra (‘A Pedagogical Paradigm for Musical Robotics’). Music and theater students work together to apply their skill sets to the creation of an ensemble where humans and machines perform together. Very inspirational.

Kris Kitani developed an analysis / performance augmenting algorithm for live percussion performance (‘ImprovGenerator: Online Grammatical Induction for On-the-Fly Improvisation Accompaniment’). If this were incorporated into the above mentioned robot orchestra, I can imagine some really exciting results.

And finally, Andrew McPherson has brought the piano to its next evolutionary phase with ‘Augmenting the Acoustic Piano with Electromagnetic String Actuation and Continuous Key Position Sensing’. This one is best understood by watching a video of his elegant system in action.

NIME 2010 in Sydney

Kevin — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:37:03 +0000

The conference was fantastic – lots of creative energy and some truly inspired projects and research. As for my presentation, it went quite well. I got some very nice feedback from other presenters and conference attendees about the multi-point instruments.

Once the paper publication goes online I will link to it from here. There are plenty of clever works that are worth mentioning. In the meantime, check out the flickr photostream for an idea of the conference atmosphere.

Multi-point paper accepted into NIME 2010

Kevin — Sun, 02 May 2010 21:21:35 +0000

My new paper on multi-point mapping strategies, titled ‘Relationship-Based Instrument Mapping of Multi-Point Data Streams Using a Trackpad Interface,’ has been accepted into the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) 2010 conference in Sydney. The paper describes my analysis system for dealing with multi-point interfaces. I will be presenting at the conference, and will post the link to the paper and proceedings when it gets published.

MAM After Dark – Pictures

Kevin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:51:50 +0000

The night was great – lots of fantastic art pieces and a fun atmosphere. Part of the fun was watching people figure out the interactive element to the piece (or, in most cases, not figure it out).

Here are some pictures I found of our installation. They are from a JS Online blog, the MAM After Dark site, and the Milwaukee After Dark photostream on Flickr. Click on the image to go to the gallery.

MAM After Dark – ‘Street Seen’ & ‘Here and Now’

Kevin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:43:36 +0000

Tomorrow, Friday March 12, the Milwaukee Art Museum is hosting one of its ‘After Dark’ exhibitions. I’ll be there presenting a work with MIAD student Leticia Figueroa as part of MIAD’s ‘Here and Now’ version of ‘Street Seen.’ We put together an altered stop sign – animated, interactive, a bit pushy, but quirky and fun. There are about a dozen other MIAD student / Milwaukee artist pairs that have been working on pieces of their own for the show. It should be a fun night!

Info and tickets:
http://www.mam.org/afterdark/?p=647

[tap-array] – Pd code

Kevin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:29:32 +0000

I’m nearing the release of the multipoint synth I’ve been working on, but in the meantime here is some useful code for GUI controlled arrays in Pd. I call these ‘tap-array’ objects, since they were originally designed for a tap delay system I’ve been developing. There are also table read and write objects to go along with them that mimic those built into Pd: [tapwrite], [tapread], [taposc4~].

The idea is that table control can be incorporated into patches in a more expressive way – that array data can be musically manipulated in real time.

Download (Pd – 6 files, .zip)

Files and installation instructions included.

Questions CD

Kevin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:48:46 +0000

A while ago a piece of mine, Fractal Constructions No. 1, was featured on a compilation CD of new works commemorating the 100th anniversary of Ives’ The Unanswered Question. The CD is called ‘Questions’ and was released a few months ago. There is a ton of great music on this CD – work by Yehuda Yannay, David and James Bohn, Jerod Sommerfeldt, and more. You can check it out at the Bohn media store and listen to some excerpts of my piece here as well.

CD cover:

MStretchSynth and MDrumSynth Demo Videos

Kevin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:03:41 +0000

I’ve finished two demos of a multitouch instrument I’ve been programming. You can see the videos on Vimeo:

The synth uses the Macbook Pro trackpad, but it can accept any multitouch interface that adheres to the TUIO specification. I programmed the instrument to react to the relationships between the points, instead of simply mapping the multiple points’ coordinates directly to synthesizer parameters. This adds a level of interpretation to the raw multi-point stream, but the result is a much more dynamic instrument. MDrumSynth, for example, allows you to ‘mute’ the trackpad like a drumhead by holding down multiple fingers before tapping. I mapped that parameter to the long decay sound you can hear in the video.

I’m still very much in the development stages. There is a lot of polishing to do before I look into distributing the programs.