ModImprov: Modularity, Immedicacy and Exchange in Laptop Improvisation

Reuben, Federico (2013) ModImprov: Modularity, Immedicacy and Exchange in Laptop Improvisation. [Project]

Abstract / Summary

This project explores musi­cal impro­vi­sa­tion through lap­top per­for­mance in inter­ac­tion with live instru­ments. Lap­top impro­vi­sa­tion presents unique tech­no­log­i­cal and artis­tic chal­lenges to the com­puter musi­cian. If the lap­top improviser’s desire is to encour­age exchange with other instru­men­tal­ists, s/he has to be able to gen­er­ate a reac­tion that is both spon­ta­neous and expe­di­tious and that at the same time is respon­sive and reflec­tive of the other musi­cians’ con­tri­bu­tions. Another con­cern for the lap­top per­former in rela­tion­ship to impro­vi­sa­tion is the abil­ity to pro­duce an adap­tive response to the instrumentalist’s ini­tia­tives and at the same time con­tribute new and inven­tive ideas. A mod­u­lar approach to lap­top per­for­mance is desired, where the per­former can access a wide vari­ety of tools and choose the ade­quate ones depend­ing on the musi­cal cir­cum­stances at a spe­cific moment.
The main out­put of this research is the devel­op­ment of a com­puter envi­ron­ment that com­bines the ver­sa­til­ity pro­vided by live cod­ing with the mod­u­lar­ity that can be achieved with the pow­er­ful Super­Col­lider pro­gram­ming lan­guage and syn­the­sis server, all within the imme­di­acy required to inter­act with live instru­ments. This is achieved through a command-line style envi­ron­ment, which accesses dif­fer­ent mod­ules con­tain­ing a vari­ety of SC func­tion­al­i­ties (machine lis­ten­ing, syn­the­sis def­i­n­i­tions, pat­terns, node prox­ies, etc.) as well as buffers and data­bases by exe­cut­ing short text com­mands in a ‘call win­dow’. The mod­ules can be accessed and dis­posed very quickly mak­ing it an ideal envi­ron­ment for improvisation.

View Record (staff only)