Francisco Zamorano

TRINIDAD

Trinidad : Collaborative Music Interface for Novices from Francisco Zamorano on Vimeo.
Trinidad_ User Interface from Francisco Zamorano on Vimeo.

Trinidad (Trinity in English) is an audiovisual user interface for group musical performance. It allows novice users to engage in a collaborative musical experience with no previous musical training. The aim of the project is to explore the social dimensions of collaboration in music, where participants can communicate with each other through musical exploration.

Inspired in a Jazz or Rock trio, where one player performs the drums, other the bass and the third the guitar, the interface is designed for three participants. Each one of them is in charge of performing different sonic components: rhythm, base, melody.

Setup and Technology

The technology used for the interface consists of three cameras and three screens. Three players use lighted controllers that can be turned on and off with a switch, turning sounds on and off accordingly. When users move the lights, their position is captured by a videocamera connected to each of the three computers. This position is translated into coordinates that control different aspects of sound such as pitch or volume and at the same time it gives a visual feedback for the movement.

The main program was developed using openFrameworks. This program performs the reading of the movement using camera vision, translates that information into coordinates, and sends OSC messages to a patch in Max/Msp that produces the different sounds.