The plants that was just leaves when we first got here started to bloom. It is amazing how quickly days pass by. Swelovenia is always dark and gray that I am starting to loose the boarder of one day to the other… days are becoming one big blob of a big winter day. We wake up as the light comes up (which is usually not so early), eat breakfast and work until someone gets too hungry (usually me), take a lunch break and work again until another hunger hits one of us. It is in a way a perfect residency because we are totally concentrated on working, on the other hand we lack meeting new people and getting inspired. I wonder how it would have been to be in real Ljubliana.
Last night, we talked a bit about how to continue the development. Organelle is a small computer running PureData. It came with quite a lot of nice synth patches, there are community of users offering more patches, and you can make your own PD patch to it. It is a very good tool, offering many different options… but sometimes too many options is a killer. So far, Mag has been exploring Synthesizer sound with Analog Style patch, and live recording and field recording play back with DJ patch record. She was also interested in Tapey which is a mix of two… you can record short sample, and use it like synthesizer.
The question is how we want to use the costume. Is it a general interface like midi keyboard that works with any/multiple Organelle patches? or is it made for specific patch and adjusted to specific song? In a way, nice thing about having costume/on body interface is to be expressive when you play a digital instrument. When Mag is playing her trombone or megaphone, she is very expressive. When playing the Organelle knobs and buttons, it is less so. In our first test sessions, you can already see these expressiveness when she is wearing sensors and playing with Organelle. I would be very curious to see how she would develop her expression with this interface and perform her song.
Making universal interface that works for all the patches is difficult. So we start with specific, and develop further from there. Mag “maybe” is making a new song for the costume.
I spent whole afternoon hacking Analog Style patch to read out sequence files and play back the notes according to the sequence you create. I thought it is easy, but the Organelle patch is actually quite advanced and it is not easy to find where to intercept the notes. All the sequences that you create (you can use the AUX button on the Organelle to record sequences) is stored in a folder as text file. You need to read out the text file in text object, sort out only note-on lines (it has timestamp, note number and velocity(0/100) for on and off) to play back the note you want to play. I made the elbow sensor as the trigger to these note, so when you bend your elbow, the note on the sequence plays back (and LED flashes). In the first test, I forgot to send note-off signal (note number, 0) and it ended up eventually all the note playing all together and you can not hear the difference anymore. Then I added note-off after 500ms of note-on using delay object. Perhaps this is not a good solution, as when you play quicker than 500ms, it plays next key without sending the note-off, and that note stays forever… quick fix is never a good idea. I should play back the note-off before playing new note… This is a task for tomorrow.
The test result seems promising. Mag seems to be enjoying playing. She looks like the space lady. This is a good start. To be continued…
In the evening, we leave to Göteborg as Mag has to work tomorrow, and I and Ingo wanted to meet a friend who lives in the city. Tomorrow is our day off. We will be back on Saturday.