3D Musical Instrument

3D Musical Instrument

Concept: An abstract 3D Visualization of a small spark's journey inside of a electronic music synthesizer with a famaliar music interface to travel through and interact with the world. The user's input into the world results in a unified visual and aural experience. Coupled with a MIDI keyboard controller, this software was presented as an installation in the 2002 Spring ITP Show.

Inspirations: Futurist visions of the insides of a computer, such as the movie Tron or videogame Rez. The musically tied visual effects are inspired by visual works that in which music is an integral part of the experience, such as music video games (Space Channel 5 or Samba Di Amigo) or movies such as Fantasia.

Interface design: The user can interact with the world with either a conventional computer keyboard of a MIDI piano keyboard. The different interfaces lead to completely different modes of interaction with the world. With a regular keyboard the user will be more aware of the relationships between the letters that appear on the screen, with the MIDI keyboard a more musical approach to the interaction emerges.

To interact with the world the user simply presses the letter keyes on the keyboard or the labeled white keys of the MIDI piano keyboard. After a certain amount of interaction, a word pops up on the screen. If the user chooses to type the word into the text output window the world and sounds wil transform, visualizing the dynamic nature of this synthesizer-world.

Technical Design: All of the objects in the world are modeled using primitives in 3d Studio Max. The sounds were edited using Pro Tools and Digital Performer. The world and sounds were laid out and programmed in Lingo using Shockwave 3d. MIDI interface programming was done using the MIDIio Director Xtra.

All Materials Copyright © 2004 Edward Tang. All materials on this site including interactive programs, images, videos, and text are the property of Edward Tang and is protected by copyright and are not to be reproduced without permission. All Rights Reserved.