Interactive music composition

RHYME with strong imprints at Music Therapy conference

Birgitta — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 22:08:42 +0000

The RHYME project contributes with three papers, one poster and a round-table to the 8th Nordic Music Therapy Congress. The theme of the conference is “Music therapy across contexts” and is arranged in Oslo at the Norwegian Academy of Music from August 5^th to 8^th 2015.
Four of six RHYME members are contributing at the NMTC conference. Anders-Petter Andersson presents a paper on “Composing Interactive Music for Shifting Between Diverse Contexts”. Birgitta Cappelen presents a paper with the title “Vision for the Future of Music Technology for Music Therapy and Music and Health”. Karette Stensæth presents a poster with the title “Will the future home environment be musical, digital and interactive?” and together with Ingelill Eide the paper “Umberto Eco’s notions ‘The open work’ and ‘A field of possibilities’: New perspectives for music therapy?” Even Ruud is chairing a round-table with the title “From Music Therapy to Music and Health”, a theme of great importance to the RHYME project.
Read the paper abstracts here.

RHYME at NIME 2014

Birgitta — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 09:52:37 +0000

On 3rd July RHYME member Anders-Petter Andersson made a presentation of a paper by himself, Birgitta Cappelen and Fredrik Olofsson at NIME 2014. The title of their paper is “Designing Sound for Recreation and Well-Being”. NIME, New Interfaces for Musical Expression, is the most important conference and community within music and technology. RHYME has for several years now been one of the few projects in this community focusing on developing musical artefacts and expression in a health related context. This is the third time RHYME has published at the NIME conference. NIME 2014 was held at Goldsmiths College at University of London, 30 June – 4 July 2014.

RHYME at ESSA 2014

Birgitta — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 16:16:55 +0000

On 29th of June RHYME member Anders-Petter Andersson held a presentation on the ESSA 2014 Conference. ESSA is the European Sound Studies Association annual conference. This time the Conference name was Sound Studies: Mapping the Field and was held in Copenhagen from 27th to 29 of June 2014.
ESSA is a community that has emerged from various traditional disciplines within the humanities and social sciences related to sound and music, such as musicology, art history, media and cultural studies, psychology, architecture and urban planning. Sound studies has been associated with inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches.
Anders-Petter Andersson presentation was titled “Creating Musical Actors” and is about the musical work in RHYME and Polly, the 4th generation of Co-creative Tangibles.

In his presentation Andersson argues that music is not longer only the sound object, instrument or piece of art, but the services around it. These are services in the form of actors with characters that behave coherent as they answer back musically, take initiative and develop over time. With perspectives from drama, game theory, actor-network-theory as well as from learning theories on motivation, Andersson explores two design cases from RHYME.

Creating an Open Musical Experience

Birgitta — Fri, 30 May 2014 16:15:38 +0000

The RHYME development team are currently working on creating the music for the 4th generation of RHYME Co-creative Tangibles. The goal is to meet the demands from the users, music therapists and focus groups, to choose the music of their own liking (self-regulation), both well known music and more abstract soundscapes. We edit and de-compose a linear tune into musically significant elements. Elements that the users can re-compose, based on advanced musical rules into a continuous musical experience, by interacting together. The different users, both at home and on a distance, can interact and co-create the music together. The co-creation can be achieved in many ways: through physical interaction in the Co-creative Tangibles; through a graphical iPad interface; or through writing compositions in a high level musical Twitter language on the mobile phone.
The 4th generation Co-creative Tangibles, named Polly, will offer the users a broad range of musical styles from beat-based popular music, children songs, classical music to more contemporary musical experiences. Currently (June 2014) we have about 40 different interactive visual and musical soundscapes the users can select from by choosing preferred Scene Cards with RFID tag. Under are some of the Scene Cards Polly offers so far, but this part of Polly is in continues development, so we can offer new visual and musical experiences :

Developing 4th generation, distributed and social media

Birgitta — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 12:33:55 +0000

Currently we are working intensively with the development of the 4th generation of Co-creative Tangibles. The 4th generation of Co-creative Tangibles are in the project plan defined as “distributed and social media”. In the RHYME project this means that the users can co-create across different media, space and time. For instance that a sibling can interact through a smartphone or tablet from another place, with her sister or brother and the Co-creative Tangibles at home.

In the 4th generation we try to accomplish, develop and realize as many of the ideas, suggestions and wishes as possible, that we have received from the users, care persons, families and experts from several fields throughout the whole project. These many ideas, suggestions and wishes have been articulated through participation in the many workshops, tests, interviews, discussions and observations during the whole RHYME project.

Some of the users’ wishes, such as dynamic microphone input to the music together with different forms of sensorial stimulating input sensors in a mobile interactive thing, has been a major technological challenge. These user wishes have compelled us to develop six different hardware platforms throughout the project, which was not something we planned to do, but had to do because of its importance for the users and music therapists.

Including direct light response and projection in the tangible objects has also been an important user demand that has been a great design challenge. We try to include and prioritize as many user wishes as possible into a new 4th generation of distributed and social co-creative tangibles with new shapes, structures, surfaces, hardware, software, music, set design, positive experiences and mastery levels, personalization and interaction forms. Here are some pictures from the ongoing development process:

New hardware solutions under development:

New shapes under development:

New materials, surfaces and joinery under development:

New light solutions under development:

New APP with graphical user interface under development:

RHYME PhD defended, approved and celebrated

Birgitta — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:00:59 +0000

Friday October 26, RHYME member Anders-Petter Andersson, defended his PhD in musicology. The thesis with the title Interactive Music Composition explores the design dimensions of interaction, narrative structure, composition rule and music in Generation 1 of RHYME’s co-creative tangibles, ORFI. The thesis discusses and explores if and how one can compose computer based interactive music. In other words; How to design interactive music, that is musically satisfying for an interacting audience, consisting of both laymen and skilled musicians.