The team is developing a web-based ecosystem of software and hardware to create embodied collective interaction with media, and particularly with sound and music. In this context, the challenge we propose is to invent, design and develop novel scenarios, interactive paradigms, gameplay – by means of any artistic form with a strong emphasis on sonic aspects – that implement, support and/or question human / human interaction through the mediation of these technologies.
Constella(c)tions
In a close collaboration with the Sound Music Movement team (IRCAM) this project proposes the creation of a sonic environment from which emerges an interactive and collective musical work. Configured as a mix of musical set and installation, this musical space will have cell phones as main tools and instruments. It proposes to shift towards a new paradigm for musical score through the appropriation of web audio tools, mobile technologies and musical instruments. In this context, the musical score is replaced by a collective game whose rules are implied in the instruments interface, visual representation, spatial arrangement, forms of interaction, and sound profiles. The participants (audience) are invited to navigate between codes and different types of visual representation: QR codes, drawings, tablatures, calligrams. In this proposition, music writing is conceived as collective actions that unify sound, sound representation and gestures in a multidimensional space. This results in highly shifty musical and interaction forms that alternatesconstella(c)tions and pop-up musical forms.
Michelle Agnes Magalhaes
Michelle Agnes Magalhaes is a Brazilian composer whose music explores the limits between gesture and writing, composition and improvisation. She has been awarded fellowships, residences and commissions from Radcliffe Institute (Harvard University), Fapesp, Camargo Foundation, Villa Sträuli, Brazilian Culture Minister, Fondazione Giorgio Cini Venezia, IRCAM and Siemens Foundation. Her compositions are about the production of sound and physicality. She focus on raw materials, creating complex sounds inside forms that are geometric and structured. Magalhaes also places a high premium on the engagement of the musician's body with her performance, as well as new approaches to traditional instruments and instrumentation.
The goal of the Constella(c)tions project was to develop new paradigms for screenless and collective musical interaction, repurposing web and mobile technologies. Constella(c)tions unfolds as a set of collective musical games and interactive pieces involving various gestures, body movements and action of performers and/or public within open musical environments (open work). The project is inscribed in a practice-based methodology with the aim of exploring and developing further technological tools dedicated to playing sounds using the motion sensors embedded in smartphones. In this context, the residency allowed the composer to create new musical pieces, involving various performers, from professional music ensemble to pedagogical action in schools, as well as including the general public in performances. Feedback and continued discussions and experimentations allowed the team to constantly and reflectively revise both the interaction design and technology. The gained experience ultimately allowed them to design a new version of the technological ecosystem. The results are thus intrinsically of a hybrid nature, beyond strict scientific and artistic boundaries, and allowed to reconsider the technical setup from a novel epistemic point of view. Several new projects have already been engaged, with dancers, musicians, as well as pedagogical actions. The project created novel ways to engage the public, aiming at fostering social interaction and inclusion.
Final video of the residency
Interview with Michelle-Agnès Magalhaes at CENTQUATRE Paris, during the STARTS Residencies Days
