The Input Devices and Music Interaction Lab has uploaded videos from a concert held in February 2020, in which participating composers from the CIRMMT T-Stick Music Creation Workshop presented their new works. The videos linked below show some of their amazing variety, including installation-like pieces in which the T-Stick is fixed to a stand, works for dancers, laptop ensembles, and interactive visuals.
Workshop on the T-Stick @CIRMMT
Composer/instrumentalist D. Andrew Stewart performing the soprano T-Stick.
On Saturday November 16, 2019, CIRMMT hosted a workshop on the T-Stick digital musical instrument. The workshop included presentations by myself, composer D. Andrew Stewart (the other originator of the T-Stick), Eduardo Meneses, Takuto Fukuda, Mathias Bredholt, and Mathias Kirkegaard. Presentations covered the history, design, and development of the instrument; mapping and performance practice; and current advances including embedding libmapper and algorithms for high-level gestural descriptors in the instrument firmware and the addition of programmable force-feedback hardware to the physical structure of the DMI.
The workshop also served to launch the 2019 T-Stick Creation Project, a new program supporting composition for the T-Stick which will culminate in a concert performance in February 2020.
This workshop explores the development of compositional and performance practices for the T-Sticks—a family of gestural musical controllers designed to sense performer interactions such as touching, tapping, twisting, tilting, squeezing, and shaking. Joseph Malloch—the T-Stick designer (Dalhousie University)—and D. Andrew Stewart—composer/T-Stick instrumentalist (University of Lethbridge)—will discuss the instrument design and compositional possibilities for the T-Sticks, followed by a hands-on workshop for the practical use of the T-Stick, including how to set up, perform and notate. Finally, the workshop will include a report on the CIRMMT Student Award project, Between design, composition, and performance: expanding and embedding a high-level gesture vocabulary for the T-Stick, by Eduardo Meneses and Takuto Fukuda.
New videos from Ex)Situ
Ex)Situ recently released four short videos presenting projects related to gesture based interaction on mobile phones. Two of the videos—Fieldward and Expressive Keyboard—are related to research I pursued while working there as a postdoc:
MINT – Music in New Technologies Forum
The MINT Forum 2018 is devoted to the advancement of music through new technologies. How can advances in new technologies change the experience of making music (from the musician’s perspective) and listening to music (from the audience’s perspective)? What are the musical and performative implications and applications of the vast array of new technologies that are now emerging?
WHERE: University of Kings College, Halifax, NSWHEN: 16–18 November, 2018
Halifax Explosion Installation
This project is a collaboration between GEM Lab and the Narratives in Space+Time Society (NiS+TS). It serves as a public platform for exploring the past and present urban geography of the area surrounding the Narrows where the Halifax Explosion took place in December 1917. The tabletop consists of a semi-opaque glass projection surface representing the harbour and solid pine CNC-shaped forms for land. Projection mapping is used to project various content on the tabletop, including aerial photographs and historical maps showing the devastation caused by the explosion. Additional computer-generated content can be interactively explored using a Microsoft HoloLens head-mounted display.
Visit the installation at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic until 5 November 2018. Previously installed at the Dalhousie Art Gallery.
Joseph Malloch 