Jaime Oliver – general concept, technical design, programming
Matthew Jenkins – concept, design
The Silent Drum Controller is a transparent drum shell with an elastic head. As one presses it, the head deforms and a variety of shapes with peaks are created reflecting the shape of the hand. These shapes are captured by a video camera that sends these images to the computer, which analyzes them and outputs the tracked parameters.
These variables are sent to a mapping / score-control system. Through several discrete gestures the performers gestures control the progression through an internal score, which is in charge of moving between different mappings, while the continuous gestures shape the sounds themselves.
One of the projects was the Octable, an eight-sided table with controls for four musicians playing manually and algorithmically-derived bass, percussion, and lead parts, and operating a mixer.
The Octable is a musical table with four stations: bass, drums, lead, and a mixer. The bass, drum, and lead stations are basically 3 separate instruments brought together by the mixer.
Myriam de Sainte-Catherine: research director
Christophe Havel: composer
Various Students
Christophe Havel writes —
“The air percussion is a DMI using the flocks of birds (FOB) as sensors put at the tip of drum sticks, receiving electromagnetic waves produced by a cubic emitter, and sending position and orientation information back to a computer. The particularity of this system is that the percussionist strikes in the air, with no physical support, though virtual objects that are placed in the space around him, relying with his traditional percussionist knowledge.”
