Cyclops: Designing an eye-controlled instrument for accessibility and flexible use

William C Payne, Ann Paradiso, and Shaun Kane

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

The Cyclops is an eye-gaze controlled instrument designed for live performance and improvisation. It is primarily mo- tivated by a need for expressive musical instruments that are more easily accessible to people who rely on eye track- ers for computer access, such as those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). At its current implementation, the Cyclops contains a synthesizer and sequencer, and provides the ability to easily create and automate musical parameters and effects through recording eye-gaze gestures on a two- dimensional canvas. In this paper, we frame our prototype in the context of previous eye-controlled instruments, and we discuss we designed the Cyclops to make gaze-controlled music making as fun, accessible, and seamless as possible despite notable interaction challenges like latency, inaccu- racy, and “Midas Touch.”

Citation

William C Payne, Ann Paradiso, and Shaun Kane. 2020. Cyclops: Designing an eye-controlled instrument for accessibility and flexible use. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4813204

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{NIME20_112,
 abstract = {The Cyclops is an eye-gaze controlled instrument designed for live performance and improvisation. It is primarily mo- tivated by a need for expressive musical instruments that are more easily accessible to people who rely on eye track- ers for computer access, such as those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). At its current implementation, the Cyclops contains a synthesizer and sequencer, and provides the ability to easily create and automate musical parameters and effects through recording eye-gaze gestures on a two- dimensional canvas. In this paper, we frame our prototype in the context of previous eye-controlled instruments, and we discuss we designed the Cyclops to make gaze-controlled music making as fun, accessible, and seamless as possible despite notable interaction challenges like latency, inaccu- racy, and “Midas Touch.”},
 address = {Birmingham, UK},
 author = {Payne, William C and Paradiso, Ann and Kane, Shaun},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.4813204},
 editor = {Romain Michon and Franziska Schroeder},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {July},
 pages = {576--580},
 presentation-video = {https://youtu.be/G6dxngoCx60},
 publisher = {Birmingham City University},
 title = {Cyclops: Designing an eye-controlled instrument for accessibility and flexible use},
 url = {https://www.nime.org/proceedings/2020/nime2020_paper112.pdf},
 year = {2020}
}