Sound Design for a System of 1000 Distributed Independent Audio-Visual Devices

Sam Ferguson, Anthony Rowe, Oliver Bown, Liam Birtles, and Chris Bennewith

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

This paper describes the sound design for Bloom, a light and sound installation made up of 1000 distributed independent audio-visual pixel devices, each with RGB LEDs, Wifi, Accelerometer, GPS sensor, and sound hardware. These types of systems have been explored previously, but only a few systems have exceeded 30-50 devices and very few have included sound capability, and therefore the sound design possibilities for large systems of distributed audio devices are not yet well understood. In this article we describe the hardware and software implementation of sound synthesis for this system, and the implications for design of media for this context.

Citation:

Sam Ferguson, Anthony Rowe, Oliver Bown, Liam Birtles, and Chris Bennewith. 2017. Sound Design for a System of 1000 Distributed Independent Audio-Visual Devices. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1176236

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{sferguson2017,
 abstract = {This paper describes the sound design for Bloom, a light and sound installation made up of 1000 distributed independent audio-visual pixel devices, each with RGB LEDs, Wifi, Accelerometer, GPS sensor, and sound hardware. These types of systems have been explored previously, but only a few systems have exceeded 30-50 devices and very few have included sound capability, and therefore the sound design possibilities for large systems of distributed audio devices are not yet well understood. In this article we describe the hardware and software implementation of sound synthesis for this system, and the implications for design of media for this context.},
 address = {Copenhagen, Denmark},
 author = {Sam Ferguson and Anthony Rowe and Oliver Bown and Liam Birtles and Chris Bennewith},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1176236},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 pages = {245--250},
 publisher = {Aalborg University Copenhagen},
 title = {Sound Design for a System of 1000 Distributed Independent Audio-Visual Devices},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2017/nime2017_paper0046.pdf},
 year = {2017}
}