2003 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression	Special Event

NIME-03

Using "Jitter" to Search the "DarkMatter" for "StarDust"

A Multi-Media Performance and System Analysis

Richard Boulanger & Greg Thompson

with special guest

Max V. Mathews

Room C201 - Saturday, May 24 at 16:30

Abstract: "StarDust" and "DarkMatter" are two of Boulanger's most recent real-time multi-media compositions that use a Mathews' Radio Baton to trigger, transform, process, and spatialize a quartet of physical models in 4-channel surround using Max/MSP. These delicate audio textures are loosely synchronized with a visual quartet "playing" Hubble Space Photos and Saleh Earth Photos that are triggered, transformed, processed, and sequenced, from another Radio Baton driving cycling74's new "Jitter" software. On a third PowerBook, an OrangeMicro "iBot" firewire camera is feeding a set of Jitter algorithms that remember, ponder, wander, wonder, and transform the actions of the two radio-baton performers - literally reflecting on the performance as it happens. This special NIME2003 presentation, featuring a 4-channel multi-screen performance of Boulanger's "StarDust" will be followed by an overview of the three systems designed for the compositions DarkMatter and StarDust: The RadioStatic Synthesizer, The RadioJitter Visualizer, and The StarGazer Wanderizer. The presentation will focus on the use of Jitter and the Jitter programming; the ways that the three systems loosely connect and communicate with each other; and the ways that the newest 3D Radio Batons MIDI controllers of "the father of computer music," Dr. Max Mathews, allow musicians to literally explore auditory, musical, visual and actual space.

StarDust (2003): A Real-time 4-channel MultiMedia Work for Two G4 PowerBooks and Two Mathews Radio Batons

by
Richard Boulanger

(Realtime Synthesis and Image Processing via Max/MSP/Jitter)
(Original Images and Movies by Jana Saleh)
(Additional images from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope)

Richard Boulanger - Radio Baton (audio)
Jana Saleh - Radio Baton (video)
Greg Thompson - Custom Audio and Video Software Development

StarDust is an interactive multimedia work developed in Max/MSP/Jitter under the realtime audio and video control of two Mathews Radio Batons. A quartet of audio "players" is paralleled and synchronized with a quartet of video players. The audio is synthesized and modified in realtime using four of the models/instruments from The Perry Cook synthesis toolkit - Guiro, BowedBar, Wuter, and Shaker. These are triggers, shaped, looped, processed, and mixed by the movements of the radio batons. The piece is in quad, and each of the players can be localized in any of the four speakers either directly, randomly, or by the movement of the baton. Likewise, the video system features four "photo/movie players" whose sequencing is activated and synchronized by a corresponding audio player. These moving images, from the Hubble Telescope, and from the collection of stills by Jana Saleh, are selected, frozen, zoomed, traversed, blurred, granularized, distorted, filtered, colorized, etc. by the movements of the radio batons.

This piece is inspired by Hubble's grand and glorious new views of the heavens above and the revelations, answers, and endless questions that they bring with them. What, when, where, how, who, why ...am I? ...are we? StarDust grew from, and was inspired by, the ideas, suggestions, and significant contributions of my two student collaborators Jana Saleh and Greg Thompson. This piece is humbly and gratefully dedicated to them. Truly, they are the star stuff of this work.

RICHARD BOULANGER (rboulanger@berklee.edu) was born in 1956 and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Music from the University of California, San Diego where he worked at the Center for Music Experiment's Computer Audio Research Lab. He has continued his computer music research at Bell Labs, CCRMA, The Media Lab @ MIT, Interval Research, Analog Devices, and IBM. He has collaborated extensively with Max Mathews, Barry Vercoe, and John ffitch. Boulanger's music is recorded on the NEUMA label

ABOUT THE RADIO BATON: Developed by the "father of computer music," Max Mathews (m.v.mathews@worldnet.att.net) , the Radio Baton is a system aimed at providing a more expressive way of performing on computers (http://csounds.com/mathews/) . It allows the performer to freely move two "batons" (radio transmitters) in three-dimensional space above a sensor surface. The sensors trace the locations of the ends of the batons and send their X, Y, and Z coordinates to a computer that is programmed to interpret the performer's gestures in a musically useful way.