Playing The nUFO

• Isak Han
• i.han@udk-berlin.de
• Berlin University of the Arts, Berlin, Germany

Keywords: DMI, Sensor, Mapping, Wire-Less, HCI, Influx, Metacontrol, SuperCollider.

Developing the nUFO was my main occupation for the last 3 years; first as art academy graduation project, then in the frame of a grant. The work encompassed the design of Hardware & Software, interactions, sound design, development of a series production pipeline, company CI, website and marketing strategies.

Will new digital instruments become part of the current musico-industrial framework with composers, publishers, producers, sound engineers, performers, concert halls, media, critics, audience?

Or do they belong to a new age of musical practice?

What is a new digital instrument? How do we play it? Who composes for it?

Where does it fit in our culture? And is it a sustainable thing? (Magnusson 2019)

from Thor Magnusson’s recent book “sonic writing” (2019) pose pointed questions about societal and cultural implications of new DMIs, which perfectly apply to me as the creator of the nUFO. The composition process of this piece started with rendering my private answers to these questions with computer voices as a concrete sound source. Interacting with the nUFO, these sounds can be played back at intelligible rate, or gradually granulated to become purely sonic, at times rhythmical, textures. A choice of complex, internal-feedback-based synthesis algorithms serves as accompaniment to this quasi-human voice, and nUFO’s rich interaction affordances leave plenty of space for ad-hoc decisions about the flow of the piece. The juxtaposition of clearly audible speech and dense sound layers constitutes two complementary ways of addressing Magnusson’s questions, one semantic/rational and one experiential, which are intended to merge into a self-referential musical contribution to the xCoAx discourse.

References

• Alberto de Campo. 2014. “Lose control, gain influence - Concepts for Metacontrol.” In Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference.
• Thor Magnusson, 2019. Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions.