Aug 2007
Recordings for New Experiment
21/08/07 12:12 Filed in: Research
Today I was in the lab with Jonas and Bobby making blue-screen recordings for my next research experiment. The new masters' students are coming in next week, and the experiment is almost ready to go. For this test I am looking into how different factors affect our auditory visual environment's transportation, realism and presence. The experiment consists of musical performances being presented in a variety of acoustic and visual conditions and asks the listener to:
On a scale from 1-7 how much do you agree with the following statement:
1.Given the visual display, the musical performance that I hear sounds completely implausible.
Transportation/Realism:
1. I felt as though I was in the same room as the performer.
2. I felt immersed in the environment.
*Other questions to be developed in the next week.
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ICAD 07 Tintinnabulate Performance Added to Visual Media
13/08/07 13:15 Filed in: Research
I have posted an except of the Tintinnabulate performance at the International Conference on Auditory Displays (ICAD). This performance occurred June 10th, 2007 at 8 P.M. EST. This was a co-located performance between RPI (Albany), McGill (Montreal), Stanford (Palo Alto), and the University of Korea. A sample of the performance can be found on the visual media page. The complete performance, along with the Tintinnabulate performance at the SIGGRAPH concert will be released on DVD in the near future.
Columbia County Triathlon
12/08/07 19:06 Filed in: Triathlon
Today I competed in the 3rd annual Columbia County Triathlon, about 40 miles south of Albany. It was a great race. I had my most successful effort to date, coming in 2nd overall, and 1st in my age group out of a field of around 200. This was a sprint + distance race, which included a 1/4 mile swim, 20 mile bike, and 4.5 mile run. My time was 1:31:50.
Strongest Ever Wins Award
11/08/07 18:31 Filed in: Composing
"Strongest Ever", a film for which I composed the soundtrack for, which was produced by the CRL media group, won best locally produced film in the New England film festival this past weekend. Check out the website for more information.
Inclusions
09/08/07 14:43 Filed in: Composing
I just recently finished composing the soundtrack for the Flawless Films' feature length movie: "inclusions". It should be premiering in film festivals later this month. The teaser can be found at the CRL video page: http://www.crlvideo.com/. This was a great project to work on and the final product was quite good. Good story, good acting, good producing. If you are in the New England area, I would highly recommend checking it out. As soon as it comes out, I will post some samples from the score to listen to on the website.
Composition Sample 2006-07
09/08/07 14:30 Filed in: Composing
I have been doing music production and composing for the CRL media group for the past year. They deal with everything from commercials to feature length films. There are two samples from commercials on my media page. A few more samples, that I provided music for from the past year are found on the CRL media group webpage: Graftek Systems, LaSalle Academy, Strongest Ever.
Year-to-Date Triathlon Results
09/08/07 13:36 Filed in: Triathlon
8/04/2007 Fronhofer Tool Triathlon - Jackson, NY
Olympic 2:13:42 Overall: 10th Age Group: 3rd
7/15/2007 Pine Bush Triathlon - Guilderland, NY
Sprint 58:51 Overall: 8th Age Group: 1st
7/14/2007 Geneva Triathlon- Geneva, NY
Sprint 1:13:50 Overall: 19th Age Group:1st
6/10/2007 Keuka Lake Triathlon- Penn Yan, NY
Olympic 2:30:22 Overall: 22nd Age Group: 3rd
Olympic 2:13:42 Overall: 10th Age Group: 3rd
7/15/2007 Pine Bush Triathlon - Guilderland, NY
Sprint 58:51 Overall: 8th Age Group: 1st
7/14/2007 Geneva Triathlon- Geneva, NY
Sprint 1:13:50 Overall: 19th Age Group:1st
6/10/2007 Keuka Lake Triathlon- Penn Yan, NY
Olympic 2:30:22 Overall: 22nd Age Group: 3rd
My Bike
09/08/07 13:28 Filed in: Triathlon
This is the bike that I have been using this season for triathlon. I have gone through quite a few frames before finding the one I truly like. This is a 1997 Javelin aero frame. What's cool and unique about this bike is the fact that it does not have a top tube like a conventional bike. This allows me to keep my knees in when I pedal and gives me an additional aerodynamic advantage by reduce my frontal area. The drive-train is full dura-ace 9 speed. I like the 9 speed components (except the crank, where I have opted to go for the newer, 2-piece DA7800 model), because of the ease of maintenance, cost-effectiveness, and I feel like it just plain shifts easier than the 10-speed stuff. I ride with the seat pushed all the way forward, which makes an effective seat-angle of around 81 degrees. Riding this steep puts less stress on the muscles that I use for the run leg and keeps me feeling fresher. The front wheel is a Zipp 404 rim laced to a real-design hub with DT spokes. The rear wheel is a full-carbon aerospoke. What I like about this wheel, is that it can fully hide in the shadow of the massive seat tube. This bike is by far the most rewarding one that I have ridden so far, and I suspect I will keep it for quite a while. I plan on having the steel frame (yes it is steel!), sandblasted and refinished this winter, as the paint is bubbling in some spots. I may keep it black or put a white powder-coat on it.
Distance Piano Teaching
09/08/07 13:00 Filed in: Design
I have been working with piano teacher Adrian Cohen to develop a network application to link student and teacher over the internet for the purpose of distance teaching. This software package uses a custom Max/MSP application to link popular music and communication software . The teacher and student can each see visually what they are playing on each other's computers. In addition, the teacher can control pre-arranged songs in Apple's Garage Band for jamming and teaching. This software will be available for purchase in late fall '07.
ViMiC Update
09/08/07 08:55 Filed in: Research
Hello Everyone. This is the new version of my website. I have decided to integrate the blog into the page to make everything more streamlined. All the previous blog entries have been taken from the blogspot archive so ignore the dates. Lots of great things have been happening this summer. The most important change is moving the performance space from the back lab to the front lab. The front lab is a more uniform room as well as being slightly larger. It's been quite a while since the last post to I will give you a summary of what has been going on. I have been studying auditory/visual interaction in musicians in virtual environments using ViMiC. I have published two conference papers, AES and JMP. I gave a talk at the JMP user's conference in june about the research and it was well received. The AES paper will be given as a talk at the conference in october. In addition to the papers, we have had two successful concerts at the ICAD and SIGGRAPH conferences. The ICAD conference was a four-way performance between musicians at RPI, McGill in Montreal, Korea, and Stanford in California. This was the first concert where Virtual Microphone Control was used on one computer, in a Max/MSP environment. This concert went quite well, although there was some glitches and problems in the setup. The SIGGRAPH concert, which occurred on August 5th and 6th, 2007, went much better. This concert was between RPI, San Diego (where the conference was being held), and Stanford. This was the first concert where everything went as planned, with no last minute rewiring. It was quite a complicated setup, and I've included the channel assignments below. This concert was recorded at all three sites, and I managed to multi-track record all of the audio inputs. This should make a nice DVD, because the performance was quite good. Other than that, it is time to look forward to the year. Classes are starting soon and while performing is fun, I need to focus on my primary research, in order to get a peer-reviewed journal publication. I will continue to look at auditory/visual interactions as well as a systematic calibration of the ViMiC system.
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New Website and Progress of ViMiC Max External
09/08/07 08:55 Filed in: Research
Another Successful Transmission Another Successful 8 Channel Transmission with Stanford
09/08/07 08:55 Filed in: Research
Today we had another successful transmission with Stanford in 8 channels. For this we had numerous musicians on both sides working together to have a collective improvisation. All in all it was very successful, the latency was low enough so that we could have complicated interactions between spaces.
8 Channel Transmission with Stanford
09/08/07 08:54 Filed in: Research
Last Thursday we had a successful 8 Channel bi-directional audio/visual transfer with Stanford. This was the first time in performance where both sides of musicians were able to communicate and improvise without any major latency issues. For this performance, only 4 musicians at RPI and 1 at Stanford were used, which made for an intimate experience. For next Thursday, the entire ensemble at RPI will be performing along with numerous musicians at Stanford. In addition to the successful transmission, the mixer Max/MSP patches as well as the Video transmission were handled by the G4 tower. In effect the entire system consists of only 3 computers (the G4 for Control and Video, the G5 for local audio rendering, and the Linux machine for Tele-transmission to and from Stanford). Now that this system is working well, I can start to work on improving the auditory rendering engine and working on video sync issues.
Beta Version of the Mixer
09/08/07 08:54 Filed in: Research
Today I worked on the case for holding the mixing device for ViMiC. By using a keyboard case and some plywood, I constructed a case that will contain the two Behringer devices as well as power and USB. I also set up a LCD in order for the user to see the max patch he is using. The joysticks and trackpad will be installed once I get them. I finished the control patch as well as my ViMiC environmental patch for my Multimedia Performance class. I will demo all the stuff on Wednesday. Stay tuned for more as I finish the mixer in the week to come!
Changes in the Lab
09/08/07 08:53 Filed in: Research
Big changes in the lab today in order to transmit 8 channels over the internet to Stanford. The new system uses the Linux machine to transmit 8 channels of audio to and from Stanford with Chris Chafe's low latency software. The audio coming from Stanford will be processed in a new ViMiC patch. Because of I/O concerns live 2-way transmission will be limited to 8 channels of playback in the lab. The new system will have enough processing power to have 8 input channels from Stanford as well as 6 moving sources with first-order reflections. In addition to this new patch a few other updates have been made. As far as I/Os the live local inputs are coming in ADC 1-6, Stanford ADC 16-24, Local Outputs DAC 1-16, Stanford Outputs Lightpipe connection to the Linux machine. Please see the flow diagram for the new patch in the figure.
1. Pauline expressed interest in evolving a performance from one space to another. As part of a new Max patch and our MotorMix by Behringer, the parameters of ViMiC can be controlled with 8 sliders to allow fluid shaping of the rendering environment. Right now it only works for one channel at a time, but soon an option to change a parameters such as reverberation time or room size globally will be an option.
2. A new ViMiC object will be finished soon that allows control of all parameters with simple OSC commands. This will greatly reduce the complexity of the Pd patch, and provide a more global way of adjusting ViMiC parameters.
3. I propose the creation of a portable ViMiC system using a Mac Mini, Firewire audio interface, a small monitor and portable speakers all enclosed in a 4 space rack case. This will allow the ViMiC system to be demonstrated outside the lab without having to take apart or move one of the lab computers.
Wiring Diagram for the Lab
09/08/07 08:52 Filed in: Research
ViMiC Flow Diagram for Performance System
09/08/07 08:51 Filed in: Research
This is the new flow diagram for ViMiC within the live performance system. I will systematically working on this throughout the semester. I worked on a bit of the live looping aspect and as soon as the max/msp ViMiC external is compiled I will integrate that into my patch. The input to the patch will be the live audio input from my electric violin, as well as input from presampled loops and environmental sounds. As soon as the spatialization and live spectral processing patches are done I will begin to work on the visualization aspect of the patch in jitter.
Updated Proposal for Deep Listening
09/08/07 08:51 Filed in: Research
Synthesis of acoustic space and acoustic instruments in an artificial environment.
Virtual Microphone Control (ViMiC) gives the ensemble the distinct advantage of placing an acoustic instrument virtually in an artificial recording space. Several improvisation sessions have been dedicated to exploring this phenomenon with performers working with themselves and each other working with their instruments in a virtual environment. With the Soundfield microphone, the ensemble has the ability to capture the sonic identity of any actual ambient environment and again reproduce it, with 3d accuracy in the virtual recording space of ViMiC. I feel a great experiment would be to examine the interaction of improvising with acoustic instruments and acoustic environments all within the realm of an artificial reproduced space. This experiment can be carried out either locally in the Gurley lab or globally in one of our telepresence jams with Stanford. Several questions could be answered through this experiment.
1. How does the energy of the ensemble change with various reproduced ambient spaces?
2. How the improvisatory orchestration change when the ensemble is exposed to these ambient spaces
3. Is there an interaction between the reaction of the performers when the experiment is carried out locally or globally?
4. Is the current ViMiC system have adequate resolution to provided these ambient spaces with the accuracy that they need to be effective, otherwise what needs to be changed.
The project will serve as an experiment within the realms of this class as well as a set of interviews for my dissertation research on human performance interaction both locally and globally with the ViMiC Spatialization system.
Performance with Stanford
09/08/07 08:50 Filed in: Research
Today we had the second telepresence experience with Stanford. It worked quite well. We also talked about projects for the deep listening class. There was some very good ideas. I have decided to change my idea proposal into working with collected sounds in the ViMiC space. We realized we have access to a Soundfield microphone to record 3d ambient environments and this got me thinking that playing them back and interacting with the environments in our virtual environment would be a great experiment with ViMiC. I will still build the mixer, but now I don't have to rush it so much and can focus on Curtis' class and learning how to get ViMiC into Max/MSP.
Lab Changes
09/08/07 08:49 Filed in: Research
I was in the lab tonight and made a few important changes to the setup. First, I put the Motu 896HD in the rack with the G4 to enable 8 microphone inputs to EIS. It worked great plus the latency issue that was going on before. Looking forward to the transmission tomorrow and to see how EIS works with 8 inputs. On a sidenote I want to look into the possibility of using a genetic algorithm to evolve the ViMiC parameter values to match a pre-existing impulse response. Just a thought.
Telepresence Performance with Stanford University
09/08/07 08:48 Filed in: Research
This past week we had the first telepresence improv session with Stanford University with Chris Chafe's low-latency audio software and iChat AV for video transfer. The local audio was controlled with Pauline Oliveras' EIS software which is routed to the ViMiC rendering computer for auditory spatialization. We have another session next Thursday and the are a few issues that need to be addressed.
• The input mixer to EIS needs to be streamlined to provide 8 microphone or line inputs in the the EIS software. I suggest changing the M-audio firewire interface with the MOTU 896 interface. This will also provide a more streamlined input to the G4. I will do this tommorrow.
• The mixer should be just used to mix outputs to the inputs of ViMiC. Currently there is only 2 input channels on the ViMiC system. This will be changed soon. I will make this do for now but Stanford should come in on up to 8 channels, and we should have 4-8 channels locally for spatialization.
• As part of the deep listening class I will be developing a mixing console for the control of ViMiC. I will post the images and progress as that gets built as well as the proposal.
• Bart will be working on improving the quality of video capture with 4 different angles of cameras and a mixer.
More on this later.