The video of an "Amoeba" installation "Live" exhibited during the festival "Music in touch" 2011 (Cagliari)

    "Ameoeba" is an interactive multimedia installation and / or a synthesizer with a unconventional interface. The "Amoebas" (that are projected on the screen) are elastic / sound deformable forms that the viewer can drag and deform with the gesture of his hands through the NUI (Natural User Interface) that is used. This NUI consists in a “Microsoft Kinect”(*) connected to the software of the installation (developed in Processing and Pure Data) through a proxy software (Osceleton) and OpenNI(*) driver that convert the users hand gestures to a 3d coordinates. The deformation and displacement of the "Amoeba" determines the transformation of sounds, produced by different synthesis techniques, and the particular interactive gesture leads to a unusual executive modes. This “synthesizer” must be usable both from performers and public, so it try to realize a balance from complexity of generated sounds and fluency of play, for the same reason the “Amoebas” are decorated with video textures to make them much nice and the movements of palyer leave a light wake. Sound synthesis used in the work are: phase vocoder, granular synthesis, comb filters, resonators and digital filters. Every “Amoeba” is a particular synthesizer and it play only when the player “touch” or deform or drag it, so the installation can be play like a “trio”, and in fact in the performance the player do so. During the installation, before the performance, some people (from babies to adults) try to use “Amoeba”, and was so intresting observing how anyone use different way of play it. (*) Microsoft Kinect and OpenNI are trade mark.



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