SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will focus on developing Visual Performance Instruments (VPIs) that will enable the Deaf and hard of hearing both to appreciate music and to perform in a medium that serves as a visual analog of music. Object-oriented control software for these devices will be capable of processing musical data in a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) format, and generate choreography based on this music for a 3-D visual display. The displays will be choreographable sculptural media designed to be as emotionally evocative and flexible as possible. The VPIs will be visual analogies of musical instruments, in that they are equipped with control interfaces such that they can be played directly in real time. The instruments can be extended or combined to produce visual orchestras, accessible to Deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing individuals. The controlling software will allow direct programming of the VPIs by the non-technician, thus enabling composers to score pieces to be played by VPIs without a musical intermediary. Proposed Phase I research on visual performance instruments is viewed as a natural extension of TechnoFrolic's research into interactive, choreographable, 3-D display media. TechnoFrolics' patented technology is emotionally-engaging and highly expressive, but is currently unable to respond automatically to music. They feel that by adding this capability, they would have an exciting medium capable of translating music into a visual performance, much like dance or theater. Such a medium would enable the Deaf and hard of hearing to appreciate music on a new level of understanding. In addition, by refining the user interfaces on the displays, they can create visual instruments which can be played directly.

This Small Business Innovative Research Phase II project will focus concurrently on developing Visual Performance Instruments (VPIs) that enables the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing to perform in a medium that serves as a visual analog of music, algorithms to process digitally sampled acoustic music and cause VPIs to dance in accompaniment, and closely related science museum and commercial advertising displays that utilize the same underlying hardware and software control environments. Phase II objectives include: -The creation of a working prototype for a new VPI called the Tower of Triangles (TOT). TOT is made out of mirrored triangular columns which function as linear torsional wave-mediums for small excitation energies and chaotic systems for high-excitation energies, and may be "played" in real-time via a computer-mediated user interface. -Adding the ability, in an existing performance artwork constructed out of iron dust in a computer-controlled electromagnetic field, to dance automatically in response to music. The Phase II tasks for implementing this system include the further development of an algorithm for extracting rhythmic information from music in real-time, and software physics simulations whose initial conditions and evolution parameters are modified in real-time by data extracted from the music. -The creation of a set of computer-controlled turntables which function both as the drive mechanism for the first VPI mentioned above, and collectively in their own right as a display device to animate, in sophisticated and complex ways, retail point-of-purchase products and trade-show exhibit items. Commercial applications of the science/artworks, VPIs and automatic music response control software include: VPIs for the deaf, responsive dancing corporate logos for trade-show; retail store, and nightclub environments; interactive science museum exhibits on wave mediums and chaotic systems; kinetic signs for commercial use; an interactiv e option for coin-operated dancing artwork displays.