Iannis Xenakis formed CEMAMu (Centre d'Etudes de Mathématiques et Automatiques Musicales / Center for Studies in Mathematics and Automated Music) in Paris in 1972.
Xenakis' interest in graphical interfaces, led him to invent the UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique du CEMAMu) in 1977.
Instead of a keyboard to perform the music, the UPIC's performance device is a mouse and/or a digital drawing board. These are used to trace the composer's graphic score into the UPIC computer program, which it interprets the drawings as real time instructions for sound synthesis.
Mycenae Alpha is the first work entirely realized on the UPIC.
[Xenakis, UPIC, Continuum - Electroacoustic & Instrumental works from CCMIX Paris]
Original Sound Effects Libraries, Custom Sound Design, Consulting Audio Content for third party software.
Very cool! Thanks for this. It seems that this interface would be wonderful for improvised live performance if it could be done in realtime - you'd draw shapes that conform to the time/frequency paradigm shown in the video, keeping ahead of the current time indicator, while projecting the image to the audience. That way, the audience, or at least those who'd figured out how it worked, would be able to anticipate the musical events before they occured, without necessarily knowing exactly how it would sound.
ReplyDeleteI know that Kyma doesn't have a realtime graphic interface as such, but it seems like it should be possible to create an interface in Kyma that could do what we're seeing here in realtime....