Autonomous and reactive objects for sound and light generation

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The goal of this project is to explore the design and development of embodied, reactive, autonomous agents that create sound, music, and light in reaction to each other and their environment which includes other agents and people. Tangible Interaction blends art, design, and technology to create sensory installation where people participation is key. Their work taps into some of the most basic instincts, to play and explore in a shared space. They have produced branded interactive experiences for companies, music groups, cities, and museums. The proposed project is informed by existing technologies they have developed and their limitations. The novel contributions of this work will be in three areas: autonomy, emergent creativity, and sound/music generation. Currently the systems that Tangible Interaction deploys are mostly focused on visuals so they are looking to expand into sound and music generation. Installations with multiple components that require coordination are difficult to deploy due to the need for wired or wireless communication and the difficulty of programming multiple components. We will develop prototype cubes that contain a small factor embedded computer that are capable of generating light patterns and sound. These simple embodied agents will also be able to sense through microphones and cameras their environment includes other agents and people. We will use a multi-agent approach for coordination where each agent operates independently of the other agents but is informed by other agents without any central coordination. We will show how interesting behaviour can emerge from their interactions both in terms of sound and music as well as light. The research group of Dr. Tzanetakis has a strong international presence in Computer Music, New Interfaces of Music Expression and Music Information Retrieval all of which are research areas that will contribute ideas, concepts, and algorithms to the project. Two PhD students with complimentary experience in embedded systems/signal processing and gesture recognition/music generation will be funded through the project and work with the designers and engineers at Tangible Interactive.