Composer and Georgia Tech professor Jason Freeman doesn't much like concert halls, with their audiences sitting in silent rows. They just don't fit the modern, interactive world, he says.
That's why his latest work, "Flock," being previewed at Atlanta's dorkbot meeting Thursday, might share as much with Dance Dance Revolution as it does with any Beethoven symphony, while helping bring composition into the Xbox age.
Working with programmers, a computer vision expert and an adventurous saxophone quartet, Freeman is creating a work in which a restless audience is very literally part of the music. Listeners and musicians are encouraged to wander around the performance space during the concert, while digital cameras track their motion.
Those movements are fed into a software simulation, and Freeman's algorithms, using parameters such as distance from performers, speed and "sheepiness," use the data to dynamically create a score on Pocket PCs attached to the musicians' instruments. Wave a hand, or run around the room, and you'll almost immediately hear the results.
"It's part inspired by a cocktail party, and part by a dance club environment," Freeman said. "Even in part by a multiplayer game, where people are in competition to influence the music by convincing people to follow them."
Freeman, whose last big computer-aided work was premiered at Carnegie Hall, calls himself a "failed computer science major" who studied programming but lost interest until finding musical applications. His collaborator, fellow Georgia Tech professor Frank Dellaert, uses his computer vision tools to analyze bees' motion, and is treating music listeners like a similar mobile data set.
All interesting from the techie standpoint –- but is it music?
In fact, Freeman is following in a long line of experimental composition. John Cage and his contemporaries pioneered the use of random or chance-driven techniques such as coin-tossing to create their scores. Some modern computer-aided composers have used algorithms based on chaotic fractal geometry to generate their music.
Freeman, too, sees a subtle order in his audience-influenced music, rather than simple chaos.
"We're learning how audiences react," he said, noting that future versions may even give listeners a gamelike goal, trying to influence the music in certain directions. "We want patterns to come out of it."
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