Project Name: Sound Forest: Monsters
Year: 2017
Role: Interaction Designer, Video Producer
The project was developed in the “DT2300 Sound in Interaction” course at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, Spring 2017 by Jonathan Adam and Adrian Latupeirissa under the supervision of Ludvig Elblaus.
“Sound Forest” is a string-based, interactive, largescale installation created in the Sound and Music Computing lab at KTH, for a new museum dedicated to performing arts, Scenkonstmuseet, which will be inaugurated in 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden.
For more details, see R. Bresin et al., “Sound Forest/Ljudskogen: A Large-Scale String-Based Interactive Musical Instrument” in Sound and Music Computing 2016, 2016, pp. 79-84. [Link]
Our responsibility in the project is to come up with a new way of interaction with the string. After assessing the particular characteristics of the string instruments and paying attention to the specific challenges inherent to the museum setting, we create a dramaturgical and technical framework that facilitates designing sonic interactions for this installation.
Using the metaphor of creatures, we program a sonic interaction that responds to the level of energy accumulated in the string, as well as to some other sensor data. If the user does not engage with the creature for an extended period, the sound travels to another instrument in the installation. The system implements a simple interface for other composers to engage with the same framework. User evaluations were informal and only qualitative but suggested a positive response to the interaction framework. Designing to the installations constraints benefits the specific interactions, and designing with an overarching dramaturgical structure benefits mixing interaction modalities, creating a satisfying experience for many different users.