sonorama, 2011
interactive musical installation
dimensions variable
undetermined duration
Along with Electronic Gamelan (2007) and Sounding Score (2009), Sonorama (2011) belongs to a series of musical works that use hybridization, technology and interactivity to find new ways of constructing, delivering and experiencing music.
Sonorama consists of a set of malleable musical ideas and behaviors provided for the pubic to play with. Using a simple visual interface, on a touch surface, visitors can activate/deactivate digital buttons and arrows to generate moments, trajectories, even create a piece or simply live the process of manipulating these musical materials.
Despite Sonorama’s open form and shapeable materials, the composition can be considered determinate. All steps (buttons, arrows) activate musical behaviors that can be recognized and identified, even though their individual components (notes) are always different. Statistics and probabilities previously established by the composer allow the computer to recalculate musical parameters for each sound it generates; this is how the identity and perceivable characteristics of musical ideas are controlled.
Similarly to Sounding Score, Sonorama’s visual design evokes a score. Musical parameters are graphically represented as the interaction unfolds, in order to stimulate a deeper, yet intuitive, understanding of the music, to support the user’s interpretation
Special thanks: Juan Ricardo Forero, music piece programming. Matthew Ostrowski, visual interface programming.
