Common Ground, Music and Movement Directed by a Raspberry Pi
Bell, Jonathan, Aaron Wyatt · HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2020
This paper describes Common Ground, a piece for six dancing singers and electronics, in which the coordination between performers is ensured by a RaspberryPi-embedded node.js web application. The singers received synchronised scores in the browser of their phone, which they wore in head-mounted display in order to free their hands and enhance their scenic presence. After a description of the artistic project, the elaboration of the score is examined under the categories of movement notation (how trajectories are embedded in musical notation), spectral composition (microtonal tuning between synthesised sounds and human voices), algorithmic processes (how the recent bell coding language facilitates processes for which Max patching is ill-suited). The article finally describes the Raspberry implementation, outlining potential ameliorations of the current system, including dns support and unnecessary dependance on a dedicated router.