The Well-Tempered Objects: Using Everyday Things for Tangible Composition

Abstract

This work-in-progress paper introduces the design and prototype of an interactive tabletop that transforms unmodified, everyday objects into tangibles for sound synthesis and experimental music composition. Enabling the use of familiar objects aims to facilitate meaningful and accessible engagements with interactive music creation. Following a research-through-art process, we developed a set of basic design principles centred around creating meaningful computational interpretations of unseen objects, i.e., objects not previously known to the system. Deliberately constraining this interpretation of the objects to their intrinsic properties (e.g., size, shape, position) allows our design to establish couplings between the tangible and intangible representations while taking advantage of the rich (yet unseen) affordances of the artefacts.