Conference Schedule

The idea is simple and obvious: Take some Raspberry Pi computing units, each as a reusable synthesizer module. Connect them via a network. Connect a notebook or PC to control and monitor them. Start playing on your virtually analog modular synthesizer.
However, is existing Linux audio software sufficiently mature to implement this vision out of the box? We investigate how far we get in building such a synthesizer, what existing software to choose, analyse what limits we hit and what features still need to be implemented to make our vision become reality.

Coloured hearing is a form of synaesthesia with co-perception of acoustic stimuli as visual effects. In contrast to acquired or induced synaesthesia, the genuine form is thought to origin very early in life and to not relevantly change over time. Therefore, finding correlations between acoustic stimuli and visual effects with genuine coloured hearing and evaluating their visual significance even on adults gives hints on which acoustic properties have been significant for an individual since early life. With this snapshot of significance taken from many individuals, we hope to better identify the border between congenital perception and perception habits created from cultural influence. Knowledge about this border is essential for composition of contemporary music, as it marks the limit where musical parameters go beyond trainable perception and thus render irrelevant as compositorial means. So far, for a preparatory case study we developed a set of sounds, tested it on a single genuine coloured hearing individual and present first results.

Two players give a concert in a competitive manner. They put and rearrange colored shapes and symbols on an advertising column that slowly rotates. The surface of the column is scanned, and a computer program renders the shapes and symbols into sound, as they move under a virtual playhead cursor that is projected onto the column.
Since the players compete in uncoordinated fashion rather than cooperate, the overall picture grows wildly. Both players are struggling to dominate the system by putting as much information as possible onto the column. As their competition finally results in big chaos, the overall informational content approaches zero, resulting in random noise.