:: the SoundShell Project
| SoundShell :: concept :: 3 :: a new musical interface |  |
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| The SoundShell mimics the abalone's shell-generating process down to the smallest detail. The difference is in attracting specific frequencies of sound rather than specific ions of calcium, and building layers of sound, rather than layers of shell. The Soundshell has no sound source of its own - when activated, it sits and samples the sounds in the room, picking out set frequencies and setting them into overlapping, continuously looping layers of sound that a person playing it can manipulate. Also, I wanted to give the musician only as much control to manipulate the sound as the creatures themselves have over their shells, which is not much. There is a gene in the creatures that causes each successive layer of shell to be randomly offset from the others, o that a close-up picture of a shell fragment looks like a jaggedly uneven brick wall, which is what Soundshell resembles. A "musician" can start it collecting sounds, stop it, clear the sampled sounds, and fracture the current layer of sound, but there is a randomness to how the sounds are layered that they have no control over, which drives the performance. |
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| ::1::2::3::construction | |
