Interphase
05.28.2018
The WAVE Festival is an annual light art event in Breckenridge, Colorado, USA. Conceived by the great people at Breckenridge Creative Arts, the 4-day festival brought artists from around the world to light up Breckenridge. I was approached to pitch a concept, and my idea to build an illuminated, multi-user, tactile musical instrument was ultimately approved. I partnered with Audiopixel, who brought fabrication and interactive lighting expertise to the project. "Interphase" was an 8-foot tall touch-sensitive octagon that also served as an 8-channel step sequencer. Each physical wall represented a different sound and sequence pattern that could be controlled by participants by simply tapping on the structure. The resulting audio engine produced hours of original music that was influenced by users' physical participation.
I was fortunate to talk to Colorado Public Radio about the project, and you can listen to my interview here:
Colorado Public Radio
A huge thanks goes out to everybody at BreckCreate who made this happen: Nicole, Robb, Becca, Ken, Andy, Dennis, Drea, Erin, and everybody else who I'm forgetting to list here. Check out their official recap video here or here.
Photos by Jenise Jensen, courtesy Breckenridge Creative Arts
The Music
Interphase creates continually-evolving music, largely based on pattern generator algorithms that have been optimized per-instrument. The sound palette comes from a library of hand-selected and normalized audio samples, organized by instrument type: kick, snare, hihats, precussion, sound effects, bass, synth, lead. These audio samples were pulled from a few hours of Interphase running and evolving without any user interaction.
Interphase 001 Interphase 002 Interphase 003 Interphase 004 Interphase 007 Interphase 009 Interphase 010 Interphase 012 Interphase 013 Interphase 015 Interphase 016 Interphase 019 Interphase 101 Interphase 102 Interphase 103 Interphase 105 Interphase 107 Interphase 108 Interphase 109 Interphase 113 Interphase 114 Interphase 120 Interphase 122 Interphase 125 Interphase 128 Interphase 131 Interphase 133
The Software
More play
Partners:
- BreckCreate
- Cacheflowe
- AudioPixel
Key Technologies:
- Processing
Press:
- Colorado Public Radio
At Breckenridge's WAVE, You'll Be Able To Make Music With This 8ft-Tall Sculpture