Description

“The Cantalupus project”: movement-controlled audio composition

Experience objects of sound, flying around you. Dialogues between tonal, timbral and rhythmical variations float nearby or move outwards. The composition is directed live by the composer, around the audience that is seated in the center. 

The Cantalupus project is a pilot artistic study in immersive composition where spatial movement becomes an essential component of musical structure. It uses finger and hand to chest gestures to control the ‘throwing’ and ‘painting’ of sound objects, molding the expectations of source, target and impact of sound trajectories by the audience. 

Underpinning the artistic work is the ear radar model, putting our hearing at the heart of the capacity of perceiving and appraising movement in our surrounding environment. This capacity never sleeps and is naturally related to our primary emotions. Music, dwelling on those dynamics of movement in sound, can induce these emotional reactions (in part). The project tries to bring this one step further with the use of immersive technologies.

The performance makes use of the 80 speaker array at the ASIL lab, in a high precision 7th-order ambisonics configuration.

Supported by Kunstendecreet Vlaanderen & UGent