MonoScape

Research | Development

 

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Monome meets 3D-AudioScape
23rd May 2008 – Future Of Sound
The Sage, Gateshead, UK


Monomatic developed an application for a monome64 to trigger and position up to eight sounds within the Illustrious’ 3D-AudioScape surround sound system.

We wanted sounds that would be both aesthetically pleasing and suitable to demonstrate the system with – and thought church bells and their traditional ringing patterns would be a rich and emotive sonic theme.

Nick used shado – his own open-source compositing and sprite library – to enable the monome to trigger up to eight individual sounds (via MIDI note-on on separate MIDI channels), set their volume  (controller #7) and allow each to be positioned both within the x-y plane (controllers #2 & #3) and z plane (controller #4) of the sound field (3D-AudioScape is unique in that it also has a z-axis positional component due to its two rings of speakers – one on the ground and one in the air). The app also has a mode for calibrating the output of the monome64 accelerometer to allow the position of a sound in the x-y plane to be controlled via tilt.

Nick  & Lewis also co-developed a Processing sketch to provide an on-screen display of  monome activity – an 8×8 grid of graphic buttons which mirror the actual LED state of the monome64 – as well as showing tilt and orientation by rotating the grid in 3D space.