NIME 2018

Waveguide
by Andrew Blanton

Waveguide is an audio visual performance that uses the internet as a resonant body for drums. By sending data from drums to a server and back through the audience's cell phones in real time, the work uses the array of cell phone speakers to create an immersive audio visual environment. Conceptually, the work draws on a number of different topics exploring the ubiquity of cell phones in contemporary society, and what it means to have an increasingly mediated reality through the screen of a smart phone. It also questions the increasing role that cell phones are playing in our lives. The work takes over audiences cell phones in the performance environment. The work creates a diverse multi channel array of speakers that are controlled in real time from the stage. Each phone of the audience acts as an individual small speaker, screen, and interactive environment, allowing for real time dispersed audience interaction with the work as it is performed. The system is built using Max for realtime analysis of audio data from analog drums which sends data to a node.js server that then sends data to the audiences cellphones if they are the site andrewblanton.com/node.html