~Proceedings ICMCISMCI2014 14-20 September 2014, Athens, Greece
Figure 2. GUI with 2D slider + Influx, KtlLoop, and Preset controls
by a damping factor ranging from 0 (which means linear
sum of all influences) to 0.5 (quasi equal power sum) to 1
(linear mean). Like Influx, the output can be shifted by a
list of offsets corresponding to a preset, so it allows playing
relative to known locations.
This strategy opens many possibilities: Several players
could influence the same sound process together; one source
can slowly move the center of the parameter space for other,
more lively players. A combination of three players, three
processes could play with varying degrees of source dis/
entanglement. EventLoops or random sources could create small inner motion while a human player is playing
with the same process at the same time.
2.3.2 InfluxSpread
InfluxSpread is the counterpart to InfluxMix; it handles
sending influences to multiple listening destinations. Like
all of its family, the configuration of these destination mappings is very flexible and can be changed very quickly in
performance.
3. PRACTICE AND FUTURE WORK
3.1 Presets
The ProxyPreset classes have been used in many of the author's own projects, and in instruments made by, for and
with other artists, to wide approval of its usefulness. Integrating frequent recording of presets and finding ways of
fluidly playing with them is still to be sketched in code,
and to explore as a performance strategy.
3.2 KtlLoop
Precursors of the KtlLoop classes have been used in the
GamePad quark since 2005, and later in the KeyPlayer and
other contexts. Its generalized redesign has opened a number of new possibilities, such as more fluid integration into
performance instruments with fast switching between control and metacontrol levels. Similar concepts are studied
by the Modality project [35].
3.3 Influx
Influx, being the newest metacontrol family member, has
seen about two months of use by research colleagues, student participants and professional musicians. The example
handed out to them is shown in Figure 2, and can map a
2D GUI slider to 3 synth processes with 6, 10 or 16 process parameters. With an Influx for variable mappings, a
KtlLoop for gesture recording, and 3 destination processes
it has a large possibility space already.
Users informally reported that the search for interesting
zones is enjoyable and often pleasantly surprising, and that
it is easy to find zones in the parameter space worth keeping as state snapshots. When listening to and observing
people perform even with only a single 2d slider, the complex sound behavior induced by Influx is quite appealing
and a far cry from telltale single slider/single parameter
movements; and players appear quite absorbed in listening, so possibly the very opacity of the mapping does free
players to listen more attentively to the changes their actions induce. Finally, networked multi-player influx setups
introduce interesting layers of independent influence; informal experiments with such setups with student groups
have been quite promising, and have been adopted by some
students for their practice.
3.4 Next steps
Metacontrol as proposed here is an artistic strategy rather
than a specific design alternative, so the best criterium for
its relevance is simply the extent to which it gets adopted
into the practice of professional performers. For this, the
first step will be to create more example setups from very
simple to very complex, play with them extensively in our
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