NOISA
During 2016-2017 I worked on a research project with SOPI at Aalto University. The instrument called NOISA learns how you play, tracks how concentrated you are while playing and then plays with you. I updated the code, interaction, added pressure sensors and rebuilt the internal design.
While good physical health receives more attention, psychological wellbeing is an essential component of a happy existence. An everyday source of psychological wellbeing is the voluntary practice of skilled activities one is good at. Taking musical creation as one such skilled activity, in this work we employ an interaction method to monitor varying levels of engagement of musicians improvising on a desk-top robotic musical interface (a network of intelligent sonic agents).
The system observes the performer and estimates her/his changing level of engagement during the performance , while learning the musical discourse. When engagement levels drop, the musical instrument makes subtle interventions, coherent with the compositional process, until the performer’s engagement levels recover. In a user study, we observed and measured the behaviour of our system as it deals with losses of performer focus provoked by the controlled introduction of external distractors. We also observed that being engaged in our musical creative activity contributed positively to participants’ psychological wellbeing. This approach can be extended to other human activities.
More information: sopi.aalto.fi
Heart of Helsinki
I designed a project proposal for HSL together with SOPI research group. A pulsing heart of Helsinki. The software reads real-time data and maps it to a 3D model, creating the paths of the local traffic in the center of Helsinki. The visualizing also includes other data like for example, a speedometer.
Blindphones
Blindphones is an art installation made by Andrea Mancianti. To this project I was hired to tutor with design, CAD, 3D printing and Arduino. The installation was exhibited at Ars Electronica Festival in September 2018.
More information at aalto.fi
Expanding Leap Motion – Moving Controllable Interfaces
While designing a game, I needed to expand the capabilities of a Leap Motion by making the device follow the movement of your hand in a larger canvas. I implemented this by physically moving the leap motion and at the same time as modifying the leap motion input data, depending on the position of the device. The Arduino controlled linear axis is taken from an ink printer.
This followed up with research for making the device react to different kind of hand movements. Below you can see a video where I am grabbing the air above the device and and and moving it. And then pushing it from the sides, making it move before you make contact.