III. Contemporary works concerning visual music interpretation

a. Piano -as image media by Toshio Iwai
b. GhostDance
c. Glasbead by John Klima

a. Piano -as image media by Toshio Iwai, 1995
-An installation of interactive visual/audio.

A trackball and button are used to position and place dots on a moving grid on the lower projection screen. These dots constitute a virtual score, which triggers the piano keys, which in turn project computer-generated images on the upper screen. The patterns created with these dots generate simple melodies and related visual formations.

In an age where digital technologies begin to replace the physical world with virtual forms, this work tries to combine the physical and the virtual into a new interactive experience. It makes an aesthetic conjunction of sound and image, as well as a functional conjunction of a mechanical object (the piano) with the digital media (the projected score and computer generated imagery). In this way the piano itself seems to become transformed into image media - a flow of image depresses the piano's keys, which as a consequence release yet another flight of images.

b. GhostDance, 1997

GhostDance is an (unfinished) experimental piece collaboration of Mark Podlaseck at IBM, composer Philip Glass, and set designer Robert Israel for the WWW. The piece is being divided into 4 musical movements. Each visitor log in to the environment is represented by a cube, and is controlled by user using joystick. The flocks of cubes then generate a sound, depending on its shape, size, direction, etc. into a chord or melody. Together all the elements made up the music, not unlike in Indian's ghost dance where different tribes come together and
make impromptu music.

c. Glasbead by John Klima, 2000

Glasbead is a multi-user persistent collaborative musical interface allowing players to manipulate and exchange sound sample files and create a myriad of soundscapes and rhythmic musical sequences. Players are able to submit digital sound samples that then are shared among all the players. As many as 20 people can play glasbead at the same time, each seeing and hearing the same thing.
The project took an opposite approach than typical visualization in that instead of
manipulating images, the piece generates new sound (in form of loop) from uploaded samples. The out come of the piece depends on how users manipulate the graphical elements that are associated with different sound files.