title: engraving hammering casting
type: electroacoustic composition for two haptic interfaces
year: 2012
author/composer: Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos and Edgar Berdahl
first performance: INTIME 2012 Symposium, Coventry University
"We must all return to the crafts," wrote Walter Gropius in the first manifesto of the Staatliches Bauhaus in 1919. These famous lines emphasised the vital link of art with materials and process techniques. Mind, body, and imagination were indispensable elements. However, in contemporary computer music, this link has become weaker because new technologies have dematerialised the inter- action between the performer and the sound object. Engraving − Hammering − Casting is a music piece composed for two haptic digital instruments designed and developed by the composers, who aim to bring materiality back to computer music.
A virtual physical model of vibrating resonators is designed and employed to generate both the sound and the haptic force feedback. Because the overall system, which includes the physical model and the coupled operators to it, is approximately energy conserving, the model simulates what is known as ergotic interaction. It is believed that the presented music composition is the first live composition, in which performers interact with an acoustic physical model that concurrently generates sound and ergotic haptic force feedback.
The piece uses a minimalist language and has been conceived and composed for live interpretation using commercially available haptic interfaces. It has three parts, each of which refers metaphorically and sonically to a process technique used in a workshop environment by artists and craftspeople. The interest of the piece lies in the fact that a rich soundscape and music composition can be devised by the use of the most pure and simple musical means: interacting by energy exchange with mechanical resonators − virtual in our case. The piece celebrates the hand, the gesture, and force-feedback interaction in computer music making.
The following video illustrates how the haptic device behave when interacting with the physical models that generate the audio and the haptic response simultaneusly.
More info about the research of the work can be found in the paper Engraving-Hammering-Casting: Exploring the Ergotic Medium for Live Musical Performance in the Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference ICMC2012, Ljubljana