The Start

At the start of my forth year at university I was given the opportunity to write and create my own individual project. To decide what I was going to spend the next twenty-four weeks studying and designing I looked back over my previous years to see what skills I had best learnt and most enjoyed and what Interactive Media Design means to me.

My initial idea was to address the challenge of interactive music. Using my knowledge of MAX MSP and Flash I aimed to give the user the chance to create there own individual piece of music without requiring a lot of instruction. I also wanted to create a very physical interaction with a high level of visual output to the user.

In the beginning I had planned to use sensors running into Max to control an algorithmically music structure. The first way I had planned to do this was by using simple switches in specific sections of an interface that the user would place a series of physical representations of instruments. Then the user would get an output on a screen or projection of a band where the band members were interchangeable in conjunction with the different physical symbol.