Last edited 27jan01 by
gfrancis
The page was originally designed by croll@uiuc.edu
Find this document at http://new.math.uiuc.edu/audible/
Homepage for the
Audible Sketchpad for the CAVE
Ours is an
Research Experience for Undergraduates
(REU)
sponsored by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA) at the
University of Illinois (UIUC).
We use the Vanilla Soundserver (
VSS)
to sonify real-time interactive CAVE/console animations (
RTICA)
and so create auditory
CAVE Toys.
Under the direction of
George Francis
and
Umesh Thakkar
, and the generous assistance of
Camille Goudeseune
(creator of VSS), and
Matt Hall
(creator of CAVE Toys), the projects webscaped here have been transformed
from purely visual toys to RTICAs with interactive sound.
Sound has been available in the CAVE and used in many applications in the
past, but it was never greatly developed because sound effects were not
considered as important as visual effects. One reason for this was the
lack of octaphonic, or 3-dimensional, sound to accompany the 3-dimensional
graphics which make the CAVE unique. Octaphonic sound now has been
added to the CAVE so we now can create CAVE applications that can be heard
as well as seen in 3-D. An implication of this is the possibility that
vision impaired people can experience the CAVE in a way analogous to the way
sighted people do.
Here is a shortcut to
VSS for Dummies, which is the best place to start for vss.
More recently Ben Shanbaum and Doug
Nachand have been experimenting with Csound
and OpenAL respectively, seeking to incorporate these packages into our
project.
Ben has written the beginnings of a Csound tutorial. Come back to see our
progress in this direction.
Kairomone
We are reviving the 1989 project "Kairomone" by Daniel Azzi. Ours is a
sonified CAVE simulation of Diabrodica (corn root worm) beetles reacting,
in a complex manner, to diffusing kairomones (chemical food attractants)
wafting across a field of mature corn. This is based on the work of
the late Robert L. Metcalf, UIUC professor of entomology and pioneer in
integrated pest management.
Audible Cricket
The CAVE Toy Cricket was created by Matt Hall. Paul Whitaker stepped
up the level of interaction, adding the
crumbSlider for navigation controlled sound. Matt Woodruff currently is
completing a
fully sonified version.
For discerning position, Charles
Huang's tetraphony was mapped to the cricket cage with one instrument
dominating a quadrant. Now Matt is adding octaphonic sound, and ball-wall
collisions in xyz can be differentiated through directional amplitude.
Audible Billiards
Bob created a CAVE game of pool in the
Spring'99
Math 198
course. He has now added it to the audible CAVE projects and
is creating sound for billiards.
Audible Glom
Robert Pinta, Matthew Woodruff
The CAVE Toy Glom was created by Matt Hall to visualize a familiar
dynamical system: Gravity. Our sonification involves a zoo of acoustic
geometrical cues such as octaphonic sound, Doppler effects, beats etc.
Audible Lissajou Pad
We wish to hear an n-dimensional
Lissajou Figure, where n=2,3 and 4. For the 2-dimensional version
we have adapted Paul Whitaker's VdPol3D project for
Math198 which is a
sonification of multiple, simultaneous, orbits of the Van der Pol
oscillator. Instead of spirals and cyclic attractors, the Lissajou
figures provide a richer sample of possible mappings of geometrical
position into sound ranges. The 3-dimensional version uses the octaphonic
sound system of the CAVE. Once we can train people to hear 2- and
3-dimensional Lissajou figures, which can also be visualized, we can
persuade them to hear 4-dimensional Lissajou, which cannot be visualized
so easily.
BlobbyForth
Previous incarnations of this project were created by
Steve Kohen,
Dan Cranston,
Ann Delano,
Sherwin Tam,
et.al.
Our version of Jim Blinn's famous articulated puppet directs
a bar of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Dan tells you a bit
more
about this project which has had many contributors over the years.
Van der Pol
Here, sound accompanies the mapping of a phase space.
Using an fmslider, frequency, amplitude, mod index, and m/c ratio
can be varied with x, y-coordinates, angle, or distance. Matt Woodruff
found that by varying freq. with x and MC ratio with y
a person can sketch the phase space of the system.
And here we are. (and Ulises too!)