LOLC
LOLC is one of my main projects at GTCMT (download it below) – I work on it almost every day. LOLC is really the brainChild of Akito Van Troyer and Jason Freeman, but the current development team currently consists of Sang Won Lee, Shannon Yao, Jason Freeman, and myself.
Many musical instruments have strict one-to-one mapping from performer action to sound production (ie a finger to a key that plays one note), and while the abstraction of one-to-many mapped instruments has produced some interesting music, we wanted to create a system that was simple enough to be used by a novice musician but powerful enough to produce large amounts of meaningful musical interaction with little effort. Naturally we landed at “live-coding (writing code during a performance – example),” but with simple script-like inputs, we are able to target a larger user-base than the typical computer musician. The tool is sponsored by an NSF Grant (see below) that focuses on studying the development of creativity. We are currently implementing real-time notation, and for all the tedium involved in developing a functional/readable/flexible notation system, it will be worth it to have such a powerful improvisational tool.
In LOLC, the musicians in the laptop orchestra use a textual performance interface, developed specifically for this piece, to create and share rhythmic motives based on a collection of recorded sounds. The environment encourages musicians to share their code with each other, developing an improvisational conversation over time as material is looped, borrowed, and transformed. LOLC is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation as part of a larger research project on musical improvisation in performance and education (NSF CreativeIT #0855758).
LOLC Performances:
PLOrk @ Princeton
GTCMT (Listening Machines 2010) @ eyedrum
GTCMT @ FutureFest