Interactive Swarm Orchestra

Proceedings of the Generative Art Conference. Milano, Italy, 2007.

The project Interactive Swarm Orchestra (ISO) employs flocking algorithms to control computer sound synthesis and 3D sound positioning. Synthesis, positioning and movement of several simultaneous sound events are modeled according to swarm behavior. Camera-based tracking allows visitors to interact with this acoustic flock and thereby change its spatial distribution and synthesis properties. This paper fo- cuses on the description of the software components that have been developed spe- cifically for this project. These components encompass of a sound synthesis frame- work, functionality for 3D sound projection based on Ambisonics, a generic multi- agent simulation environment, and video tracking software for conventional video cameras and for SwissRanger 3D cameras. All software source code is publicly available.