From: dpierce@sgimco.orlando.sgi.com (Dennis Pierce)
Subject: Re: TECH: Linking VR glove and synthesizer?
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 02:41:54 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA



HyperHello!   :^)

In article <1992Sep3.072240.23843@u.washington.edu>,
76130.2225@CompuServe.COM (John Eagan) writes:

> pvanheus@frodo.cs.uct.ac.za (Peter van Heusden) writes:
> 
> >Firstly, has anyone tried linking a VR glove and a synthesizer to make
> >an instrument? I was thinking along the lines of one finger for
> >amplitude, another for pitch, etc. Also, I realise this will not be
> >(stuff deleted)

Jaron played virtual instruments at SIGGRAPH this year during the
Electronic Theater (video show).  The instruments were not close to
real but could ONLY exist in virtual space.  The audience saw what
Jaron saw and heard what he played.

> It's worth noting that Jaron Lanier is a musician, and as the story
> goes, Thomas Zimmerman of VPL had ideas about literally playing "air
> guitar" when the Dataglove idea was conceived.
> 
> If you want to do something relatively cheap, you could try using a
> Mattel/Nintendo Powerglove. The degree of control you would have is
> fairly gross for pitch control, but if I were doing what you're doing,
> I'd think in terms of using a powerglove and a PC, with a program to
> take various hand positions and finger bends and map them to values
> that correspond to MIDI "Note On" bytes, then feed those to a sampler
> with multisamples set up so that one octave would be a particular
> snippet of sound, another octave is all another "event", etc., or
> maybe use different glove gestures to trigger sequences.
> 
> You might want to check out the work Tod Machover has done using the
> Exos and assorted equipment. There have been a few magazine articles
> on him and his work, the most informative one I've seen was in
> Keyboard (don't remember the issue...I seem to recall INXS was on the
> cover of that one<?>) He refers to the assembled systems of
> controllers, computers, and musical hardware as <ACK!>
> "Hyperinstruments". (is anybody getting tired of the "hyper" prefix
> yet??)

HyperBye.

Dennis Pierce, SGI, 900 Winderley Place, Ste 130, Maitland, FL 32751
email: dpierce@sgi.com    vmail: 8548              
tel  : 407.660.0073       late : 407.660.2789      
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