Event: Media demo of new iPhone app called ChoirMob
Time: Thursday, March 15, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Location: Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems
2366 Main Mall
http://www.maps.ubc.ca/?166
Media are invited to a sneak peek of a new app that turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into an instrument for choir singing. To see the video, visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNzV7lvgJjI
UBC engineering graduate student Johnty Wang and former UBC post-doctoral researcher Nicolas d’Alessandro have developed an app called ChoirMob that transforms the iOS devices into a voice synthesizer.
“People using this app can form a mobile phone choir, thus the name ChoirMob,” explains Wang, a trained musician who with d’Alessandro and others formed the group Vox Tactum to perform chamber music using mobile devices.
“The app controls voice synthesis in real time including the pitch, vocal effort and vowel of the output sound of the mobile device,” explains d’Alessandro, currently a researcher at the University of Mons in Belgium.
ChoirMob performers are connected through a system called Vuzik, a large interactive display application developed by Canadian composer Aura Pon and researcher Junko Ichino, in the Interactions Lab at the University of Calgary.
Vuzik displays the “score” and “conducts” the music. The performers can control the phrasing of their synthetic voice through gestures.
“We’re interested in making gesture-controlled voice synthesis more accessible by leveraging the power and ubiquity of mobile platforms, focusing on the social aspect of music making,” says Wang at UBC’s Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC).
Vox Tactum will perform Pon’s three-movement piece “Intertwine” on March 21, at Vancouver’s Sonic Boom Festival – a celebration of B.C. composers.
MAGIC recently unveiled other “singing” technology. Led by UBC Profs. Sidney Fels and Bob Pritchard, the project uses special gloves equipped with 3D position and bend sensors to control a speech synthesizer. To see a video of the innovation, visit: http://www.aaas.ubc.ca/media-resources/videos/
