Lichtgestalt: Interaction with Sound through Swarms of Light Rays

We present a new interactive sound installation to be explored by movement. Specifically, movement qualities extracted from the motion tracking data excite a dynamical system (a synthetic flock of agents), which responds to the movement qualities and indirectly controls the visual and sonic feedback of the interface. In other words, the relationship between gesture and sound are mediated by synthetic swarms of light rays. Sonic interaction design of the system uses density as a design dimension, and maps the swarm parameters to sound synthesis parameters. Three swarm behaviors and three sound models are implemented, and evaluation suggests that the general approach is promising and the system has potential to engage the user.