Lose control, gain influence - Concepts for Metacontrol

The ideas explored here are based on questioning some common assumptions in the usual conceptual models of hybrid (NIME-style) instrument design, and thinking and playing through the implications of these alternate strategies in theory and implementation. They include: varying the mappings between controller input and changing them on the fly in performance, e.g. by gradually entangling or disentangling process parameters; recording instrument parameter state presets and control data (gesture) loops, and reusing them as flexible performance material; and creating networks of cross-influence between gestural input from multiple human players, other gestural sources, and multiple sound generating processes, which can be modified as part of the performance. In effect, this can be described as ’Lose Control, Gain Influence’ (LCGI): gracefully relinquishing full control of the processes involved, in order to gain higher-order forms influence on their behavior. These heuristics may lead both to finding non-obvious but interesting mapping strategies which can be built into more traditionally well-controlled instruments, and to new concepts for playing single-person instruments or multiplayer instrument ensembles based on networks of influence. Many of these ideas can be played with using software libraries written in SuperCollider.