Mosievius: Feature Driven Interactive Audio Mosaicing

The process of creating an audio mosaic consists of the concatenation of segments of sound. Segments are chosen to correspond best with a description of a target sound specified by the desired features of the final mosaic. Current audio mosaicing techniques take advantage of the description of future target units in order to make more intelligent decisions when choosing individual segments. In this paper, we investigate ways to expand mosaicing techniques in order to use the mosaicing process as an interactive means of musical expression in real time. In our system, the user can interactively choose the specification of the target as well as the source signals from which the mosaic is composed. These means of control are incorporated into MoSievius, a framework intended for the rapid implementation of different interactive mosaicing techniques. Its integral means of control, the Sound Sieve, provides real-time control over the source selection process when creating an audio mosaic. We discuss a number of new real-time effects that can be achieved through use of the Sound Sieve.