The Procedural Sounds and Music of ECHO: : Canyon

In the live game-based performance work ECHO::Canyon, the procedural generation of sound and music is used to create tight crossmodal couplings between mechanics in the visual modality, such as avatar motion, gesture and state, and attributes such as timbre, amplitude and frequency from the auditory modality. Real-time data streams representing user-controlled and AI driven avatar parameters of motion, including speed, rotation and coordinate location act as the primary drivers for ECHO::Canyon’s fullyprocedural music and sound synthesis systems. More intimate gestural controls are also explored through the paradigms of avian flight, biologically-inspired kinesthetic motion and manually-controlled avatar skeletal mesh components. These kinds of crossmodal mapping schemata were instrumental in the design and creation of ECHO::Canyon’s multiuser multi-channel dynamic performance environment using techniques such as composed interaction, compositional mapping and entirely procedurally-generated sound and music.