Composing for Cars

The authors report on composing a piece for RoadMusic, an interactive music project which generates and manipulates music for the passengers and driver in a car, using sensor information gathered from the surroundings and from the movements of the car. We present a literature review which brings together related works in the diverse fields of Automotive UI, musical mappings, generative music and sonification. We then describe our strategies for composing for this novel system, and the unique challenges it presented. We describe how the process of constructing mappings is an essential part of composing a piece of this nature, and we discuss the crucial role of mapping in defining RoadMusic as either a new musical instrument, a sonification system or generative music. We then consider briefly the extent to which the RoadMusic performance was as we anticipated, and the relative success of our composition strategies, along with suggestions for future adaptations when composing for such an environment.