Mobile Controls On-The-Fly: An Abstraction for Distributed NIMEs

Designing mobile interfaces for computer-based musical performance is generally a time-consuming task that can be exasperating for performers. Instead of being able to experiment freely with physical interfaces’ affordances, performers must spend time and attention on non-musical tasks including network configuration, development environments for the mobile devices, defining OSC address spaces, and handling the receipt of OSC in the environment that will control and produce sound. Our research seeks to overcome such obstacles by minimizing the code needed to both generate and read the output of interfaces on mobile devices. For iOS and Android devices, our implementation extends the application Control to use a simple set of OSC messages to define interfaces and automatically route output. On the desktop, our implementations in Max/MSP/Jitter, LuaAV, and SuperCollider allow users to create mobile widgets mapped to sonic parameters with a single line of code. We believe the fluidity of our approach will encourage users to incorporate mobile devices into their everyday performance practice.