Small Fish - Video

Cybernetic Music Spaces

The SMALL FISH CD-ROM version is designed as an interactive visual score, in which meaning created by configuration, movements, and collisions of symbols, objects and images on the computer screen to generate MIDI code for controlling a flow of melody, harmony, and rhythm of music in real-time. The user can interact with this software like a music instrument. This can be called "Active Music Score". It provides a concrete experience of, and appreciation for, the space of abstract connotations. It does not require any kind of cerebral interaction to decode its audio-visual elements, but enables the user to draw meaning straight out of direct interaction with images and objects. Thought does not follow experience in SMALL FISH; it is experience by itself.

The SMALL FISH Floor version is an immersive environment that capitalizes on the potential of a human-computer interface in which real and virtual objects merge on the surface of the projection area. Moving real objects on the floor alters the position of its associated virtual image and results in a change of the musical structure. Eventually, the generated sound sequences begin to sound like music. The pleasures of both movement and music yield subtly to each other in a common progression.

The SMALL FISH Tale  concert version capitalizes on the potential of the interplay between a trumpet player and interactive music software. Both players can alter the positions and the behaviour of objects on the screen—the trumpet player by using specific tunes, and the player at the computer through mouse and keyboard interface. New complex musical structures appear on the large screen, where the visualisation of the musical duet is projected.