Moonment
The overture for LUNA System
The LUNA system is, in general, a new type of gesture-centered interactive system for playing instruments combining aleatory music and light art.
The main goal is to design an interactive system based on sound and light technology and aleatory music, which allows participants without any musical background to play instruments, or "super-instruments", in line with the mainstream musical aesthetics, or to create a new form of instrumentation. MOONMENT is the LUNA system's attempt at an interactive device.
INSPIRATION
The same universe and the same moon, but in different regions and cultures, the moon can be seen so differently, and this gave birth to the idea of incorporating the concept of the moon's brightness, which is both warm and elegant, and unpredictable and crazy, into the design of the LUNA system.
Express Emotion
The change of human emotions is so similar to the change of the moon, and it seems to be a characteristic of human beings that they like to put their emotions on other things. Therefore, it seems that people's sadness and happiness, the moon's cloudy and sunny days, music and light have the same characteristic of "changing emotions".
Gesture Interaction / Aleatory Music / Acousto-optical System
Applying this conceptualization to the LUNA system, it means that the LUNA system is just like the moon, through which people can express the opposite emotions of warmth or coldness.The music played by different people through the LUNA system is also very different, and even the same person may not be able to play the exact same melody through LUNA in his or her lifetime, but every LUNA performance is unique and a surprise for the participants.
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
Following the principle of human-computer interaction, there are four steps: information input, information acquisition, information processing centre and information output. The equipment required are a computer (macOS), Leap Motion, Arduino UNO, WS2812 full colour light strip and speakers.
The gestures are used as the "raw data" for the information input and are the actual movements made by the user. The gestures are captured by Leap Motion and presented mathematically in the information processing hub and Max/msp, which transmits the data in Midi form to the This data is then transmitted to the music output and Ableton Live to control the music changes, and to the Arduino panel in the form of an ascii data string, where the Arduino calculates the program that has been programmed to control the light strip changes.
