Crossole is a musical meta-instrument by Sang Won Lee, Avinash Sastry, Anosh Daruwalla and myself. The word “Crossole” is a portmanteau of “crossword” and “so-lee (소리)” which, means sound in Korean. In Crossole, the chord progressions are visually presented as a set of virtual blocks. With the aid of the Kinect sensing technology, the performer can either build chords in the high level or step into the low level and control the arpeggiations of chords note by note. In the meantime, the performer has to play music by moving a gesture controlled cursor within the blocks. As more and more blocks are created, the visualization will eventually start to resemble a crossword puzzle.

Also, Crossole allows the performer to save a route. Once the recording is finished, Crossole replays the chords by traversing the recorded route in the background. In the meantime, the performer’s hand gestures are mapped to various processing algorithms to enhance the timbral scenery. Crossole allows the performer to think of chord progressions, arpeggiations, timings and timbre separately. Nonetheless, Crossole brings a challenging environment since the performer needs to make the musical decisions on-the-fly and coordinate his efforts between these elements.

You can watch the performances below:

Listening Machines 2011, 30 April 2011, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Tags: block, chord, concert, gesture, interactive, Kinect, listening machines, performance, timbre