My Role
Research, prototyping (Unity, Wekinator), business plan development + pitch, illustration and visuals
Duration
8 weeks
Advisors
Jesus Garcia Galvez, Alexander Baumgardt, Amy Kweskin
An illustrative example of the intended interaction design made by Maxime using his Saxophone, Google's Beat Blender, and Refik Anadol's beautiful digital art.
The Context:
This project spawned from many years of Maxime's personal research, as a musician, in how jazz is a language of its own.
Through him, Blake and I embarked on a journey of learning how jazz improv (bebop) has been codified by Jerry Coker in 'Elements of the Jazz Language', and discovering Jaron Lanier's thoughts on convolution networks in 'Dawn of the New Everything.'
All three of us were introduced to Claude Shannon's 'Mathematical Theory of Communication' in our Systems class which elevated our understanding of this idea and we were in business. Literally.
This project has two parts —
PART 1
PART 2
We prototyped an initial proof of concept
+
We crafted a business plan for this idea
(For when we have that marketable API!)
Tools: An analog saxophone, sensors and circuit boards, Max/MSP, Wekinator, MIDI instruments, Unity
Winner: 3rd place + the People's Choice Award at the CCA Sparks Business Pitch Competition (100+ people attended, virtually)
Part 1 Prototyping a proof of concept —
Our prototyping journey involved physically digitizing a saxophone, routing it through Max/MSP and Wekinator, and finally using Thomas Fredrick's UnityOSC library to control three specific outputs in Unity — the skybox (colors), the rotating cube (colors), the particle system (speed + rate of emission)
An early demo using a MIDI keyboard to change the output in Unity
The final demo of the saxophone controlling the output in Unity
We know we have our work cut out and we'll need more technical help on this journey. But that didn't stop us from thinking big and long term.
We designed a business! We're only scratching the surface of what could be possible as we develop more ways to communicate through, and with, machines.
Part 2 The business opportunity —
Although jazz improv has been codified into building blocks we understood that TMBR would get better over time when more musicians have access to it allowing it to capture different styles of improv and creative expression through music — like writing with words.
What’s the best way to get it out and make it fun?
Game developers emerged as the best answer.
The gaming industry is bigger than the music and film industry combined and has consistently been at the forefront of pushing technological boundaries. The tech industry is already actively working to make video game streaming as intuitive and natural as possible. It made sense for us to find a niche in this market and make game developers our initial target audience.
If you're curious, here's our business plan!
👈 And if you're really curious, here's a recording of the pitch we built for the CCA Sparks Business Pitch Competition encapsulating our platform strategy. The first 8.5 minutes are the pitch followed by Q+A with the judges.
🏆 We pitched, virtually, to a panel of industry experts and an audience of 100+ winning 3rd place and the Peoples' Choice Award.