Smartphone applications just keep getting better and better. From hacking museum galleries to making your own sound-reactive augmented sculptures, the creative potential you never knew you had is now waiting at your fingertips. Want to conduct your own orchestra? You got it. The KAIST Mobile Phone Orchestra or KAMPO iPhone app allows you to orchestrate melodies with other users.
First budding its roots as a project of Sihwa Park in collaboration with AIM (Audio and Interactive Multemedia Lab) in 2010, the KAMPO app is a musical interface that sends OSC messages via wifi. Composing music doesn’t get any simpler than this—five separate interfaces (button, draw, accelerometer, mic, and compass) and a setting menu equip you to become the next digital maestro.
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The debut performance featured above demonstrates five AIM lab performers operating different components of the KAMPO app, which in turn registers as different instruments. As these performers trigger instruments set in Ableton Live, the main display application creates loops as well, so conduction messages can be sent back and forth between the performers. Like a real orchestra, you can co-conduct with your fellow musicians. Receiving the performer’s OSC messages to visualize the data, the main application sends conduction messages and sounds that are then generated from the main computer. While this demonstration shows only five performers, imagine the spectacle of a KAMPO symphony!