Body as controller
This work tackles incremental challenges in improving body-controlled digital music instruments for performers, focusing on specific design aspects that have received little prior attention.
The paper addresses three underexplored questions in digital music interface design: which limbs are most effective for control, what reference points to use for movement measurement, and the mathematical mapping from movement to sound parameters, proposing that answering these questions is valuable and suggesting potential solutions for further study.
In the process of developing a new digital music interface, the author faced three questions that have attracted little to no attention in the literature. By tracking body joints, a performer can use body parts to directly control a digital music instrument. An immediate question that follows asks which limb(s) is more effective for the instrument. The next question asks that movement should be measured relative to a particular reference point. And the last question asks about the mathematical form of the mapping function from the movement feature to the sound parameters. This paper attempts to discuss why finding an answer to these questions is worthwhile and to provide possible solutions that require further investigation.