Absolute Relativity

The NTMI (NonTrivial Musical Instrument) is a project of Alberto de Campo at UdK. It embodies the idea of making complex sound worlds playable by intuition. It enables children and laypersons to playfully explore many sound synthesis processes and enables expert musicians to realise their own sonic imagination by adapting / expanding its open-source architecture. In this workshop, Alberto briefly explained and demonstrated the central concepts, then dedicated time to hands-on playing, experimenting and improvising, first on individual setups, and finally as multiple sources of influence on a single NTMI environment.

How can a group meaningfully play collectively on a single instrument? Based on our long-term project NTMI, we have been exploring the strategy of polyphonic influence: Multiple non/human sources play interfaces that only send requests for relative change to the generative environment. Big gestures become recognizable foreground; slow movements shift the area of exploration within the possibility space.

Reversing the thinking of the NTMI, Nico Daleman, and Maxime Le Calvé then suggested to use these complex sound worlds to make the complex dataset more intuitive to navigate using sound interactions. In the last part of the workshop, we applied the insights gained during the workshop to modify and further develop the prototype of a tool for neurosurgical planning by the SpecLab at Charité. We made use of the Non-trivial framework to create meaningful relations between spatial features and MRT data.

The day concluded with a participatory concert, open to children and family members of the workshop participants. This concert provided an opportunity for attendees to apply what they had learned in a live setting, performing in an improvisational and collaborative manner.