Movement into Music

Scientists are developing ways of capturing human movement in three dimensions which would allow music to be created with the gesture of an arm. It would eliminate the need for music technicians to twiddle hundreds of knobs to achieve the perfect sound. The technique could also be used for scrolling a webpage, especially useful for people with limited mobility. ...

Dr Kia Ng of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Research in Music is leading the project, which captures 3D movements using infra-red light. ... "Effectively a person could play a note by blinking an eye or moving a foot. The possibility is for anybody to control a musical composition," said Dr Ng.

Of course there are risks that the wrong gesture could lead to a bum note, so the system is also going to have a more pre-composed system that can intelligently guess what a series of gestures represents. "The biggest challenge is to train the system to anticipate movement," said Dr Ng. "To make sense of a gesture it need to know not only where an object has been and where it is, but also where it will be," he added. He is hopeful that the system can be put to the test at a live concert by the end of next year.

BBC News