PDCON:Conference/A Pd framework for the Xth Sense: enabling computers to sense human kinetic behaviour

A Pd framework for the Xth Sense: enabling computers to sense human kinetic behaviour

Author: Marco Donnarumma

The Xth Sense is an interactive system for the biophysical generation and control of music. It makes use of muscle sounds (namely, mechanical myography or MMG) produced by a performer as both raw sonic material and control data. Presently the Xth Sense (XS) technology consists of low-cost, wearable biosensors and a Pure Data based application for capture, analysis, real time processing and playback of human muscle sounds. The technical implementation of the XS biosensors has been recently illustrated in .

This paper describes the design of the XS software; it is a program that enables a computer to “listen” to the MMG signals transduced transduced by the XS biosensors, to understand the performance main features, and therefore to interact with the performer. After a brief introduction on the nature of the interaction fostered by the XS technology, I focus on the framework main features such as: the XS library, a tabbed dynamic interface (TDI), a MMG features extraction unit, and a graph-on-parent (GOP) routing system for dynamic mapping of gesture to sound.

Music for Flesh II, is a solo sound piece for the Xth Sense.