ABSTRACT – Mobile Performance Group is a collaborative, multimedia project involving faculty and students from Stetson University’s Digital Arts program. The group’s primary mission is to find new ways of presenting art outside of traditional venues. Since 2004, MPG has fulfilled this objective by presenting a number of site-specific performances at festivals and conferences throughout the country. For each performance, members of MPG collect sounds and video from a given locale using digital equipment, edit the material into libraries based on common traits and use these libraries as the basis for a structured improvisation using laptop computers and specialized controllers. Requiring students to design their own instruments for our collective improvisation system provides a platform for them to apply advanced musical concepts including sound synthesis, audio processing, algorithmic composition, and gestural control. This demonstration will address technical methods used and discuss how these reinforce learning objectives within our interdisciplinary university program.

Stephen, Jana, me, Amanda and David. Photo courtesy of David Royse.

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• Listen to MP3 recording – 26.1 MB

This performance was presented as a Thursday night preview to my presentation on Friday morning.  It allowed the conference attendees to experience MPG in our normal setting so that they had a better idea of what we do.  As is our usual method with Collective Sites, we gathered sounds and images from around campus to use as material for our performance.  The following 3 tracks were the results:

• Metalik – MP3, 10 min 22 sec
• Step Up – MP3, 7 min 3 sec
• Starter House – MP3, 11 min 5 sec

The performance also featured the premiere of our new interactive shopping cart.  This touch-sensitive controller is simple enough to allow audience members to join in the fun.  You can see it in action here:

Interactive Shopping Cart from Matt Roberts on Vimeo.

ABSTRACT – Most learning management systems feature online discussion forums, allowing students and instructors to communicate asynchronously outside of class meetings. However, beyond their ability to exchange text messages, most also include the option of attaching small files to user posts. It has also become common for audio software to export projects as MP3 files, a file format that today’s students are very familiar with. These two technologies, discussion boards and MP3 files, can be easily combined to implement a powerful system for tracking student progress on music composition and audio production assignments.

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