So over the last few weeks, we've been rushing around all over the place, talking to lots of people about accelerometers and music, and how they approach the concept of gestural movement creating music. Firstly, having discovered the eZ430-Chronos watch, a great cheap startup bit of kit, we got in touch with Robby Grodin of Conductive IO, who created the Toscanini patch for MaxMSP, which meant we could literally plug in the watch and start making noises from movements.

Next we met Rob Thomas from RjDj, a company in London that developed the RjDj app for iPhone. Rob's a music producer himself, and we had a great conversation about audience engagement and how to place interactivity within a structured artwork, especially music, which necessarily has a beginning and end (or at least most of the time!) Rob also threw us a couple of bits of code which were massively helpful.

Then, earlier this week we met with Matthew Bickerton in London, an electronics/programming expert and music enthusiast with a wealth of good advice for us.

Our salient problem has been that of the technology - getting accelerometers to spit out nice friendly data is difficult. You need to know your physics, have good programming skills and a lot of time on your hands - sadly we have these in very small quantities. So we've asked Liam Lacey, another resident at the studio to help us out with his expertise. Unfortunately it feels like we've discovered this resource a little late, as we're now frantically trying to make some kind of prototype for next week when we'll be filming a document of the residency.

Whilst we've been having a lot of really exciting conversations with a lot of awesome people, it feels in practice a bit like we've been held back from exploring how the technology can inform our art and instead just been exploring technology, perhaps because our ambitions are a little too grand. But I think this is an indication of how long things can take when you're dealing with technology. Two months is a very short time, but we have to remember that this is a research & development residency and I'm optimistic that we'll have some sort of prototype and a good idea of how to take things forward at the end of it all.

Either that or I'll just have to tell you all that my dog ate the accelerometer.

Posted by timbamber