Automata

Automata is an interactive software system designed to give individuals without any formal music training the opportunity to compose and perform an original piece of music. It was created by V.J. Manzo. The PHP module that allows for a cell-phone to be used to enter numbers was created by Dan Manzo, though it is not available in this version which was used in a 2010 TI:ME Action Research project. More information on the original model (2009) go here.

A user enters some meaningful numbers such as their phone number, or birth date, or locker combination by using an on-screen number pad. The system gets the numbers and equates each digit (0 – 9) to one of the scale degrees of a user selected musical scale (1-8, 9 = 2, 0 = 3). By default, the software begins in C Major. The user can then cause the notes to play back in some manner by using the on-screen graphical controls. The user can impose a rhythm and tempo for which these scale degrees are played back sequentially, change the tonic and key, and build tertian harmony from these scale degrees, as well as control the timbres used to synthesize these numbers. Up to four sets of numbers can be loaded and performed simultaneously. For this study, the four sets of numbers were controlled on four small MIMO touchscreen USB monitors.

This project was developed by V.J. Manzo, PhD and is available here.

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Hardware:

- 4 MIMO 720-S USB Touscreen Monitors were used as controls for the original research study, but are not required.