• mobile devices
• collaborative performance

The purpose of this report is to support the internship activity I developed at Ircam/Centre Pompidou. I have worked in the ISMM team (Interaction Sound Music Movement, ismm.ircam.fr/) and in particular in the environment of the CoSiMa research project (Collaborative Situated Media, cosima.ircam.fr/).
The entire research activity has been developed inside the CoSiMa Research Project whose aims are to develop a platform for collaborative and collective interactions based on recent mobile and web technologies. The idea is to make the possibility of playing music together accessible to people, whether they have musical practice or not. One of the most important aspects of the CoSiMa’s philosophy, in fact, is the democratization of this new media by using an accessible platform (e.g a Wi-Fi connection) based on open standards which allow it to be used, for instance, by a great variety of mobile devices (e.g smartphone, iPod, iPad, iPhone, etc.). Envisaged applications of this type are made for artistic purposes (e.g audiovisual collective performances), videogame (e.g collaborative videogames), entertaining media (e.g interactive fictions); the features of this kind of collective pattern can be extended to further uses such as city public services, marketing communication, health and wellbeing and, generally, aspects of communication design. Most of CoSiMa applications and collaborative performances are designed by keeping in mind the idea of proxemics, a semiotic approach to human’s use of space, formalized by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in his The Hidden Dimension (1966). We cannot dismiss, in fact, from anthropological and social considerations in collaborative-collective-based projects for artistic and recreational activities. Hall’s ideas about proxemics have been examined by composer and performer Lorenzo Bianchi, collaborating with CoSiMa Project, to elaborate and create original composition and musical execution modalities in terms of gestural control, space positioning of the player and generated sound; therefore, this performative approach considers the collaborative and collective side of the participants.
From a technologic point of view, this multimodal environment requires many components to be developed in terms of hardware and software: a client application installed (or accessed via web page) on a mobile device, a web service providing an open API, a database on server and a data management interface.
The software side of this technology is based on SoundWorks, a Javascript framework which allows artists and developer to create collective and collaborative performances where a collocated and distributed group of participants can use their own smartphones to whether generate or use sound for interacting by each others, using touch or movement features.

During my period at Ircam, I had the chance to participate to the infield demonstration of many collaborative and collective application such as: Drops, 88 Fingers and ProXoMix (during the Journées d’études @ ESBA TALM and Les Rencontres du Numerique of ANR).
Another experience I had occasion be in contact with, has been related to the Lorenzo Bianchi’s Proxemic Fields (during his Residency at Ircam). This research project aim to design two types of participative installations by using mobile devices whether in social context and in 3D audio systems, such as the Ambisonic.
On January 20th, 2017, a first demonstration of the Ambisonic Proxemic Field took place in the Studio 1. For that occasion user surveys were prepared to collect informations about feelings, musical expressivity, social issues and usability from the users. The user survey (created by following the model of structured interviews) has been composed and designed to be used as a pattern interview for every CoSiMa application.
Furthermore, during my internship activity, I developed a Soundworks application commissioned by Donald Glowinsky from the NEAD (Neuroscience of Emotion and Affective Dynamics Lab) of Geneva University, whose interests are involved in the study of behaviour of human interactions by relating emotional and musical context. The application is called ClickNoise1 and is a web application for mobile device, that allows users interacting between each others by generating a single impulse of a white noise signal or of a sample. The objectives are to analyze rhythmic synchronization and social aspects. Every users can manipulate the sound whether by simply touching the device or by shaking it. Finally, the application provides a database service that gathers data regarding information about the session of the performance and the user's interactions; this feature is good for further data analysis.
The entire activity has been supervised by Norbert Schnell researcher, developer and founder of CoSiMa research project and by Benjamin Matuszewski, developer for Wave project; moreover, I had occasion to work for Donald Glowinsky, researcher from Geneva University, and with Lorenzo Bianchi, composer and performer during his residency at Ircam.