Aura – minuit 47 Creating a unique collective musical experience

Organising residencies at Rotondes isn’t just about giving artists optimal working conditions. It’s also the privilege of watching their project evolve in real time.

Last December, Minuit 47, the duo who won the Multiplica grant as well as the cross-border residency organised by Rotondes, the City of Metz and Bliiida, moved into our Black Box for two weeks of research and meetings around their project AURA (Accessible Unified Responsive Audio). Benjamin Gabriel and Victor Paredes worked on both the technology and how their modular musical device would actually be used. Before they packed up their equipment, we caught up with them one last time.

Benjamin, if we’ve got this right, the initial idea for AURA came from you. Did it start from something specific you observed?

Benjamin: Yes, I was working in a care facility with people with disabilities, making music with them using traditional instruments like the piano; These instruments require quite advanced motor skills and a lot of time to master. I found it frustrating that people who lacked fine motor control, or simply the patience, were excluded from this. So I started thinking about musical games and explorations that could include everyone.

That’s what led me to look into different types of sensors. I spent a long time researching what already existed and reached out to IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/​Music. Frédéric Bevilacqua, who heads the movement and sound department there, put me in touch with Victor.

So Victor, you took on the technological aspect of the project.

Victor: I worked with Frédéric for five years on a thesis about the interaction between movement and sound, using motion sensors for artistic creations. I have knowledge and skills in engineering applied to music, but even after working on this for four years, these things take time to develop and you never really know what’s going to work. It’s always best to start with what you know. With AURA, I’m using technologies I know well, or thought I did, but in a context that pushes me in different ways than research does. That change opened up very different solutions. For example, it was the first time I’d ever embedded sensors inside a ball! We made significant progress in just two weeks.

Rotondes organised meetings with ​“test” groups fairly early in the residency. Were you ready?

B.: The workshops took place after eight days. Before that, we tried loads of things and focused on what felt most reliable. We knew we’d be working with 10-year-old children on the autism spectrum, so it was important to present something stable and robust, to avoid frustration.

V.: We arrived with five different sensor technologies, but in the end we only used two. From those, we developed several different setups. The underlying technology is the same, but each configuration creates a different kind of interaction and produces different sounds. 

B.: You can put a sensor inside a ball and make it produce whatever sounds we choose when you touch it, catch it, and throw it. You can also use sensors placed around the ankle to capture footsteps and turn them into musical material. The sensors are extremely versatile.

V.: They’re portable, battery-powered and send all the information via Wi-Fi. They’re small enough to be embedded almost anywhere, which gives us a lot of freedom.

Did working with children push you towards a more playful approach?

B.: What mattered most was using everyday objects that people instinctively know how to handle, like a ball. We chose foam so it wouldn’t be dangerous and so people wouldn’t be worried about damaging it. We also tried to avoid giving the objects an overtly technological look. That said, we did design a glove fitted with strips that detect finger joint flexion. In a week, it’s difficult to build something that is robust, visually appealing and doesn’t look technical. For the children, we simplified the interaction with the glove: they just had to open and close their hand. Two days later, we met teenagers, and for them each finger was independent and represented part of a drum kit. The system is meant to reach a wide range of people, so it’s also about simplifying or adding complexity to the interaction depending on the audience you’re working with.

V.: The technology itself remains simple. What changes is how it’s used. There’s a range from very intuitive objects, like the ball, to more demanding ones, like the glove, which requires practice. It seems to us that everyone fits in somewhere. The key is listening to what a person wants to do, the objects they feel comfortable with and which ones they might form a connection with that would push them to go further. The workshops showed us that this is less about inventing new devices than about how they’re used and how the workshops are designed. Rather than narrowing the scope, we’re deliberately keeping it open.

Given the possible applications, the project could potentially go on forever.

B.: Next year we’ll be hosted by an institute working with people who have very diverse disabilities. We’ll present objects, make music with them and go back and forth through co-development. The workshops will be overseen by two research units. Over the year, we’ll adapt the devices to arrive at something designed for and by the people concerned, so the object doesn’t become outdated. Then we’ll leave them with a setup, because the idea is that other artists can come and use it in workshops that reflect their own practice. At that point, we’ll have created a mediation tool, a bridge between artists and people who are far removed from cultural life. That aspect is an integral part of AURA.

V.: We’re also thinking about open source. But just because you make things freely available online doesn’t mean they’ll find an audience. We’d also have to actively spread them, and for that we need to define precisely what AURA is. Is it just a set of objects? Is it a method? Where does it find application? And conversely, what can’t it do?

To make full use of this potential, are you planning to collaborate with other people, specialists connected to the different potential applications?

B.: That’s what I’ve been doing from the start by contacting different types of places. I’m in touch with psychologists to study the impact of AURA on certain profiles, and with psychomotor therapists for the rehabilitation side of things.

V.: At this stage, we’re thinking about all the professions we would have loved to work with already, whether in design or education. We’re considering who we’d like to invite for the next part of the residency in Metz. We’ll have to prioritise our needs and decide quickly. I think the social value of the system will motivate people to join us.

Before Metz, you’ll present a work-in-progress at the end of February at Rotondes, during Multiplica Lab. What can we expect?

B.: Creating a shared experience was my core idea for AURA from the very beginning. There are many possible versions of the project. For Multiplica Lab, we still need to decide whether to focus on a large public presentation or workshops with small groups. In the meantime, we’ll continue developing other technologies, like a sensory mat, so there may well be more to show than there is right now.

V.: Once we’ve decided on the format, we can make sure that attendees at Multiplica Lab leave feeling they’ve had a musical experience they’ve never had before, thanks to collaborative activities and technologies that break down barriers and let people make music differently, collectively, regardless of their level of musical knowledge.