Artists Statement
In the interactive “Polly World ” installation one can experience many new, embodied ways to cut, combine, compose and co-‐create with musical, visual, tangible and social media. Music tunes are cut into significant parts and can be combined in infinite ways through user interaction with RFID tags and sensors, interpreted by pre-‐programmed musical algorithms (SuperCollider). Voice-‐input can be recorded through microphone input and cut up, combined and co -‐created into new unique musical compositions and experiences. Original music scores are remixed and developed into complex embodied parallel DJing, when users interact with several interactive Polly objects in parallel. The co‐- creation and composition, in the physical installation, can be extended further by distant interaction on a tablet/smartphone in a graphical user interface, or a high level Polly Twitter Language. In this way the Polly World enables a shift of roles between professional musicians and amateurs, between present and non-‐present audiences, between old compositions and new improvisations, between musical, visual and tangible media. This represents a disruption and shifting of roles, spaces, times and music practises such as composing, performing and listening, into a hybrid multi-‐sensorial, embodied experience.
Polly World is an interactive installation created by MusicalFieldsForever. The name Polly comes from “poly”, the Greek prefix for many, because it is many folded in a multitude of ways, which can b e interpreted as different disruptive changes of expressions and practises: There are many ways to interpret, relate and interact, many musical tunes and visual expressions to cut, combine, co-‐create and compose with. The shape of the interactive objects is built up of many joint polygon parts. The installation offers many possible embodied, sensorial experiences and many ways to participate socially.
The Polly World consists of one wired (Polly Land), three wireless interactive objects (Polly Ocean, Polly Planet and Polly Fire) and two APPs. One APP, Polly Compose, enables distributed interaction over the Internet with the physical objects using a Smartphone/Tablet.
The physical interactive objects are created in grey wool polygons, with coloured active areas, and have the following electronics and software embedded: Sensors: RFID, bend, touch, accelerometer and microphone. Actuators: LEDs and speakers. Computer: Apple/MiniMac and Texas-Instruments / Beagle-‐Bone-‐Black with Linux OS. Software: SuperCollider (generative music), Processing (dynamic graphics) and Web-‐Apps written in HTML5 using Twitter as a protocol for high level musical interaction. https://musicalfieldsforever.com/interactive-art/polly/concept/
MusicalFieldsForever (Sweden) is a group of Artists and also a Project. The members have diverse artistic backgrounds within music, industrial design, interaction design, but share the use of Networking models and the Computer as their major working tool and material. They also share a vision for the democratic potential of these technologies. Members of the group MusicalFieldsForever are Anders-Petter Andersson, Birgitta Cappelen, and Fredrik Olofsson. They have worked together since 2000 when they met at the Swedish Interactive Institute. musicalfieldsforever.com
- Anders-Petter Andersson is a composer, musicologist and associate professor in Interaction Design at NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
- Birgitta Cappelen is an industrial designer (SID), interaction designer and associate professor at Oslo school of Architecture and Design (AHO).
- Fredrik Olofsson is a musician, programmer and video artist. Olofsson is educated in music composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and at the School of Music in Piteå.