Swirls for CataRT

Overview

"Swirls for CataRT" represents a corpus of sounds, imported, segmented, and analysed by CataRT in a 3D space as shapes of "swirls", a sort of spiralling grass that grows according to the analysed sound descriptors. The swirl space can be navigated interactively with the mouse to trigger playing of the units.

The corpus-based concatenative sound synthesis system CataRT plays grains from a large corpus of segmented and descriptor-analysed sounds according to proximity to a target position in the descriptor space. This can be seen as a content-based extension to granular synthesis providing direct access to specific sound characteristics. More information on CataRT : CataRT by Diemo Schwarz, IMTR team, Ircam .

Please note that the development of "Swirls for CataRT" is partly funded by ANR project Topophonie .

Download

• Version 0.20 ".APP" (2010/06/14)  -  SwirlsForCataRT-0.20.zip  -  MacOSX 10.4 to 10.6 w/ Java 5 to Java 6  -  (1.9Mb)  -  (GNU GPL v3.0)
• Version 0.19 Lomus (2010/04/13)  -  SwirlsForCataRT-0.19.zip  -  MacOSX 10.4 to 10.5 w/ Java 5 (6 unsupported)  -  (1.69Mb)  -  (GNU GPL v3.0)
• Version 0.16 (2010/04/09)  -  SwirlsForCataRT-0.16.zip  -  (1.70Mb)  -  (GNU GPL v3.0)
• Version 0.15 Lomus (2010/03/31)  -  SwirlsForCataRT-0.15.zip  -  (1.66Mb)  -  (GNU GPL v3.0)

Documentation

• General :

  "Swirls for CataRT" is a Java program that works as a standalone, separate GUI for CataRT. It is mainly intended at producing visually inspiring/informative representations of CataRT sound grains analysis, and at enabling their playback. The data it retrieves from CataRT via the OSC protocol is very detailed, as every CataRT-analysed "grain of sound" bears values for the 12 following descriptors :
  1. Loudness
  2. Pitch
  3. Note Number
  4. Periodicity
  5. Spectral Flatness
  6. Spectral Centroid
  7. High Frequency Energy
  8. Mid Frequency Energy
  9. High Frequency Content
  10. AC1
  11. Energy
  12. Label
  The "swirl" unit is designed to be able to reveal most of those descriptors at once, hence the complexity of its shape.

• Step-by-step use of the interface :

  The interface is made of 3 major panels which will be addressed in the following steps using the names : menu bar, control panel, display panel.
  
  1. First, make sure CataRT is launched, sound files have been imported and audio is ON (green).
  2. Then launch Swirls for CataRT by double-clicking on the "SwirlsForCataRT-0.19.jar" file in the "SwirlsForCataRT-0.19" folder.
  3. The display panel should now appear plain white.
  4. By tweaking the XYZ rotation sliders in the menu bar, you'll understand that you are facing a white, planar ground that is floating in front of the display panel camera in an infinite, grey universe. Don't freak out and proceed to the next step ;)
  5. Click on the "CataRT", plug-styled button and at the prompt, enter the IP address of the machine that is running CataRT for you. That is, unless you've chosen to run the sound software on a separate unit, the IP of the machine you're running Swirls for CataRT on : 127.0.0.1 or localhost. Please note that running audio and visuals on separate computers can be of significant help with performance issues that are usually related to real-time rendering of an overload of imported sound samples.
  6. Wait for Swirls for CataRT to retrieve all of the data and show it in the viewport. This can be quite long if the amount of samples is large. In such a case, the performance may fall dramatically, especially when setting the "Bits" parameter to a high level !
  7. From now on, all of the data is acquired from CataRT and the visualisation can be fine-tuned (see next section "Fine-tuning the visualisation" for details).
  8. To toggle visibility of the white, planar ground, use the toggle button in the menu bar. When ground is hidden, the mouse cursor disappears and is replaced by a black circle (that is visible in the viewport only). That "playback head" cursor triggers the associated sounds within CataRT when crawling around the bases of the swirls. Whether ground is visible or hidden, that stands.

• Fine-tuning the visualisation :

  (click on the thumbnails to open a larger view)
  • As you may read from the following screen shots, X and Y parameters of each individual swirl can be associated with all 12 descriptors :
    
    
  • The same goes for the 3 components of their color : Red, Green and Blue. However, no fine-tuning is available for these parameters in the current version.
  • The next parameter that can be tweaked from the control panel is the "Bits" parameter. This controls the amount of 3D shapes that are used to build the swirls, therefore controls the length. It can be both associated with any of the 12 descriptors, and fine-tuned via a dedicated slider.
    
    
  • The next parameter alters the thickness of the swirls. It can be both associated with any of the 12 descriptors, and fine-tuned via a dedicated slider.
    
    
  • The prior-to-last parameter, "Swirling" (used to be called "Base width"), has to do with the amount of "spiraling" induced in the building of the swirls. That is inherited from the width of the base of the swirls' spiral : the wider, the swirlier. It can be both associated with any of the 12 descriptors, and fine-tuned via a dedicated slider.
    
    
  • The final parameter that can be tweaked from the control panel is the "Stretch" parameter. This roughly controls the height of the swirls, in obvious conjunction with the "Bits" parameter that has a lot to do with their length. It can be both associated with any of the 12 descriptors, and fine-tuned via a dedicated slider.
    
    

Technologies

Swirls for CataRT uses the following technologies :

• Java
• OpenGL (JOGL bindings)
• Processing
• Open Sound Control

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