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    INESC Porto creates music on wheels with the Skate Ensemble

    The Telecommunications and Multimedia (UTM) is currently developing the Skate Ensemble, together with the Junior University programme. Promoted by Casa da Música’s Educational Service, this project aims at the creation of sounds and graphic images through the acrobatic movements of skaters, habitués at the Casa da Música outside space.

    01st September 2009

    Designed by Carlos Guedes, researcher at INESC Porto and professor at ESMAE, this project combines technology, music and sports, united by a multimedia interactive system placed in public spaces used by skaters. The concept is simple: with a simple equipment, designated as Skynth, sounds generated by the skaters’ acrobatic movements will be collected, thus generating synthetic sounds.

    In order to demonstrate this system, an educational initiative took place on 16 July with the participation of several young people. The aim was to combine music with new technologies. Each element participating in the initiative had a device on his/her skateboard that picked up the sounds generated by that same skateboard, sending it to a computer that would afterwards process it and play in real time.

    This initiative is just a subset of an ambitious performance and entertainment project where the device sends the information on the position and movement of the skater within an interaction space to a computer. Thus, it will be possible not only to create sound effects, but also computer generated graphics projected on a large screen.

    With this system, each skater will be capable of conducting the music the way he/she pleases, creating sounds as he/she moves. These sounds will vary according to the direction or speed that the skater is going. This is a process that can be carried out individually or in groups, in movements that can either be synchronised or not, in an interaction of rhythms and performances.

    The Skynth was designed by Carlos Guedes, together with Kirk Woolford, with the support of INESC Porto’s Optoelectronics and Electronic Systems Unit (UOSE), of the Directorate General for the Arts, of the Companhia do Som, ESART-IPCB and of the UT Austin – Portugal Programme.

    BIP, July 2009