Making Acoustic Computer Music: The Rumentarium project

Abstract

The article describes the design, production and usage of the ‘Rumentarium’, a computer-based sound generating system involving physical objects as sound sources. The Rumentarium is a set of handmade resonators, acoustically excited by DC motors, interfaced to the computer by means of various microcontrollers. Following an ecological/anthropological approach, in the Rumentarium discarded materials are used as sound sources. Every instrument is ‘produced while designed’ in an improvisation-like manner, starting from available materials. In this way, hardware is ‘softened’: that is, it can be continuously modified as in software development. Analogously, the onsite setup is very light, so that components can be added or removed on the fly, even while the Rumentarium is at work. Differently from typical computer music, the Rumentarium, while entirely computationally controlled, is an acoustic sound generator. On one hand, the Rumentarium can be played like an instrument in conjunction with a MIDI controller, for use in live musical performance. On the other side, it can be driven by algorithmic strategies. In this way, the Rumentarium can be configured also as a sound installation, in a standalone mode. Some artistic works are discussed while introducing the various control modalities that have been specifically developed for the Rumentarium.

Across Fields: Sound, art and technology from an electromechanical perspective

“…Meanwhile another generation of practitioners has emerged from a context of easily available and ubiquitous digital technologies, who also choose to focus on the creative potential of the electromechanical. Peter Bosch and Simone Simons’s large installation-based music machines and sound sculptures, Daniel Wilson’s ‘miraculous agitations’ (Wilson 2012) of objects for sonic effect, Andrea Valle’s Rumentarium Project , described as ‘acoustic computer music’ (Valle 2013), Ethan Rose’s object-based sound installations, Shawn Decker’s motorised sound art installations, Jim Murphy, Ajay Kapur and Dale Carnegie’s musical robotics (Murphy, Kapur and Carnegie 2012), Zimoun’s minimalist kinetic installations and Felix Thorn’s machines represent a few such examples. It is possible to consider this broad range of contemporary creative practice in terms of the distinctions identified between process-driven and robotic creative approaches.…”