Description:

This project focuses on the interaction of autonomous, realistic and musically-gifted virtual agents with sound synthesis systems.

Our interest lies both in the analysis and the synthesis of percussive gestures. One the one hand, the analysis focuses on timpani gestures and aims at extracting relevant movement features. On the other hand, the synthesis part involves an inverse-dynamics control chain of a mechanical virtual agent model. For improved realism, we will use physical modelling for sound synthesis.

We expect that the virtual agent simulation will show the relevance of gestural control in animation, since gesture influence acts on the fine nature of the produced sound and on the spatial and temporal coordination of movements in charge of musical expressivity.

IDMIL Participants:

• Alexandre Bouënard
• Marcelo M. Wanderley

External Participants:

Sylvie Gibet

Fabrice Marandola

Research Areas:

• Movement Analysis

Funding:

• NSERC

Publications:

• Bouënard, A., Gibet, S., Wanderley, M. M. (2008). Enhancing the Visualization of Percussion Gestures by Virtual Character Animation. . Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2008).Genova, Italy.
• Bouënard, A., Wanderley, M. M., Gibet, S. (2008). Analysis of Percussion Grip for Physically Based Character Animation. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Enactive Interfaces (ENACTIVE 2008) (pp. 22-27). Pisa, Italy.
• Bouënard, A., Gibet, S., Wanderley, M. M. (2009). Hybrid Motion Control combining Inverse Kinematics and Inverse Dynamics Controllers for Simulating Percussion Gestures. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA'09) (pp. 17-20). Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Bouënard, A., Wanderley, M. M., Gibet, S. (2009). Advantages and Limitations of Simulating Percussion Gestures for Sound Synthesis. In Proceedings of the 2009 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC2009) (pp. 255-261). Montreal, Qc, Canada.
• Bouënard, A. (2009). Synthesis of Music Performances: Virtual Character Animation as a Controller of Sound Synthesis. In Ph.D. Thesis, Université de Bretagne Sud. Bretagne, France.
• Grond, F., Bouënard, A., Hermann, T., Wanderley, M. M. (2010). Virtual Auditory Myography of Timpani-playing Avatars. In Proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx2010). Graz, Austria.
• Bouënard, A., Wanderley, M. M., Gibet, S. (2010). Gesture Control of Sound Synthesis: Analysis and Classification of Percussion Gestures. In Acta Acustica united with Acustica (pp. 668–677). S. Hirzel Verlag.
• Bouënard, A., Wanderley, M. M., Gibet, S., Marandola, F. (2011). Virtual Gesture Control and Synthesis of Music Performances: Qualitative Evaluation of Synthesized Timpani Exercises. In Computer Music Journal (pp. 57–72). MIT Press.
• Bouënard, A., Gibet, S., Wanderley, M. M. (2012). Hybrid Inverse Motion Control for Virtual Characters Interacting with Sound Synthesis – Application to Percussion Motion. In The Visual Computer Journal (pp. 357–370). Springer.
• Bouënard, A., Gibet, S., Wanderley, M. M. (2009). Real-Time Simulation and Interaction of Percussion Gestures with Sound Synthesis. .
• Bouënard, A., Wanderley, M. Â., Gibet, S. (2009). Analysis of Timpani Preparatory Gesture Parameterization. In International Gesture Workshop.