TWISTER

Twister Twister is a prototype digital instrument developed by Nicholas Ward Composition and performance by Giuseppe Torre (2013) The performance was designed so that a sequence of nuanced gestural per- formative actions could both be visually and sonically legible to audience members. The use of real-world metaphors that link the visible gesture, constrained by the physical limitations of the instrument, to the audible sonic output via a complex hierarchy of mapping strategies have been found to be a useful tool that can enhance both the performer and audience experience of the live performance. Technical Description: The Twister interface is a prototype DMI that was initially developed using a movement based DMI design process. The intention here was to explore how movement, as described using Laban Movement Analysis, might explicitly drive a DMI design process. The interface is deliberately limited in the sensing systems that are employed (accelerometer, rotation, two buttons). The work explores this limitation whilst focusing on the range of gesture that the device supports and how this range might be mapped to sonic outcomes. In that regard, the presented work shows how we moved from a DMI design based on movement analysis to explore how the movement constraints imposed by the newly created DMI have influenced the design of the performance and the establishment of coherent audiovisual metaphors.