Today Google announced a new feature of google hangouts where an existing hangout can call a telephone number and include them in the hangout. i’m not sure what sort of limitations there are in terms of number of phone calls or whatnot, but this has some further interesting potential for live performance art that is still rolling around in my head.
I’m going to start experimenting and creating the piece of music that uses google hangouts that i blogged about earlier. I just bought myself a Mac Mini that should get shipped to me by the beginning of next week, so between that, my main machine, and the work laptop i have three video/audio setups that i can play with to see what i can do.
Originally i had thought i was going to make the piece a percussion piece, but i think i’ve decided that instead it’s going to be a solo clarinet or saxophone piece because it’s possible that i can manipulate the live video feed a bit better if the sound gets directed in a particular direction. The new feature of adding in phone conversations doesn’t really play into this piece, but one thing that it has done has sparked an idea of maybe trying to program or create some sort of live audio manipulation. That might not be in scope for this particular project unless it’s done in a very simple way – the way that i’d want to do it for a future piece is using Max/MSP and i don’t have the money or the time to learn that on top of everything else going on right now. One thing i *could* try to do is to have some accompaniment in the background, but i think that would add fussiness to how audio signal routes to the laptops and changes the video focus. I need to get my feet wet with the base concept first before i start embellishing too much.
Experimentation for this is going to start probably in the next couple of weeks. i’m pretty excited about it, i want to see what i can do.