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Floating Points is a piece for six instruments and motion-controlled interactive sounds played from the mobile devices of the audience. This extends my previous work with music for mobile devices in On the expressive potential of suboptimal speakers (a web-based piece for any number of people) and iMonkeypants (an iOS app album).
To set up your device for the performance, simply set the ring/silent switch to silent and turn up the volume. This will prevent notifications from phone calls or text messages. The music from this site will still play.
Once the page has loaded, you will see a start button, which you may tap right away. Your device may request permission to access your motion data, or you may need to allow this access in your settings.
The application will prevent the screen from turning off. Manually locking the screen may interrupt the sound, but if this happens you can simply reload the page.
The label in the center of the screen indicates the mode of interactivity for the current section of the piece. "Tilt" allows you to control certain aspects of the sound by tilting your phone to the left and right or up and down. "Shake" allows you to trigger individual sounds by gently shaking your device; a quick flick of the wrist will do. "Tacet" is a musical indication that your part is silent for this section.
Even at maximum volume, the sound from your phone speakers may still be quite soft. If you hold your phone close to your ear, you'll be able to hear the sound you control more distinctly, and if you hold your phone farther away, you'll hear a more balanced mix of all the sounds being made around you. Feel free to experiment with this balance!
Compatible with iOS and Android. Older models and devices that have not been recently updated may not be supported. Recommended browsers are Safari and Chrome. (Please note that a bug in the version of Safari included with iOS 13.4 prevents the "shake" mode of interactivity from functioning; updating to iOS 13.5 fixes the issue.)
I hope that the site I have designed is maximally accessible to all users. If you have thoughts on improving the accessibility of this site, please feel free to contact me at ryan (at) ryancarter (dot) org.
This project extends the Tone.js framework for using Web Audio in supported browsers.
Aspects of this project were developed in partnership with the BounceWav Collective (Jamie Haberman, Jet Kwok, Eddie Mestre) with support from the Los Angeles Philharmonic.