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PROJECT OVERVIEW

Public Sound Objects (PSOs) is an experimental project, originaly developed at the Music Technology Group (MTG) of the Pompeu Fabra University and continued since 2006 at the Research Centr for Science and Technology of the Arts (CITAR) at the Catholic University. It addresses the topic Internet based Collaborative Virtual Environments focused on sonic arts and music creation.
In this approach the concept of a web shared space is explored in the sense of community-driven sonic creation and in an on-site audiovisual installation, which brings together both a physical space and a virtual presence in the Internet. The PSOs System aims to allow synchronous interaction providing the basis for sonic joint improvisation amongst web users.

The overall system architecture is designed along the following key aspects:

(a) It is based in a Centralized Server Topology supporting multiple users connected simultaneously and communicating amongst themselves through sound;

(b) It is a public event with special characteristics that should be appealing both to a "real world" live audience and to a virtual audience of occasional on-line users visiting the server;

(c) The on-line participants' contribution to the final musical piece will be adequately constrained in a way that the overall aesthetic coherence of the piece can be guaranteed;

(d) The system should be scalable and modular enough to allow future extension and further experiments with different setups.

System Architecture

The Main Application in the Server Side is a Synthesis Engine currently implemented with PD (Pure Data). On the client side an early prototype implementation of a Bouncing Ball Skin [1] [2] was developed using Macromedia Flash and the current version was ported to Java.

The Installation Site
In the a future development of the project a server side installation with visual representation and sound spacialization will be implemented according to the following figure.

A Commission from Casa da Música in 2007, took the project towards a new dimension leading to an installation of the system with significant improvements at the user interface and physical structures of the terminals.The original installation included several PSO's user terminals dispersed at the Casa da Musica hallways, which allowed users to interactively share and create a soundscape generated by a Yamaha Disklavier Piano controlled by a central server. The installation was open since 2007 and is now permanently installed at casa da Musica 's "Foyer Renascimento".