OSCulator is a new powerful interface engine (unfortunately not open) which allows you to connect and control different multimedia devices, remaining at the same time flexible and easy. This software uses, as the name already says, the OSC technology (Open Sound Control), a protocol specifically designed to support fast and effective communication between computers and multimedia devices, lightweight and highly configurable. Particularly interesting is the usage of OSCulator in relation with the wireless Nintendo controller Wiimote and the audio production/post-production environment Kyma X. The computer receives the input forwarded by Wiimote thanks to a sensor bar, while the OSC engine takes care of the parsing with Kyma X, in real time. A new perspective of interaction is casted on this class of applications, changing radically the performative aestethics and production. The usual interfaces for sequencers and music production packages are usually equipped with graphical knobs and sliders, sequencing grids to fill in with the clicks of your mouse or midi keyboard. Many ad hoc controller devices have been introduced into the market in order to add faster and effective interaction, but always remaining within an analogic point of view. OSCulator reaches different paradigms of composition, certainly not new, but still very flexible and with lots of potentialities, re-introducing a more physical aspect, paradoxically going back towards the traditional human act of playing an instrument, and its visual performance. Thanks to this interaction any movement of your hands can be mapped and translated into audio feedbacks, getting rid of the mouse dictatorship, and being capable of controlling at the same time , easily and fast, quite a large variety of instances. At the end, the Wiimote becomes evidently a prosthetic extension of our body (more then other instruments), the act of the musical production is directly projected onto the body itself, which becomes the real performative synthesizer.

Tony Canonico