Welcome along my name is Darrell Gibson and I'd like to give you my video presentation for
Star Interpolator - A novel visualization paradigm for Graphical Interpolators.
I'm having to record this at home so I do apologize for the sound quality.
I'll start off by just taking you through what I'm going to cover in the presentation.
First of all I'm going to introduce you to the basic concept of what a graphical Interpolator is.
I'll then show you some of the existing graphical interpolator models.
Take you through some of the work that we did comparing the different visualizations
between the different models.
I'll then introduce you to our visualization known as the Star
Interpolator and show you how we visualize the parameters with the Star Interpolator.
I'll then take you through some of the work that we did
exploring the benefits as we see it of the Star Interpolator.
In addition, we also touch upon how it can be used to generate hybrid visualizations for other
graphical interpolators and finally I'll make some conclusions.
So what is a Graphical Interpolator? A graphical interpolator uses a graphical
representation to provide control for interpolating between synthesized sounds.
The one that you see in front of you now is the nodes visualization provided in Max/MSP.
Each of the synthesized sounds is represented by a circular node and
where the circles intersect you can then interpolate between the intersecting sounds.
By moving the cursor here shown as a crosshair through the
space you can then interpolate between the different sounds.
Many different graphical interpolator models have been generated over the years.
Here's just a small example some of the ones that we used in our comparison.
The first one that we've got here is the nodes one which I've just
introduced you to which is intersecting circles.
We then had the gravitational model which then uses a model where each of the sounds is
represented by a planet within a universe. Larger planets have large
gravitational force, therefore have a greater influence over the sound than smaller planets.
Next one shown here is an inverse weighted distance,
radius-based inverse weighted distance so we use the inverse weighted distance from the cursor to the preset sound.
This one uses a radius so the cursor has a radius around it
and therefore only sounds with inside the radius will be included in the interpolation.
Next we have a light mode, here the individual sounds are represented
as light sources, lamps generating beams of light and where
those beams of light intersect the interpolation is performed.
Next one we have is a triangulation all of the sounds are placed with inside the space
and a triangulation is then constructed and the interpolation is performed based
upon the three containing preset sounds of the cursor.
And then finally we have a natural neighborhood tessellation here.
Each of the sounds has a is represented as a polygon within the space.
Then as the cursor is moved with inside the space
and uses the natural neighbors of the cursors position to determine the weighting's for the individual parameters.
We then did a bit of investigation on
these different visualization models and compared the parameters that the
visualization allows the user to
consider through the visualization so here we see the interpolator models
across the top the six that I've just covered and then down the side we can
see the different visual cues that each of these provide to a greater or lesser extent.
Through undertaking this investigation it became apparent that
all of the models, the visuals directly relate to how the interpolation is
performed and none of them actually give you much of an indication of how the
sound will actually be changed so that's what we were trying to remedy with the Star Interpolator visualization.
With a Star Interpolator each of the preset sounds
is represented by a star and star has a number of beams and each beam is
representative for the parameters that are actually being interpolated.
So by looking at the different presets here we can get a feel for how the parameters
are actually changing between those different preset sounds.
In addition, we replaced the standard crosshair cursor with a star representation itself.
In this way, as you move the cursor through the space, in real-time you can see how
the individual parameters are actually changing as you navigate through the space
We then augmented this by giving the users a parameter visualizer
that not only showed the cursors current values for all of the chosen parameters, but
also allow the users to actually see the names of the individual parameters
so they can directly understand how the parameters that affect the synthesis
engine are being changed as you move through the interpolation space.
Having constructed the Star Interpolator we then did a bit of investigation to
try and understand whether the additional visuals that are provided
that the Star Interpolator actually helped in sound design tasks.
We found that the stars themselves actually provide a visual mechanism for seeing
the differences between the different presets as you can see in the previous example
and it helped in gaining a understanding of complex relationship
between the parameter values and the audible output as you moved the cursor
you can visually see the parameter values being changed and at the same
time you get the sonic output that corresponds to those parameter changes.
Moving the cursor allows you to visually see the individual parameter changes and
also we found that it aids the selection of actually which parameters you want to map into the interpolation space.
For example, there may be some parameters
that aren't actually changing or won't actually change there may be others that
have a much bigger effect upon the audible sound that you hear or relate to
particular characteristics of the sound that you want to interpolate.
In addition, it was also found that the visualization also helped with laying out the presets
with inside the interpolation space.
As I said at the beginning, we envisage that this is a visualization that may be applied to other interpolation models
so the stars themselves could be applied to any one of the interpolation models
because the stars themselves relate to the parameter values and don't actually
relate to how the interpolation was being performed.
To give you an example of this, here we can see the nodes interpolator again but this time the
visuals to the nodes interpolator have been augmented with
the Star Interpolator visualization.
So just to conclude the Star Interpolator provides a mechanism for obtaining additional visual cues
that relate directly to the sonic output that a graphical interpolator can generate.
It was found that by generating a audio-visual relationship it became
much more effective when navigating the space and working out how to generate
particular audio audible effects.
In addition to that, it aided the selection of parameters for the actual mapping into the interpolation space.
What we consider in future is adopting an interactive visualization which means
that user can choose which visual cues they'd like to see in the visual
representation for the graphical interpolation.
In order to evaluate this further we want to undertake some usability testing in the coming months on Star Interpolator.
Thank you very much for your time.
If you have any questions feel free to ask.