Polyspring: a Python toolbox to manipulate 2-D sound database representations

Corpus-based concatenative sound synthesis is typically used with a projection or reduction of the sound parameter space to a 2-dimensional map where sound segments form point clouds that can be visualized and explored with a mouse or a touch interfaces. While this is satisfying with visual feedback, where possibly sparse and heterogeneous sound spaces can be easily controlled, this remains challenging or impractical without visual feedback and using whole-body movements.

We present polyspring, a Python toolbox dedicated to manipulating the distribution of a set of points in a 2-Dimensional plane. This package implements an algorithm based on a spring network simulation that can redistribute points according to a density target within a given bounded region while preserving the initial order between points. We made several modifications and additions to the previously published unispring algorithm to allow for concurrently interacting with the dataset and manipulating the distribution in real time. The toolbox is open-source and can be used with Max/MSP. We also present different applications of this toolbox in movement-based sound interaction.