Interfacing for dynamic morphology in computer music performance

Laptop performance of computer music has become wide spread in the electronic music community. It brings with it many issues pertaining to the communication of musical intent. Critics argue that performances of this nature fail to engage audiences as many performers use the mouse and keyboard to control their musical works, leaving no visual cues to guide the audience as to the correlation between performance gestures and musical outcomes. Interfaces need to communicate something of their task. The author will argue that cognitive affordances associated with the performance interface become paramount if the musical outcomes are to be perceived as clearly tied to realtime performance gestures, ie. That the audience is witnessing the creation of the music in that moment as distinct to the manipulation of pre-recorded or pre-sequenced events